Gibbs & Cox, although smaller than it was in William Francis Gibbs’s time, still exists. Its clients include not only the United States Navy, but also the navies of Spain, Norway, and Taiwan. The firm no longer designs passenger ships.
The Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company continues to prosper as a division of the defense contractor Northrop Grumman. The shipyard that built United States continues to construct and service naval vessels, including nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, but like Gibbs & Cox it no longer builds passenger ships.
Few ships designed by William Francis Gibbs continue to sail today. After fourteen years of successful Australian service, the former America (renamed Australis) was laid up in 1980 in the Greek harbor of Piraeus. After rusting for over a decade, the ship was purchased in 1993 for conversion into a floating hotel off the coast of Thailand. During the tow, a violent gale lashed the ship off the Canary Islands. The towline snapped, and she drifted ashore onto a beach. After pounding by heavy surf, the old America—launched by Eleanor Roosevelt on the eve of World War II—split in half and slowly dropped into the Atlantic Ocean. Today, only a few fragments of twisted metal poke above the surface.
Santa Rosa, built for the Grace Line in 1958 and the last ocean liner designed by William Francis Gibbs and decorated by Dorothy Marckwald, still exists as The Emerald. Often described as a miniature United States, she has been extensively altered in recent years. Laid up in 2009 after decades of successful cruising, she is currently awaiting her fate.
The magnificent yacht Savarona, designed by Gibbs & Cox in 1929 for the Cadwalader family, is owned by the Turkish government. Restored and modernized, she continues to sail on luxurious charter cruises.8
The tall ship Sea Cloud, built in 1931 as Marjorie Merriweather Post’s private yacht, continues to sail the world as a high-end cruise ship.
Out of 2,700 Liberty ships built during World War II, only two survive: John W. Brown, berthed in Baltimore, and Jeremiah O’Brien, berthed in San Francisco. Both ships are fully operational, floating memorials to the men and women who served in World War II. The rest have been scrapped or sunk as artificial reefs.
On September 11, 2001, one of William Francis’s ships again made history. On that day, the New York Fire Department’s Fire Fighter, built in 1938 and still one of the most powerful fireboats in the world, was dispatched to the ruins of the World Trade Center to help extinguish the flames after the twin towers collapsed.
As for United States, the greatest ocean liner ever built, good fortune intervened one more time.
H. F. “Gerry” Lenfest is a billionaire Philadelphia philanthropist who made a fortune in the cable television business. Lenfest, now in his early eighties, had a soft spot for ships. His father was a naval architect who also owned a machine shop that built the watertight doors and bridge equipment for United States back in 1952. Growing up in Scarsdale, New York, young Gerry spent hours in his father’s study—known as the “ship room”—where he would leaf through engineering periodicals and play with his father’s model collection. After college, he served in the Navy as the captain of a destroyer.
When asked for help, Lenfest said that he didn’t think saving the ship made financial sense, but he did offer to put up $300,000 in matching grant money to help purchase the ship. But no matching money was forthcoming. So in the winter of 2010, Norwegian Cruise Line put United States up for bid to scrappers. The estimated scrap value ranged from $3 million to $6 million. It looked like the ship had reached the end of the line.
The day before all bids were due, March 10, 2010, former crewman and conservancy board member Joe Rota got a phone call at his house in upstate New York.
“My name is Gerry Lenfest,” the voice announced to Rota. “How much is it to buy the ship?”
A few months later, on July 1, 2010, a crowd of nearly one thousand people gathered in South Philadelphia where United States is docked, just downriver from the site of the old Cramp Shipyard on the Delaware River. The twilight sun shone on the National Flagship Celebration, as reporters and photographers roamed the ship’s decks. The American flag, flying from the ship’s radar mast, whipped in the breeze. Fifty-eight years earlier almost to the day, United States left New York on her maiden voyage. In the gathering were former crew members—Bill Krudener, Jim Green, and Joe Rota.
That day, Norwegian Cruise Line signed an exclusive purchase option with the SS United States Conservancy. Thanks to Lenfest’s $5.8 million gift, the conservancy now has enough money to purchase the ship outright and maintain her for two years.
The plan is to raise enough money from private donors and for-profit developers to restore United States as a stationary hotel and convention center, to be moored in one of the two cities that William Francis Gibbs called home. If the plan is successful, the exterior will be restored to its original appearance, her two stacks repainted to a gleaming red, white, and blue. According to the preliminary plan, the interior will boast convention areas, dining, retail, and a boutique hotel, as well as a museum dedicated to the history of the ship and the transatlantic liner. Some spaces, such as the first-class ballroom and the bridge, will be restored to their original condition, giving people a taste of what it was like to travel on the fastest ship in the world.
If she is moved to New York, she will probably be docked at her old berth at Pier 86, next to the aircraft carrier USS Intrepid. If she remains in Philadelphia, the ship will be the centerpiece of a redeveloped South Philadelphia waterfront, a tourist draw and visual anchor on the river where her designer first fell in love with ships.
“We have a great opportunity here,” Lenfest told the flag-waving crowd on July 1. “We are sitting across from the greatest ocean liner ever built. She’s worth keeping, she’s worth saving. If you look at her, at least from a distance, she is still the most majestic and most beautiful ship afloat.”9
A recording of the ship’s whistles then roared across the Delaware River, and powerful floodlights bathed her funnels, radar mast, and bridge in a golden glow.
For a brief moment, one could imagine William Francis Gibbs’s beloved Big Ship—her decks lined with cheering people and streamers fluttering from her railings—slowly pulling away from her pier to sail the North Atlantic once more and forever.
PHOTOGRAPHS
