Posted by geox 2 days ago
"The SS United States, once the fastest passenger liner in the world, is scheduled to be sunk in the Gulf of Mexico"
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave;
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning and the gale!"
Apparently the RMS prefix on the RMS Titanic stands for "royal mail steamer" as it was authorised to carry the post.
(Officially USSS, but it's often abbreviated to SS in common parlance.)
It's not unusual for acronyms to have multiple meanings, the S in HMS can mean submarine, as submarines aren't ships.
It should be very good for both
It won't be floating anymore, but it will at least be somewhat physically intact, at least relative to the state it was already in. It was pretty well stripped bare back in the 80s, and further gutted after that asbestos abatement project a while back. And it will be available for people who can SCUBA dive to visit.
The SS Australis passed through multiple owners until it ran aground while being towed near the Canary Islands and broke into two.
A sad end to a majestic ship.
One memory of the trip was the week in the Indian Ocean midway between Africa and Australia where the waves were so large the ship's dining rooms made the tablecloths wet to stop the plates sliding off as we tried to eat breakfast...
Some years ago I was on a cruise ship. The captain announced that they were changing course to avoid a storm. I was disappointed :-/
Cruise ships today look like hotels mounted on barges [1]. About half the speed. A refurbished SS United States was never going to compete in that market, and plans to do so were never funded.
[1] https://www.royalcaribbean.com/cruise-ships/icon-of-the-seas
(not sure it should have been much of a surprise, jetliners were taking all the high paying traffic)
Buy a ticket while you can.
They call them “cruise ships” now, because the only reason to float around like that is fun, not business. So they have waterslides and such. Slightly less old-growth hardwood paneling, fewer places where one is allowed to smoke cigars.
But no. There are ten Greeks who could build another Queen Mary as a lark, and that’s just counting Greeks. However rich you think the world is? It’s richer than that.
Zeppelins, though. Those, I will grant you, have gotten scarce. Oh, the humanity.
Just saw a Zeppelin cruising over Woodside today. It's Sergey Brin's personal project, Pathfinder. It's a true Zeppelin, a rigid airship, not a blimp, and the world's largest air vehicle. [1] First flew in 2025, but, unlike the Airship Ventures craft we used to see giving tours over Silicon Valley, it's not flown often. It's normally parked in Hangar One at Moffet Field.
[1] https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/big-helium-airship-spott...