After more than 28 years of being moored at Pier 82 on the Delaware River in South Philadelphia, the former ocean liner SS United States is on the move again. The liner departed under tow from Philadelphia on Wednesday, February 19, bound for the port of Mobile, AL, where the ship will be prepared for deployment as an artificial reef off the coast of the Florida panhandle in the coming months. The journey to this day has been more than 50 years in the making and the whole story of the ship's history is beyond the scope of this post, however some backstory is necessary in order to set the scene for what took place on Wednesday. (That journey *is* the subject of a forthcoming article for this blog in the coming weeks.) The United States is simply the greatest ship conceived and built for the American merchant fleet in the country's history. On her maiden voyage in July 1952, she broke the transatlantic speed record with a time that was more than 10 hours faster than the...
Because every road has a story.