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SS United States, record-setting ocean liner, makes its final voyage
The SS United States’ departure from Philadelphia has been delayed by the weather. A team from NPR climbed aboard before it takes its final voyage.
Stephen Mallon for NPR
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Stephen Mallon for NPR
In the coming days, the United States is expected to take its final voyage, on its way to be buried at sea.
It’s not the country nearing its end, but a ship that bears its name. The SS United States is a mid-20th century ocean liner that set the speed record for crossing the Atlantic. Now tied up at a Philadelphia pier, its paint peeling and faded after decades of inactivity, it’s bound for an ending that is, in reality, a new phase of its life: serving as an artificial reef that attracts divers and marine life in the waters off Florida.
It’s an intricate job to tow a 990-foot ship that no longer has its own working engines. The ship’s planned departure from Philadelphia last week was delayed by the weather, and a new date hasn’t been set. But the United States must go. The pier operator wants its dock space back, and its sale has been completed.
Before departure, a team from NPR climbed aboard what is, in effect, a ghost ship — a relic from the era of great liners that connected North America with Europe. Some of the most famous of these ships are those that sank, like the Andrea Doria, the Lusitania and the Titanic. The builders of the United States learned from others’ mistakes, and it will not go down until it’s scuttled by design.
“If this ship had hit the Titanic’s iceberg, there is no way she would have sunk,” said Susan Gibbs, whose grandfather designed the United States and who has struggled for two decades to preserve it. She told the history of the ship while standing on the foredeck on a sunny afternoon.
“It was a top secret Cold War weapon,” she said. “Its keel was laid right as the Soviet Union tested the atomic bomb.”
The U.S. Navy paid most of the bills because the passenger ship had a military purpose. It could easily be converted to carry thousands of U.S. troops to a war zone, which was a function served by the British liners Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth during World War II.
Gibbs’ grandfather, William Francis Gibbs, was a Philadelphia native who was fascinated by ships as a child and grew up to design them even though he had no formal training. His achievement during World War II was building so-called Liberty Ships, cargo vessels that carried food and weapons to Europe; they had to be designed and built in such a way that they could be completed by the thousands, more rapidly than German submarines could sink them.
After the war, Gibbs persuaded the government to help him complete his dream: the fastest and safest liner afloat. Its advanced engines and propellers allowed it to sail at 44 land miles per hour — so fast that many warships and submarines of the era would have trouble catching it. (The Queen Mary’s top speed was around 37, and most ships were far slower.)
Watertight compartments made the ship extremely hard to sink; and Gibbs obsessively removed the flammable wood that ordinarily would have formed much of the ship’s interior decor. He insisted on lightweight aluminum — even trying to persuade the piano maker Theodore Steinway to produce an aluminum grand piano.
“Steinway thought that might affect the tonal quality of the instrument, so he refused,” Gibbs said. He finally persuaded the shipbuilder to accept a mahogany piano by dousing the instrument with gasoline and setting it alight; the fuel burned off the hardwood without affecting it.
The ship never served in wartime, instead spending the years from 1952 to 1969 in passenger service for the United States Lines. Musicians including Duke Ellington performed at the mahogany piano in the ballroom. Several presidents were among the passengers; Margaret Truman, a president’s daughter, came along for the record-breaking maiden voyage.
The ship was retired in 1969 as jet travel took over. In more recent years, Susan Gibbs tried to have it repurposed as a floating hotel, which never quite worked.
At last, Okaloosa County, Fla., proposed converting it into the world’s largest artificial reef.
“I’ve shed a few tears.” Susan Gibbs told me. But she added, “this is her next chapter and I am coming to terms with it. And I think it will offer its own sense of dignity and make me even more determined to continue to tell her story.”
I noted that she referred to the ship as “her,” which is the traditional way that ships are discussed. Did the United States have a personality in her mind?
“Yes,” Gibbs said. “I see this ship as a feminist icon. She’s tough. She’s tough and strong and resilient and holds so much.”
Assuming that the ship is successfully towed to Florida’s Gulf Coast, the faded hull will be passed over to engineers, who plan to use explosives to blow holes in the bottom and conduct a controlled sinking in water that is shallow enough for divers to explore it.
Before the sinking, its faded red, white and blue funnels are to be removed and brought to land. They are to be centerpieces of a marine museum, relics of an earlier phase of global travel.
The foredeck of the SS United States, completed in 1951.
Stephen Mallon for NPR
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Stephen Mallon for NPR
The ship’s hull, designed to withstand extreme stress, remains watertight despite decades without maintenance.
Stephen Mallon for NPR
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Stephen Mallon for NPR
The United States’ mid-20th century modern interiors were long ago stripped to dispose of asbestos, though the spaces still suggest their past grandeur.
Stephen Mallon for NPR
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Stephen Mallon for NPR
Susan Gibbs, whose grandfather designed the United States, fought for years to save it.
Stephen Mallon for NPR
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Stephen Mallon for NPR
One of the portholes on the United States.
Stephen Mallon for NPR
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Stephen Mallon for NPR
The ship’s design blended traditional elements like this anchor with high-speed engines, durability and immense size; it is 990 feet long.
Stephen Mallon for NPR
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Stephen Mallon for NPR
The pressure to vacate this pier finally forced a sale that will see the United States sunk as an artificial reef off the Florida coast.
Stephen Mallon for NPR
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Stephen Mallon for NPR
Only a few bits of the United States’ mid-20th-century modern decor remain.
Stephen Mallon for NPR
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Stephen Mallon for NPR
Diagrams of the ship’s decks highlight some of its luxury features, including a first-run movie theater, visible on the top chart, center left.
Stephen Mallon for NPR
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Stephen Mallon for NPR
The audio version of this piece was edited by HJ Mai and produced by Kaity Kline and Julie Depenbrock. The digital version was adapted by Majd Al-Waheidi.
Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, the Food and Drug Administration’s top drug regulator, said she was fired from the agency Friday after she declined to resign.
She said she did not know who had ordered her firing or why, nor whether Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. knew of her fate. The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The departure reflected the upheaval at the F.D.A., days after the resignation of Dr. Marty Makary, the agency commissioner. Dr. Makary had become a lightning rod for critics of the agency’s decisions to reject applications for rare disease drugs and to delay a report meant to supply damaging evidence about the abortion drug mifepristone. He also spent months before his departure pushing back on the White House’s requests for him to approve more flavored vapes, the reason he ultimately cited for leaving.
Dr. Hoeg’s hiring had startled public health leaders who were familiar with her track record as a vaccine skeptic, and she played a leading role in some of the agency’s most divisive efforts during her tenure. She worked on a report that purportedly linked the deaths of children and young adults to Covid vaccines, a dossier the agency has not released publicly. She was also the co-author of a document describing Mr. Kennedy’s decision to pare the recommendations for 17 childhood vaccines down to 11.
But in an interview on Friday, Dr. Hoeg said she “stuck with the science.”
“I am incredibly proud of the work we were doing,” Dr. Hoeg said, adding, “I’m glad that we didn’t give in to any pressures to approve drugs when it wasn’t appropriate.”
As the director of the agency’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, she was a political appointee in a role that had been previously occupied by career officials. An epidemiologist who was trained in the United States and Denmark, she worked on efforts to analyze drug safety and on a panel to discuss the use of serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the most widely prescribed class of antidepressants, during pregnancy. She also worked on efforts to reduce animal testing and was the agency’s liaison to an influential vaccine committee.
She made sure that her teams approved drugs only when the risk-benefit balance was favorable, she said.
The firing worsens the leadership vacuum at the F.D.A. and other agencies, with temporary leaders filling the role of commissioner, food chief and the head of the biologics center, which oversees vaccines and gene therapies. The roles of surgeon general and director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are also unfilled.
The U.S. Supreme Court
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Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
The U.S. Supreme Court refused Friday to allow Virginia to use a new congressional map that favored Democrats in all but one of the state’s U.S. House seats. The map was a key part of Democrats’ effort to counter the Republican redistricting wave set off by President Trump.
The new map was drawn by Democrats and approved by Virginia voters in an April referendum. But on May 8, the Supreme Court of Virginia in a 4-to-3 vote declared the referendum, and by extension the new map, null and void because lawmakers failed to follow the proper procedures to get the issue on the ballot, violating the state constitution.
Virginia Democrats and the state’s attorney general then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to put into effect the map approved by the voters, which yields four more likely Democratic congressional seats. In their emergency application, they argued the Virginia Supreme Court was “deeply mistaken” in its decision on “critical issues of federal law with profound practical importance to the Nation.” Further, they asserted the decision “overrode the will of the people” by ordering Virginia to “conduct its election with the congressional districts that the people rejected.”
Republican legislators countered that it would be improper for the U.S. Supreme Court to wade into a purely state law controversy — especially since the Democrats had not raised any federal claims in the lower court.
Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with Republicans without explanation leaving in place the state court ruling that voided the Democratic-friendly maps.
The court’s decision not to intervene was its latest in emergency requests for intervention on redistricting issues. In December, the high court OK’d Texas using a gerrymandered map that could help the GOP win five more seats in the U.S. House. In February, the court allowed California to use a voter-approved, Democratic-friendly map, adopted to offset Texas’s map. Then in March, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked the redrawing of a New York map expected to flip a Republican congressional district Democratic.
And perhaps most importantly, in April, the high court ruled that a Louisiana congressional map was a racial gerrymander and must be redrawn. That decision immediately set off a flurry of redistricting efforts, particularly in the South, where Republican legislators immediately began redrawing congressional maps to eliminate long established majority Black and Hispanic districts.
An explosion and fire drew a large emergency response on Friday to a lumber mill in the Midcoast region of Maine, officials said.
The State Police and fire marshal’s investigators responded to Robbins Lumber in Searsmont, about 72 miles northeast of Portland, said Shannon Moss, a spokeswoman for the Maine Department of Public Safety.
Mike Larrivee, the director of the Waldo County Regional Communications Center, said the number of victims was unknown, cautioning that “the information we’re getting from the scene is very vague.”
“We’ve sent every resource in the county to that area, plus surrounding counties,” he said.
Footage from the scene shared by WABI-TV showed flames burning through the roof of a large structure as heavy, dark smoke billowed skyward.
The Associated Press reported that at least five people were injured, and that county officials were considering the incident a “mass casualty event.”
Catherine Robbins-Halsted, an owner and vice president at Robbins Lumber, told reporters at the scene that all of the company’s employees had been accounted for.
Gov. Janet T. Mills of Maine said on social media that she had been briefed on the situation and urged people to avoid the area.
“I ask Maine people to join me in keeping all those affected in their thoughts,” she said.
Representative Jared Golden, Democrat of Maine, said on social media that he was aware of the fire and explosion.
“As my team and I seek out more information, I am praying for the safety and well-being of first responders and everyone else on-site,” he said.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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