Okaloosa County, Florida, now has a window for sinking the SS United States: the second week of November, weather permitting, at a site about 22 nautical miles southwest of Destin-Fort Walton Beach in the Gulf. When she goes down, the 990-foot liner that crossed the Atlantic in 3 days, 10 hours and 40 minutes in 1952 will become the largest vessel ever deliberately sunk as a reef.
One common mistake in the posts circulating now is the idea that she is still tied up on the Delaware River. She left Philadelphia’s Pier 80 on February 19, 2025, and has spent the 19 months since in Mobile, Alabama, where contractors stripped out fuel, wiring and hazardous materials. Anyone hoping for a last look can still see her from the street at 601 South Royal Street in Mobile; she is not open for boarding.
The numbers behind the reef
The purchase itself was cheap: $1 million, paid to the SS United States Conservancy in October 2024. Its commissioners have since set aside $13 million in all, covering the purchase, towing, cleanup and money toward a land-based museum, paid from tourist bed taxes on short-term rentals rather than the general fund. Spread across the hull, that budget comes to roughly $13,100 per foot of ship ($13,000,000 ÷ 990).
The county’s planned depths are 180 feet to the seabed and about 55 feet to the top of the upper deck. Holes are being cut so she settles upright, and openings added for fish. The county’s stated targets include grouper, snapper, mackerel and tuna, and it pitches the wreck as a dive for every skill level. The two 65-foot funnels and the radar mast came off in August 2025 and are reserved for the museum.
How she compares with other ships turned reefs
Florida has done this before, with mixed results. The record-holder until now lies close by:
- USS Oriskany, aircraft carrier, 888 feet. Sunk May 17, 2006, about 12 nautical miles from the new site. Bottom at 210 feet, top of the island at 70 feet. She went down stern first 37 minutes after about 500 pounds of explosives fired, and Hurricane Gustav pushed her 10 feet deeper in 2008.
- USNS General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, 522 feet. Sunk May 27, 2009, about six miles off the Florida Keys, a year late after unpaid shipyard bills put the ship under federal arrest.
- USS Spiegel Grove, 510 feet. Sank early on May 17, 2002, off Key Largo and landed upside down. Righting her cost another $250,000 on top of a $1 million project; a 2005 hurricane later finished the job by shifting her onto her keel.
Set against Oriskany, the liner is 102 feet longer and her top deck is planned to sit about 15 feet shallower than the top of the carrier’s island. Spiegel Grove shows what can happen when a hull does not settle the way its planners intended.
Six decades in one paragraph
Launched in 1951 and designed by naval architect William Francis Gibbs, the liner took the Blue Riband on her maiden voyage in July 1952 and carried just over a million passengers on 800 crossings as jet travel and strikes thinned her passenger lists; she was withdrawn in November 1969. She was stripped in Turkey and Ukraine in the 1990s, berthed in Philadelphia from 1996, rescued by the Conservancy in 2011 and then caught in a rent dispute that ended with a federal judge ordering her out in June 2024. Okaloosa announced its reef plan that August. Sinkings planned for April and then June 2026 slipped while federal permits were revised.
“We are proud to continue the story of this historic vessel as an artificial reef,” county commission chairman Paul Mixon said when she reached Mobile. The county says it will publish deployment details, including how the public can watch, in the coming weeks, ahead of the sinking window in the second week of November.
Further reading
- Wikipedia: SS United States
- Okaloosa County release: SS United States arrives in Mobile (March 2025)
- Wikipedia: USS Oriskany
- Wikipedia: USS Spiegel Grove
Image: WSRower, CC0 via Wikimedia Commons
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