SS United States Sinking Follow Up: Okaloosa County Lifted the Safety Zone on November 12, Sonar and a Remotely Operated Vehicle Confirmed She Landed Upright, and the First Divers Have Photographed Her
DESTIN, Florida, United States — Okaloosa County, Florida, lifted the safety zone around the wreck of the ocean liner SS United States on November 12, and divers can now visit, according to a November 12 update by the diving news site DeeperBlue. The first divers down, Will Hinton and Rustin Cassway, have photographed her sitting upright.
She went under just before 9 p.m. local time on Wednesday, November 11, Veterans Day, about 22 nautical miles, or 41 kilometres, southwest of Destin Fort Walton Beach, becoming the world's largest artificial reef. At 302 metres, or 990 feet, long, she takes that title from the 271 metre, or 888 foot, aircraft carrier USS Oriskany, sunk off Pensacola in 2006.
The sinking had been set for Thursday, November 12. The county moved it forward 24 hours because of strong winds forecast for Thursday and cancelled the public sendoff ceremony planned for the same day. The seabed at the site sits at around 55 metres, and the county expects the top of the ship to sit around 17 to 18 metres below the surface, within reach of recreational divers, while the hull and the sand at the bottom are a job for technical divers. Those numbers are the plan, not a survey. The county said on Thursday that sonar and a remotely operated vehicle had confirmed she landed upright, as intended.
Okaloosa County bought her for 1 million dollars in 2024 from the SS United States Conservancy and ran the project. The Associated Press reported that the ship, launched in 1951 and longer than the RMS Titanic, once transported four presidents, the Mona Lisa and a slate of 20th century movie stars, and that crews removed plugs in the hull to let her fill with water over about five hours without explosives. She joins a network of more than 500 artificial reef sites off Destin Fort Walton Beach. Since 1940, Florida alone has created more than 4,000 artificial reefs, according to a state fish and wildlife commission tally.
Source: DeeperBlue
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：SS United States客轮由拖船引出费城80号码头（资料图，本稿所涉船舶）。WSRower 摄，维基共享资源 CC0。 / Photo: The ocean liner SS United States being guided out of Pier 80 in Philadelphia by tugs (file photo, the ship in this report). Photo by WSRower, Wikimedia Commons (CC0).
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