DESTIN, Fla. — The SS United States, the record-setting American ocean liner launched in 1951, went to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico Wednesday night, roughly 22 nautical miles off Destin, where Okaloosa County intends it to serve as the largest artificial reef on the planet.
County crews pulled plugs from the hull and let seawater flood the ship rather than using explosives. The process ran about eight hours past the planned schedule before the liner rolled to one side shortly after 9 p.m. and slipped under.
Okaloosa County commissioners approved buying the vessel in 2024 for $1 million from the SS United States Conservancy, the group that had cared for it while it sat docked in Philadelphia for decades. The ship was then towed to Mobile, Alabama, where workers spent more than a year removing toxic materials and heavy components to meet federal reefing rules.
At close to 1,000 feet, the liner is longer than the Titanic. In its working years it carried four presidents and the Mona Lisa across the Atlantic, and it still holds a reputation as the fastest passenger liner ever built.
Tourism officials in the county say the panhandle has already sunk hundreds of artificial reefs, many of them old ships, and that those sites bring in an estimated $10 million to $12 million a year. The county expects to earn back its roughly $10 million investment in the liner within a few years, and the new reef alone is projected to draw about $3 million a year in visitor spending.
Okaloosa County tourism director Jennifer Adams said the wreck should be open to divers within a day or so, and that sea turtles and other marine life are expected to move in within days. The site sits 29 miles from the USS Oriskany, the aircraft carrier the Navy sank off Pensacola in 2006, which held the title of largest artificial reef until Wednesday. Adams also said the county is planning five or six more reef deployments.
