But her passengers were to spend another night on board. Manning dropped anchor off Staten Island. The harbor pilot was to take her through the Verrazano Narrows first thing the next morning and bring her in to Pier 86 to a wakened New York City.
By 7 A.M. on July 15, it seemed that all of New York had turned out to watch United States come home. On a hot, hazy summer morning, tens of thousands of people lined the Battery and the Hudson waterfront, cheering and waving as the Big Ship moved slowly by. “Dozens of small craft, tug boats, two Fire Department boats—each shooting up fifteen giant streams of water—and ferry boats set up a din for the returning mistress of the seas,” Milton Lewis of the Herald Tribune wrote, “and to each one the United States returned a salute.” The deep roar from the liner’s 120 separate salutes was so loud that passengers covered their ears.2
A photographer standing on the pier took a picture of Commodore Manning in his resplendent summer whites, standing on the starboard wing of the bridge as he gave orders to his docking pilot. Facing the photographer dead on, his left hand is raised, index finger pointed up—the way of signaling a docking pilot to go “dead slow ahead” or “stop” so that the ship would line up with the pier markings.3 General Franklin, in a dark suit and Panama hat, stands next to Manning, leaning on the bridge railing. His eyes are trained on the commodore. Gibbs stands toward the back, near the pilothouse. He appears to be caught in mid-sentence, his mouth slightly open, his expression agitated. Not until her lines were made fast and the gangways secured would her designer ease up.
By 9:12 A.M., United States had swung into her berth at Pier 86 and her lines made secure. Voyage Number One had officially ended. The 1,650 passengers began to disembark and collect their luggage. The crew looked forward to a few days’ leave before provisioning up for Voyage Number Two.
“In 100 years, we have been able to do this just once,” Manning said to reporters gathered in his cabin. “It should wake our people up and make them realize what a ship like this means—particularly her qualities as a troop transport.”
Chief Engineer Bill Kaiser emerged from the engine room and told the press that the Big Ship had enough power “in reserve” to take on any rival, but for future crossings the ship would be throttled down to an economical 30-knot speed.4
There was a ticker-tape parade on July 18—New York’s traditional way to salute its heroes in war and peace. Paper streamers flew down from office windows in the tall buildings along lower Broadway, as 150,000 spectators cheered the captain and crew rolling by in open limousines. The party moved into the Starlight Room at the Waldorf-Astoria, where Manning continued to hold center stage. “To me she is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,” he said, “far more beautiful than any woman I have ever known.”5
The commodore, despite his brusque confidence, did not look well. He had lost ten pounds during the trip.6
William Francis was also exhausted. Sometime after returning to the Glass Menagerie at 21 West Street, Gibbs had one more thing to do. He sat down and wrote a note to Vera, expressing both his gratitude and guilt.
“I thought you did your part in adding to the gay spirit of the trip and it was a great pleasure to be with you on such a momentous occasion,” he wrote. “I am afraid I could not be as entertaining as I would have liked, but it seemed to me that whenever I got settled down, something came up which made it necessary to put one’s mind on the business at hand. Many thanks for your long continued patience and enthusiasm about this ship. I have many times thought you must get tired about being with a person who seemed to have but one thing in mind. However, you can agree, it was quite a big thing.”7
On July 22, 1952, the crew of United States assembled in the first-class theater for an 11 A.M. staff meeting. Nearly one thousand officers, engineers, deckhands, chefs, pursers, stewards, stewardesses, and bellboys found their way into a space built to seat three hundred. From the stage, William Francis peered down at them through his spectacles, his long fingers curled around the edges of the aluminum lectern.
As the lights dimmed, Gibbs announced that he would present each one of them with a medal commemorating the record-breaking voyage: “not the kind of medal that one hangs on one’s manly chest, but a larger one that you retain in a proper case as a memento of an occasion would be required to cover the thought I had in mind.”8
Each three-inch medallion bore a bas-relief of United States, along with a map of the Atlantic showing the eastbound and westbound tracks, along with each of the voyage times:
Before presenting the crew with the medallions, however, Gibbs drew on one of his favorite analogies to describe his vision of how a great ship was more than an enormous machine, but rather had a life of her own.
“It is my good fortune, loving music, to have seen the rehearsals of a great symphonic orchestra,” he said. “I have noticed with keen attention, that these great conductors take the greatest possible care in the training of the orchestra. They know how every particular instrument should be played, and the actual strength and softness of each tone.
“But here’s an instrument—this ship—with a thousand each playing a part; and when we think that the first time that this ship—this instrument—was ever operated by the crew that took it out on its maiden voyage—it left Newport News one afternoon, and was in New York the next morning. The next time it went out to sea, it performed as never a ship performed before.”9
His voice then softened. “I want to confess to you,” Gibbs continued, “that I have a great affection for this ship. It’s a large object, but I think my affection is coextensive with its size, and likewise I have an affection for every man who has made possible and makes possible day by day, the extraordinary success of this ship so far.”10
Gibbs then slipped a wooden ruler from his suit pocket and rapped his knuckles with it. Knowing there was no wood on board to knock on, the crew roared with laughter. “It may seem sentimental, and I’m not noted for sentimentality, but I feel today that I owe you all a tremendous debt of gratitude. I wish you well, and may God be with us, and may God be with this ship.”11
A thousand men and women leapt to their feet and filled the theater with applause and cheers. Gibbs folded his speech, walked off the stage, and sat down.
The following day at noon, United States pulled away from her berth at Pier 86 to begin Voyage Number Two. Standing on the pier, her creator watched five tugs push her back into the Hudson River.
Commodore Manning and the harbor pilot turned her bow to the narrows, and then the Big Ship gradually vanished into the summer haze. Turning his back to the empty pier, William Francis Gibbs got back into a car ready to take him back to 21 West Street.