The Sinking of the United States

“Block That Metaphor,” the New Yorker was wont to exclaim when it spotted a ham-fisted attempt to derive poetic resonance out of everyday events. It’s hard to avoid drawing some meaning, though, in the final voyage of Steam Ship United States. She broke the transatlantic speed record on her maiden voyage in 1952, and was the largest passenger ship built in America — 100 feet longer than R.M.S. Titanic. Now, United States is set to be sunk.The pioneering ocean liner, which ferried four presidents during a career that saw it cross the North Atlantic more than 800 times, is slated for a new berth. That’s at the bottom of the sea, where it will “become the world’s largest artificial reef,” the Times reports, “off the coast of the Florida Panhandle.” Aptly or not, the United States’s resting place will be the floor of the body of water now designated by President Trump as the Gulf of America.It’s a humble destination for what was once known as “America’s Flagship” and the “most graceful, modern, powerful and sleek vessel in the world,” as the S.S. United States Conservancy puts it. Her record-breaking debut speed has yet to be matched or surpassed — by any ship, at least. Yet the introduction in 1958 of the jet liner would soon knell for all the great ocean liners. In 1969, the United States was taken out of service.Not long thereafter, we were invited to a cocktail party aboard the S.S. Rotterdam. As we ascended the gangway, our host, Gay McLendon, a wealthy friend from New Orleans — now gone, alas — asked whether we’d ever been on an ocean liner. “We once had a drink on the United States,” we said. Without missing a beat, Gay stopped in mid-stride, turned to us and said, “Oh, Honey, that’s a swell boat. I almost bought that two weeks ago. They wanted me to turn it into a ho-tel.”That was indeed one of the uses sought for the United States in its early years out of service. R.M.S. Queen Mary, another retired beauty, did serve as a hotel. She now bobs off the Coast at Long Beach. No source of funding emerged for the United States, though, and the vessel, no longer able to sail under its own steam, is being tugged to Mobile, Alabama, where it will be stripped in preparation for new occupancy by sea creatures.It made for a grim sight to see the weather-beaten ship, streaked with rust and with the once-jaunty red-white-and-blue paint on its funnels faded almost to imperceptibility, being towed away from its mooring at Philadelphia, where our country was given its name. Even the most hard-bitten journalist might be tempted to cough up a Sic transit gloria. To lament the fate of the United States, though, is not merely to indulge in reflexive nostalgia.The great ship’s demise, after all, comes amid ferment over the question of America’s own greatness and its role in the world. The United States, more than a means of transportation, was — with apologies to the New Yorker — a bona fide metaphor. The ship’s seizure from Old Europe of the Blue Riband for transatlantic speed was a high point for American industrial prowess. Her propeller was a state secret.“We used to make things here,” President Trump has said. “And then, all of sudden, somebody became a great globalist. Some great genius.” Among things once built here were ships like the United States. Not anymore. Today, as is the case with so much of domestic manufacturing, the torch in a strategic industry has been passed to Communist China, which today “dwarfs” American shipbuilding, analyst Thomas Shugart tells the Wall Street Journal.It could be that the sinking of the United States comes at a point when domestic industry — like shipbuilding — is on the verge of a comeback. These columns are all for it, despite doubts about using tariffs to attain such a goal. Must one rule out the possibility of an American shipyard forging a new United States? That would vindicate words by Longfellow, who, never one to shy from metaphor, limned the Union’s prospects: “Sail on, O Ship of State!”

The Sinking of the United States

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