It is the standard practice to keep larger marine engines on turning gear when not under power. I am retired from millwrighting in the power generation industry. A turbine that has not been on turning gear will need to be on the gear fora period of time to round out. These turbines are small as steam turbines go. The 4 of them produced a little over 247,000 total hp in her trials. For comparisom, the units at Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station produce 1400 MW or 1,876,675hp each. When shut down for an outage for 8-10 weeks 2-3 days is more than enough for that rotating mass of approx 650 tons.
There are no Diesels that could replace them in the space available.
I too would hate to see her lost. She is a serious part of history, a time when speed across the oceans was measured in days rather than hours. I do realize that her speed is her undoing. The narrow hull allows it to roll more than most passengers will tolerate these days. Cruise ships don't want speed as much as comfort. And as a troop ship no one is foolish enough to put 5000 men in one target.
Sinking ships, any ship, for a fishing spot is ridiculous. The "sink it" crowd would be the loudest whiners about the energy consumed and emissions produced to replaced that amount of metals.

That's basically true of any boat; the only difference here is scale. I'm given to understand similar principles apply to steam locomotives.

Re: the discussion about the turbines - I never thought an operational restoration was under consideration; I thought the best hope was to have it be a museum ship somewhere possibly with other attractions on board like a hotel/restaurant etc. That would still cost an enormous sum given the gutted interior.

It is the standard practice to keep larger marine engines on turning gear when not under power. I am retired from millwrighting in the power generation industry. A turbine that has not been on turning gear will need to be on the gear fora period of time to round out. These turbines are small as steam turbines go. The 4 of them produced a little over 247,000 total hp in her trials. For comparisom, the units at Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station produce 1400 MW or 1,876,675hp each. When shut down for an outage for 8-10 weeks 2-3 days is more than enough for that rotating mass of approx 650 tons.
There are no Diesels that could replace them in the space available.
I too would hate to see her lost. She is a serious part of history, a time when speed across the oceans was measured in days rather than hours. I do realize that her speed is her undoing. The narrow hull allows it to roll more than most passengers will tolerate these days. Cruise ships don't want speed as much as comfort. And as a troop ship no one is foolish enough to put 5000 men in one target.
Sinking ships, any ship, for a fishing spot is ridiculous. The "sink it" crowd would be the loudest whiners about the energy consumed and emissions produced to replaced that amount of metals.

The engines installed in SS United States appear to be the same as those planned for the Carrier USS United States (CVA-58) which was not built after the USAF had won the political battle. [the USAF then could not provide proper air support to the troops fighting in Korea until the Navy brought Carriers.]

As to carrying 5000 troops on one ship, the two Cunard Queens routinely carried 10,000+ pertrip transatlantic with no escort (nothing fast enough had the range). They relied on speed to defeat the U-boats.

Phil Mulligan

It is sad to think the country's Billionaires can't put together several million to save such a landmark as the SS United States, but the Billionaires only care about themselves.

Billionaires do NOT become billionaires by indulging others' foolish fantasies and delusions. And that's exactly what "saving" this ship amounts to. And casting aspersions upon billionaires for this plight not of their making is reprehensible.

Try all you want, but in perhaps forty years, NO ONE has managed to present a sensible business plan that even "bleeding heart" philanthropists can get behind, and I dare to say that would be the case even if the ship's interior were mostly intact. This ship consumes way too many resources just sitting dead and staying afloat waiting for a savior. It's the "wrong" ship to be trying to save.

This isn't like saving a "lost" UP Big Boy or B&O EM-1 if one surfaced. This is the moral equivalent of finding an entire major railroad yard or shops full of derelict seventy-five-year-old freight cars and locomotives, with a huge number of duplicates. We would not be trying to save the entire yard intact as is where it is; we'd be rationalizing what could be saved where by whom, and what has to be scrapped. Even the famous "Barry Miracle" of Dai Woodhams' scrapyard full of SR, GWR, and BR steamers in South Wales took 25 years to clear out, with several locos and trainloads of freight wagons sacrificed, and others rescued primarily as spare parts sources.

There HAVE been successful "saves" of "railroad yards," at least to some extent--Cumbres, New Mexico comes to mind. But look also at Mount Union, Pa, which has now lost both its steamers, had many of its freight cars sold off, and the rest are literally falling apart as we watch them. Steamtown, with government check-writers--successful, or not?

And no "billionaires" were involved in any of the "success stories" that I can recall--Not even Pete Waterman of Britain was entirely successful in his own later-largely-abandoned efforts.

"The problem with spending other people's money is that you eventually run out of other people." --most widely attributed to Margaret Thatcher, but the concept probably dates back to Adam Smith

Seveal millionaires did try to save SS United States. Fred Mayer owned the ship for many years after the 1980s cruise project failed. He paid to send the ship to Turkey and return for asbestos abatement. Edward Cantor then owned the ship with hopes of returning it to service. When he died, the family cut the funding for storage and sold the ship. Gerry Lenfest later provided major financial backing to the SS United States Conservancy in response to several funding crises.

~Wesley

Unpopular opinion time.

SS United States is not a landmark ship.

I don't think its ignorance, and I am trying not to go down the rabbit hole here of shaming a groups efforts, but the hard reality is this boat really has no huge historical significance. It was never any sort of flagship (as much as many may disagree but it was NOT a naval vessel). It was a liner, one that came in at the very end of the liner era, and had a short career. Its been completely gutted for 40+ years. There is no secret hull design or engineering in her anymore (not that I buy that to begin with). Naval architecture and engineering have come a long, long way since she was built. Her speed records have been broken (Yes I know, not by a "passenger liner"...but that's because they don't exist anymore..)

This boat has sat, literally, for 55 YEARS. 28 of which have been in the same spot, with millions of dollars raised, both privately, corporately and through benefactors. Studies have been done by large cooperation's to seek a viable alternative use. Every time, it has come back the same. Nil.

The amount of money this boat has swallowed up in rent and insurance alone could have funded so many established museum projects, especially maritime museums that are struggling. We are starting down the road where we are going to start loosing more and more of these vessels in the coming years. It is inevitable. We came very close to loosing the Texas and The Sullivans recently. We have lost the Clamagore and Ling (still there, but hope is essentially gone).

Is is a beautiful ship and one of the last liners? Absolutely! Designed by one of the most well known naval architects? Damn right. But its a rusted out hulk of a ship. I know once its gone, its gone. But that has been the case for a tremendous amount of things in the past.

Pier space is at a premium these days. Its not as simple as towing it to "X" and throwing the lines out. Those days are long gone. Do you know how hard it is to find any sort of tie up space in New York Harbor? The spaces just do not exist anymore. I have worked on, around and with the people from a number of the historic boats in most ports in the Northeast. Finding places to put them is next to impossible. NYC built two piers with the intention of having historic boats, but set the standards so high nobody could use them. 10 years later, they sit unused. All of the large piers? The moorings are long gone. There is literally a 30' long pile of bollards at one of our docks from piers the city has removed them from for other then maritime uses. This is why the fireboats had to tie up to trees and fences during 9/11. You think the cruise terminals will give up a working berth for this? Nope. Not happening.

The amount of places you can drydock vessels of this size, is down to just a handful of places. None of which are going to tie up their dock for a project like this without a literal boatload of cash waiting.

In the world of maritime preservation - we need to start really focusing on saving what we have, while we can, before adding more tonnage. We have lost almost every one of our tugboat museum ships in the last decade. That is just the start.

I really hate to see this ship lost. But I DO think reefing it is better then scrapping it.

At risk of going OT, but Billionaires/Millionaires have been especially active in aviation preservation over the years. Not surprisingly, they tend to be very quiet about their investments. The railroad community has been the beneficiary of one of these guys as well.

Historic aviation does offer workable business plans that allow for at least some cost recovery. As others have pointed out this has been repeatedly explored for the SS United States.

My former ship, the carrier USS America, where I spent five years out of high school, was sunk in 2005 as research into how to make future carriers more survivable. Now it turns out, even though she is 20,000ft down, she will be the only US supercarrier not to be scraped, as the Navy has decided the nuclear carriers can't be saved and the last of the conventional super carriers, the John F Kennedy, after being made available to a museum for what, 20 years, no viable solution has emerged so the Navy has decided to send her to Brownsville.

I'm happier the America is still around, will be around for hundreds of years, and will be explored in the future, instead of turned into autos driving around Guangzhou.

Bob

The New Jersey Council of Diving Clubs declined to recommend the United States to the State of New Jersey's Artificial Reef Commission after hearing that the interior was well removed, and fearing what salt water would do to the aluminum superstructure, leaving behind only the World's Biggest Sunken Canoe.

One thing NOT mentioned is that across the Delaware and a couple miles upstream is another large ship of similar vintage, USS New Jersey (BB-62). She is being maintained as a museum ship and is open to the public.

New Jersey is in excellent condition, having been drydocked a couple of months ago in the graving dock where she was built. Oh,did I forget to mention she was built at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. The construction team included many from New Jersey.

Phil Mulligan

And directly across the river from USS New Jersey is the Independence Seaport Museum, home to Olympia, the oldest steel warship afloat in the world, which carried the remains of the unknown soldier from France to Arlington National Cemetery, as well as the WWII-era submarine Becuna. Both are open daily as part of the museum and are very nice inside and out. Right next to these two is the four-masted sailing ship Moshulu, now a restaurant.

None of these are liners, but Philly has no shortage of worthy maritime preservation projects.

USS Olympia (C-6) was Adm. Dewey's flagship at Manila Bay and fired the first round of the Spanish-American War (when Capt. Gridley was ready) and performed the last mission of World War I by returning the Unknown Soldier from Europe to the USA.

Olympia is afloat, not ensconsed in concrete.

Phil Mulligan

It was a frequent practice among US design firms and builders in the 1940s and 1950s to produce a scale model of the boiler and engine rooms to check placement of machinery, piping, walkways, platforms, and ladders.

Has anyone seen one for SS United States?

PC

I don't know of any model, but if it's anywhere it's still with the designers or at Newport News.

Did EMD use models, say when redesigning an E7 into an E8, stuffing dynamic brakes and a second steam boiler in an already crowded carbody?

Phil Mulligan