The SS United States was America's answer to the great European liners – and she still holds the speed record for an Atlantic crossing by a passenger liner. Designed by William Francis Gibbs with the support of the U.S. Navy, she was built at Newport News, Virginia, and used aluminium and fireproof materials on a grand scale so that she could be converted into a troopship at short notice.
On her maiden voyage in July 1952 she crossed the Atlantic eastbound in three days, ten hours and forty minutes at an average of more than 35 knots, taking the Blue Riband from the Queen Mary. No passenger liner has beaten that record since. For seventeen years she sailed for United States Lines between New York and Europe, until competition from jet aircraft, strikes and rising costs ended her career in 1969. After decades laid up, latterly in Philadelphia, she was towed to Mobile, Alabama, in 2025, where work is under way to turn her into the biggest artificial reef in the world, off the coast of Florida.
