Text size:

Floating ideas to save the SS United States ocean liner

RHODA AMON | rhoda.amon@newsday.com

August 3, 2008

Elaine Doyle remembers the first time she saw an ocean liner. It was 1952. She was 16 and had come from her home in Queens to see her grandfather off to his native Ireland.

Tim Doyle was sailing on the second voyage of the SS United States, largest and fastest passenger ship ever built in its namesake country. Its maiden voyage setting the transatlantic speed record, never has been equaled.

It was the most beautiful ship she had ever seen. Nearly 1,000 feet long and 12 stories high, with a razor-sharp bow, it was an engineering marvel, pride of the nation.

Doyle, 71, of Rego Park, saw the ship again recently- on a big screen and no longer breathtakingly beautiful. Doyle was among 200 ship aficionados, many of whom had sailed or worked on "the big U." We had come for a screening of the documentary: "SS United States: Lady in Waiting."

We were invited by the SS United States Conservancy, a nonprofit group that seeks to preserve the nation's flagship and is still "cautiously optimistic that she can return to service," said spokesman Dan McSweeney, an Iraq Marine veteran, whose father crewed on the Big U.

The film traces the life of the vessel starting with naval designer William Francis Gibbs through 17 flawless years until 1969 when it was retired, done in by jumbo jets. Then came numerous bungled restoration efforts only to end with the ship in a derelict state at a pier in Philadelphia.

Filmmaker Robert Radler also remembered his father taking him to see the big ship. In its heyday, the Big U carried Presidents John Kennedy and Dwight Eisenhower and celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Gary Cooper and Judy Garland. Radler, who got aboard while he was still in film school in the 1970s, made his way to its best suite. Judy Garland, said to have been its last occupant, died in 1969, the year the ship was laid up. Radler found an ashtray of lipstick-smeared cigarette butts. Could they have been Judy's?

Hopes for the Big U peaked in 2003 when Norwegian Cruise Lines purchased it, with a promise to sail it again under an American flag. But five years have passed with nothing happening. Now, many of its enthusiasts foresee its future as a stationary attraction.

Recent news that the Queen Elizabeth 2 has been sold for $100 million to be converted to a hotel berthed off Dubai in the United Arab Emirates has fortified this notion. The 40-year-old QE2 will be open to the public in 2009 as a floating hotel and entertainment complex.

A few years ago, I was booked for a conference aboard the Queen Mary, in Long Beach, Calif. I stayed for five days after the conference ended.

With the morning mist and the water lapping beneath me, I could have been miles out to sea, but across the road was a car rental, and I could take off each day, returning to my stateroom and three fine restaurants.

Though its best possibility is for it to be back in oceangoing service, McSweeney said, if that doesn't happen, the Conservancy could accept her return to her home port - New York (not Dubai) - as "some combination of hotel, convention facility, maritime museum ... The city's economy could both support and benefit from her return."

"Lady in Waiting" has been making the rounds of PBS TV stations. It's also available on DVD for $19.95 with 30 additional anecdotal minutes. See bigshipfilms.com. For information on preserving the ship, see ssunitedstatesconservancy.org.

RHODA AMON gladly accepts letters from fellow senior travelers. Write to her at Newsday/Travel, 235 Pinelawn Rd., Melville, NY 11747-4250, or e-mail her.