S.S. United States

[Don Olney]

April 15, 2003
For a Historic Ship, a New Port of Call
By IVER PETERSON

PHILADELPHIA, April 14 — The United States, the fastest passenger ocean liner in the world in its heyday but now a fading hulk on the Philadelphia waterfront, has been bought by Norwegian Cruise Lines.

The Norwegian company expects to convert the ship into an immense modern cruise liner as part of plans to operate the first cruise ships registered in the United States in some 50 years.

This registry would allow the company to offer passenger service solely between United States ports. Under federal law, foreign-flagged passenger ships are required to dock at a foreign port during each voyage.

Colin Veitch, the chairman and president of Norwegian Cruise Lines, said in a statement today that the Big U, as its fans call the ship, would become one of four United States-registered vessel in the line's fleet.

"When we discovered this American icon was in jeopardy, we saw a unique opportunity and acted immediately," Mr. Veitch said.

Norwegian Cruise Lines recently won federal approval to buy the assets of the bankrupt Project America shipbuilding program, a federally subsidized plan to construct two American-registered ships in Mississippi. The line has also bought the Independence, another old ocean liner, that it intends to refit as a cruise ship before undertaking the United States.

To preservationists, the rescue of the big ship amounts to the preservation of the high point of American maritime speed and modernity. Completed in 1952, the United States is 990 feet in length — 110 feet longer than the Titanic — with 17 decks, or stories, and displacing 59,000 tons.

The announcement that the ship would be saved opens a new chapter in the history of a celebrated ocean greyhound that was put out of business by the passenger jet and had many narrow escapes from the scrapheap.

"I feel like it's my wedding day, I feel like it's my birthday, I feel just ecstatic," said Robert Hudson Westover, the chairman of the S.S. United States Foundation, which he set up in 1996, and which has worked to preserve the ship and find a buyer.

The purchase price of the ship, which was owned by the Cantor Company, a New Jersey real estate development company, was not disclosed.

The Jones Act of 1920 restricts passenger service between American ports to American-registered ships with American crews.

Mr. Veitch said the cruise line was evaluating options for using the vessel and determining the extent of renovations needed to convert it to a cruise ship.

He said most of the refitting would be done in United States shipyards and would create 1,000 maritime jobs and 5,000 jobs on land.

After its upgrade, the United States would be larger than any of Norwegian's modern cruise ships, and would be second in size only to the Norway, formerly the France, another ocean liner the company converted for cruise work that is 1,035 feet in length.

The United States sailed out of New York harbor on its maiden voyage on July 3, 1952, and set a trans-Atlantic speed record of 3 days, 10 hours and 40 minutes.

In a famous exchange of radio messages when it overtook the Queen Mary in mid-Atlantic on one voyage, the United States radioed, "Sorry, old girl." The Queen Mary radioed back, "Your girls are faster than our girls."

The ship's average speed was 35 knots, or 40 miles an hour. Its top speed was a national secret because the liner was designed to be a troop carrier during wartime. The ship was not declassified until the 1980's, Mr. Westover said.

Today the United States is far from champion of the Atlantic.

Its interior appointments were sold in 1981, and it was bought by a group that included Edward A. Cantor, a developer, who died in February.

The consortium intended to form a partnership with the Turkish government to refit the United States as a cruise ship sailing under the Turkish flag. But the ship is long and narrow, built for slicing through the North Atlantic swell, and it proved to be a difficult refit. At one point the ship was towed to Sebastapol, in Ukraine, where its lifeboats were removed and its interior was gutted.

In 1996, Mr. Cantor, uncertain of ever seeing the ship sail again, took sole possession and had it towed to Philadelphia, where it has languished ever since.

Its sharply raked funnels, complete with 1950's-era fins, are a faded red, white and blue, but engineers recently found that the hull was still sound.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/15/national/15SHIP.html

[John Bell]

How this makes economic sense I don't know. But, hey, it's not my money! I'm just glad she'll sail again.

I wonder if they'll keep her original powerplant or install cheaper to operate but slower diesel propulsion?

[ 04-15-2003, 01:48 PM: Message edited by: John Bell ]

[nedL]

My sentiments exactly john.

[Sam F]

I vote for the steam turbines! [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Alan D. Hyde]

mmd, and others, please correct me if I'm wrong, but can't diesel-electric be as fast (or faster) than the old steam system?

Good she's being saved!



And thanks, Don, for a good post!

Alan

[ 04-16-2003, 11:41 AM: Message edited by: Alan D. Hyde ]

[ishmael]

I too wonder about the finances on this one. But, it is good to see the old gal saved. Close issue if I recall. Perhaps she'll be run at a loss as a prestige item. Hope they don't turn her into SS Condominium.

Wasn't there a thread about her a couple years ago, and there seemed to be a consensus that those engineering spaces are full of all kinds of nasties, like asbestos, and that she'll need to be completely gutted?

Pop passed through, on his way to Germany I think, back in the fifties. Her first-class bar (very modern stainless affair) is in Whalebone, North Carolina, complete with plaques at each stool tellin' of famous people who once parked in that space for a cocktail. A regular 'Who's Who' of the fifites and early sixties glitterati: JFK, Monroe, Sinatra etc.

I think even the British Royal Family crossed on her, but don't quote me.

[John Bell]

Originally posted by Alan D. Hyde:
mmd, and others, please correct me if I'm wrong, but can't diesel-electric be as fast (or faster) than the old steam system?

Horsepower is horsepower, whether from diesel, diesel electric, steam turbine, or gas turbines. The question is how much gas do you want to burn, and is it worth the cost? Or more precisely, will people pay extra to go fast in a big ship?

Running at 35 knots would make lounging by the pool a bit chilly for my tastes!

[ishmael]

It woould almost be better to have her scrapped, than lumbering up and down the East coast as an emblem, with ungainly deck houses to accomadate weird tourists.

Greyhound of the seas, and all that. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

I am rather surprised by all this. NCL are running
hard to keep up with Carnival, who have recently swallowed Princess, and it may be that ducking into the Jones Act offers them something. They picked up the rest of American Classic for a song, and so far the only loser on that deal is the American taxpayer under the Title XI guarantees on the two new ships being built.

Refurbishing the United States would be an immense undertaking, and this has a definite flavour of "publicity" about it, to me.

The "Norway", ex "France", which they also run (they retained the steam plant but closed one boiler room) is apparently heading for the knackers, as her operating costs have risen too far, and she was taken over on a "going concern" basis from French Line, which is far easier than reactivating a dead ship. There is very little of the "United States" left!

[ishmael]

It is a 'gobsmacker' , eh Andrew?

I would like to see the accountant's books on this one. Running passengers up and down the East Coast of the US? Huh?

I would only be more suprised if a Rebublican Administration had decided to refurbish this ship as a flagship of a new American dominance of the world. Actually, that would make more sense.

This is weird, but I think I was a deck hand, or a porter, or maybe just a very young passenger, during the height of the Trans-Atlantic liners. As such, I'd love to see her saved.

Jack

P.S. And today is the anniversary of the death of some 1500 souls on the Titanic. God rest them. An American owned, British flagged, ship.

[ 04-15-2003, 06:03 PM: Message edited by: ishmael ]

[brian.cunningham]

Glad to hear!

[Ken Hutchins]

We took a family trip New York in the fall of '52. I was 8 at the time and the 3 things permantly etched in my mind from that trip was the Empire State building, the Statue of Liberty and that stunning liner [img]smile.gif[/img] UNITED STATES. [img]smile.gif[/img] I hope they do get it restored as it was. Power - aren't our aircraft carriers steam turbine powered?

[Ed Harrow]

Big Sis came back from her over-seas assignment on her. All her stuff (an amazing amount of stuff), plus her Alpha, plus her dog (just a puppy at the time, and he'll figure in a dog story or two). This would be about 1967 or 68 IIRC. I didn't see her (the boat) as I was working hard to get up some more tuition money. (I could make a comment about not having connections to get me into a no-show guard deal, but I don't want to be acused of hi-jacking, LOL.) My folks and my brother went down to NYC to meet her.

[plimsol]

ACB is right. This makes little economic sense. What NCL has bought is a shell, and that is not the most ecomomic way to refit a ship. The structure is always in the way, unlike new construction where prefitting is easy.
A dead steamplant is a dead steamplant. The turbines and reduction gears might be salvageable, but the boilers are the weak point. Once they are cold iron for a long time, it is impossible to get them tight again, plus other assorted mechanical nightmares. This is obsolete 50 year old technology, which is for all intents and purposes not reproducable. The US no longer has the domestic industrial capacity to support the vessel. The plant automation and electrical are ancient. Further, the fuel economics of this plant are dismal. For all intents and purposes the powerplant is the same as a Forrestal class aircraft carrier. The Navy has never had to worry about making a profit. She could be run on two shafts quite nicely, but it is still an old steamplant that is uneconomical and now at best, questionably reliable.
Repowering is hideously expensive. First there is the removal and then the new installation, in an enclosed space. Pods might work, but the narrow hull form might present problems.
What NCL should do is obtain a casino license, refit the interior and anchor her in lower New York Harbor. Let the public have an epic ocean voyage without having to go to sea, as there is nothing out there and all the action was and would be inside. Nothing like a brisk morning walk on deck in the North Atlantic during the Winter.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

I was responsible for reactivating a steam VLCC, built in 1975, which was laid up from 1980 to 1987. That (Foster Wheeler SD3) was a far newer steam plant than the United States has, we only had seven major boiler problems, and all the other systems were equally modern. I suspect that the United States may have quite a lot of aluminium in her upper works, and the problems of connecting aluminium to steel were not as well understood when she was built as they are today. This was what "did in" the "Canberra", built in 1962, whose steam plant had been in constant use and which was still fully booked when she was withdrawn.

[TomRobb]

A Grand Dame greyhound doing tricks as a casino...the shame of it all.

[blacksmith]

When the United States was built,the only propulsion system that could produce the shaft HP needed to achieve the desired speed was geared steam turbines.Subsequently, low speed,directdrive diesel engines were developed that can do the Job.For steam turbines to be economically competitive with LS diesels, the price of oil has to be well under $10.When the Arab oil embargo occured in the '70s, owners of steam turbine powered vessels couldn't get their ships converted to diesel fast enough.They also freed up a good deal of hull capacity when the got rid of the boilers.Nuclear subs and aircraft carriers use steam propulsion only because they want the advantages of reactor power.

[JeffH]

Originally posted by blacksmith:
When the Arab oil embargo occured in the '70s, owners of steam turbine powered vessels couldn't get their ships converted to diesel fast enough.

Except in the U.S. For whatever reason (probably having to do with charter contracts written so the charterer pays fuel costs) some shipowners found it cheaper to tack new forbodies on to old steam engine rooms rather than build an entirely new ship with diesel. The first ship I ever worked on started life as a two house container ship named Sea Witch built in 1968 (which would later famously collide with the Esso Brussels in New York). Around 1980, some bean-counter found this ship damaged in the bow but with a workable steam plant, and so cut the stern off, cut the forward house off, cut the lower deck of the forward house off and welded it to the back side of the upper deck, welded the whole lot to the top of the aft house, and attached a chemical tanker in front (the tanker body was 25' wider than the container ship originally was, creating a very odd shape at the stern). This ship is, so far as I know, still operating. What an absolute horror show, and not uncommon. Sabine Transportaion just last year finally retired a WWII-era T2 tanker. Floating scrap heaps like this are a large part of why I no longer sail commercially.

Slow speed diesels, being the size of reasonably decent apartment buildings, are not practical for cruise ships and thus not used. Rather, they tend towards diesel-electric with medium-speed engines or gas turbine-electric or some combination thereof.

What NCL is buying is a large ship they can use in the American market (best of luck, since two companies have gone bankrupt trying this) with name recognition. Even then, the hull shape is completely obsolete, being narrow and deep with a low-profile house. Modern-day cruisers want lots of outside cabins with private decks (and private bathrooms, something not common in 1952) and shopping centers and jogging tracks and rock-climbing walls and resturants that rotate. Will be interesting to see what they do. However, having cruise ships stretched is a common practice, so the logistics of having the Big U stripped to an empty hull and rebuilt anew is probably well within their capabilities.

Jeff

[ 04-16-2003, 09:21 PM: Message edited by: JeffH ]

[Sam F]

This has been floating around in my subconscious... I seem to remember reading that in the higher horsepower units, Diesels reach a limit due to metallurgical constraints while this is not so with steam turbines... that might account for a non-nuclear Navy ship’s reliance on old-fashioned turbines.
Is that so or am I just miss-remembering something?

[Wiley Baggins]

Sam F,

There are some practical limits to reciprocating engine technology. As to turbines, in addition to some number of steam turbines still soldiering on, gas turbines (and some diesels) are in use in the U.S. fleet.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

There are a couple of other factors here.

The reason why the US merchant fleet stuck with turbines was not so much time charters (most charterers found ways to get out of these when fuel prices hit the roof - lawyers are cheaper than fuel!) but the Jones Act.

The USA has practically no merchant shipbuilding capability. It did have once but the Jones Act killed it. I write as one who has actually tried to contract merchant ships to be built in the USA.

Ancient afterbodies (the T2 was indeed a favourite) were welded onto new forebodies because of the Jones Act. The quite bizarre ITB concept is another effect of the Jones Act - the manning scale is based on the tug component not on the entire ship - the tug very seldom detaches from the barge.

The oddest case is a heavy lift ship, now managed by a friend of mine, under US flag, which I sold as a wreck after she sank in the Mississippi! She was Dutch flag when she capsized whilst attempting to load an overweight item (weight misdeclared by the shipper). We had to remove the wreck and after we raised it we called for sealed bids for the remains - one bid was far above the others because the bidders had spotted that the cost of refurbishment in a US yard would qualify the ship under the Jones Act and give them the only US flag heavy lift vessel!

Given the weak state of US shipbuilding, there has been no demand for domestic production of slow speed cross head diesel engines in the USA.

There was a limit on the size of diesels, just as there was thought to be a limit on the size of a single shaft and screw, but these limits have long been surpassed. Modern postpanamax container ships carry 12 cylinder 98cm bore units which produce over 90,000 bhp on a single shaft - this is much bigger than most marine turbines. The biggest turbine I had to deal with was 36,000shp, aboard a VLCC.

[TomRobb]

No one would not need to make bigger and more grandiose diesels when in diesel/electric you just keep adding engines & generators until you either run out of room or get the power you want.

But gas turbines are smaller and lighter for any given power output are they not?

[JeffH]

Originally posted by TomRobb:
No one would not need to make bigger and more grandiose diesels when in diesel/electric you just keep adding engines & generators until you either run out of room or get the power you want.

But gas turbines are smaller and lighter for any given power output are they not?

Yep. Problem is, they're nowhere near as efficient as diesels. They're best used when needed for occasional added power, or in very tight spaces like the aluminum catamaran ferries. Well, these days Rolls Royce, GE and other manufacturers are getting better, but the other problem is they can only burn light diesel, kerosene, or whatever else is available in that general viscosity range. Diesels, particualry the big slow-speeds, can burn the thick, black, heavy, and, most importantly, cheap goop known as HFO (a near kin to asphalt). This is important when you burn 300 barrels a day in one ship.

As for diesel-electic, one big engine is always cheaper and more efficient than lots of little ones, as long as you are using all that power all the time. The engine configuration you choose depends on what you do with the ship. A monster container ship that moves at constant speed for long voyages and competing with other monster container ships will opt for the one big one, whereas a cruise ship has a big incentive to wring every last possible cubic foot of space out of a given hull for human use, and will thus tuck smaller (and smoother running) engines in whatever odd space they can find.

Andrew: The two of us could probably hijack this thread and swap sea stories for a while (I'm restraining myself from telling several that immediately come to mind. Can't resist the oddest conversion I know of though... A troop transport that wound up, with only minor hull modification, as a chemical tanker). I used to have a poster of that 15 cylinder behemoth on my wall (lordy, what a monster)...

Jeff

[ 04-23-2003, 07:58 PM: Message edited by: JeffH ]

[Bob Adams]

I think it's fabulous that the United States may not be going to the scrappers. She was loaded with asbestoes, but that has been removed. The engineering areas are basicly intact and were in dehumidified storage for much of her inactive years. Do a search and check out her website. There is a picture of her wake falling away from her bow. She was doing 20kts in REVERSE!

[John Bell]

Andrew: The two of us could probably hijack this thread and swap sea stories for a while (I'm restraining myself from telling several that immediately come to mind. Can't resist the oddest conversion I know of though... A troop transport that wound up, with only minor hull modification, as a chemical tanker). I used to have a poster of that 15 cylinder behemoth on my wall (lordy, what a monster)...

Hijack away! I think this subject is fascinating.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Well, Jeff and I will agree on this one...

Ballast tanks.

Today, in the best practice, a ballast tank is blasted to SA 2.3 and then it gets three full coats and two stripe coats of 350 microns each of coal tar epoxy and some pitguard anodes to make quite sure. It won't rust out for a couple of decades, at least.

Back then....cement wash?

I remember a little Greek owned cruise ship built in '62 where the owner had very sensibly filled many of the ballast tanks with distilled water and sealed them - limited his range but that was OK for the eastern Med....

Ballast tanks are likely to be a big problem, here.

[JeffH]

Oh, OK, twist my arm

Rusted out ballast tanks will certainly be a problem.... Along with the rusted out everything else. She did have the benefit of a fresh water berth the last few years, which may have helped. The new owners did report a sound hull, which is probably all they'll have left by the time all is said and done. Other problems that come to mind: Complete lack of polution control. Old liners, especially the fast and fuel-hungry ones, often had their fuel tanks double as ballast tanks (and some, to their doom, depended completely on filling empty tanks with water to maintain stability). Oily waste went straight overboard. So did sewage. Fire systems are 50 years out of date. The electrical system is most likely DC. And on and on. There are about two shelf feet of regulations that have come into being over the years that would have to be implemented (I've been reading them the last couple days for my own purposes. What a nightmare). This project must make sense to somebody, and I honestly look forward to seeing how she turns out. Hopefully not like the rest of the 50-year-old ships in the US fleet....

Speaking of which, this is one of the best old ship stories I've heard. One ship working well past her prime was a parcel tanker built back in the days when all things steel were riveted. Hull, tanks, bulkheads, structural memers, everything was riveted together in the traditional manner. Over the long years of a hard working life, these rivets started to weep a little here and there. Being a single-skin ship, a trailing oil sheen was a common sight (ah, those innocent pre OPA-90 days). One fine day, some lackey decides that a delivery of lube oil to Europe would be a good thing. The ship was loaded with a dozen grades of oil and off she went, leaking all the while. A storm enrout started some cracks in the tanks. Small at first, but then alarming (by this point in the ships life, most structural bracing had long since lost contact with their intended mating partners). A few days out of port it is discovered that each grade of lube oil has mixed with every other grade, creating a nicely homogenous, and completely worthless, cargo. Apon arriving in port, this problem is made completely moot by the fact that, shortly after the anchor went down, the starboard side of forward end of the ship fell off. A captain of one of the ships I used to work on had a great picture of him rowing a small boat into what used to be the #2 stbd cargo tank...

Then there are the ships where the crew is forbidden to bust rust on the engine room casing for fear of creating more holes in the deck than there already are (the engineers are tired of being rained on while working). And holes in ballast tanks patched over with cement, since proper structural repair is not practical since there's not much left to weld to. And so forth. Most of these ships have, in the last few years, mercifully departed to the great scrap pile in the sky, but there still are a few kicking around...

Jeff