The SS United States, the liner that set the transatlantic speed record in 1952, has sunk off Florida and is sitting upright on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. It went under shortly after 9 p.m. local time on Wednesday, Nov. 11, the Pensacola News Journal reported. Okaloosa County now has what it calls the world’s largest artificial reef.
It took far longer than planned. Crews began pumping in seawater around 2 p.m. ET. Officials had expected the sinking to take 45 minutes to three hours.
On Thursday morning, county spokesperson Nick Tomecek said sonar and a remotely operated vehicle had confirmed the ship landed upright. On the way down it leaned over. “It slowly went down evenly, and then it shifted to its port side,” Tomecek told the News Journal. Early inspections put it within feet of its target, the county said in a statement quoted by gCaptain.
Why a 990-foot ship took hours to sink
The county moved the sinking up from Thursday because strong winds were forecast. Crews needed sustained winds under 17 mph and waves under 3 feet, FOX Weather reported. A fireboat began pumping water in that afternoon, and shortly before 5 p.m. ET crews opened two valves to let the sea pour in through the ship’s original intake pipes.
Federal environmental and explosives rules barred the county from using explosives, PBS NewsHour reported, so the job relied on flooding alone. Contractors in Mobile, Alabama, had cut holes of roughly 10 by 10 feet into the decks. They also emptied the ship’s 128 fuel tanks and refilled them with water, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
That last step caused the delay. Officials told the Inquirer some tanks weren’t ready, and filling them in the open Gulf was slow. County spokesperson Nick Tomecek called that “not uncommon in artificial reefing.”
The hull had fully flooded by 7:30 p.m. but was still above water two hours later, ABC7 reported. Air trapped inside slowed the descent, WEAR-TV reported. “She was designed to be unsinkable, and that fact has definitely given our crews some challenges today,” Tomecek told ABC7.
Where the SS United States rests, and who paid
The wreck lies in about 180 feet of water, roughly 22 nautical miles southwest of Destin-Fort Walton Beach, at 30° 07.148′ N, 86° 46.755′ W, the News Journal reported. That matches the site the county announced in October, according to Cruise Industry News.
How far down the top sits is still being measured. The News Journal and gCaptain put the uppermost deck at about 60 feet, while early sonar readings showed about 50 feet, Get The Coast reported. The county’s project FAQ had planned about 55 feet, a depth it says suits beginners and technical divers alike.
Tourists, not local property owners, paid for it. The county commission set aside $13 million for the whole project. That covers the purchase, towing, cleanup and a contribution toward a museum. The money comes from the tourist bed tax on short-term rentals, and the county says it uses no general fund revenue.
In October, commissioners added $1.242 million to the budget, Cruise Industry News reported. CBS News reported that the county paid the SS United States Conservancy about $1 million for the ship itself in 2024.
What the county is buying is a tourist draw. CBS reports the Destin-Fort Walton Beach area already has about 580 artificial reefs, the most of any US region. A 990-foot liner gives it a headline wreck. Dive sites can become destinations on their own, as Iceland’s Silfra fissure shows.
How crews cleaned the ship before it went down
Crews spent about a year preparing the ship in Mobile, under a federal permit from the US Army Corps of Engineers. The FAQ says they removed all non-metal items, wiring and fuel. They cut down the aluminum superstructure so the wreck could sit shallower. They also opened passages so fish can move through the hull.
The county says it followed EPA and Maritime Administration best practices for reef vessels, including EPA guidance on PCBs. It also coordinated with Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection.
Not everyone accepted that. The SS United States Preservation Foundation sued the Army Corps and the county in federal court in Florida. It argued the approval skipped a full environmental impact statement and ignored hexavalent chromium in some coatings, 6abc reported.
On Nov. 6, US District Judge M. Casey Rodgers refused to halt the sinking, FOX10 reported. She wrote that the foundation hadn’t accounted for the “substantial expense” of keeping a ship that size docked.
The county’s FAQ says the coating in question isn’t federally regulated for artificial reefing.
The speed record, and how Philadelphia lost the ship
William Francis Gibbs designed the liner, and it made its maiden voyage in July 1952. It “shattered the trans-Atlantic speed record in both directions,” the SS United States Conservancy says, and it still holds the Blue Riband. FOX Weather, citing the federal Historic American Engineering Record, puts its crossing at 3 days and 10 hours.
In sea trials it hit 38.32 knots, about 44 mph. The rise of air travel and high operating costs ended its career in 1969, PBS reported.
It spent nearly 30 years at Philadelphia’s Pier 82. In 2021 the landlord, Penn Warehousing, doubled the daily dockage fee from $850 to $1,700, PhillyVoice reported. When the Conservancy kept paying the old rate, the company ended the agreement in March 2022 and sued for $290,700.
In June 2024, US District Judge Anita Brody ruled the Conservancy owed no back rent. But Penn Warehousing could end the berthing deal at will, so the ship had to leave by Sept. 12.
The Conservancy had estimated a full rehabilitation at about $400 million, and no backer stepped up, the Inquirer reported. Okaloosa County’s offer was the way out. Tugs pulled the ship away from Philadelphia in February 2025.
By the record: the new reef against the old one
Guinness World Records, which this week logged a human catapult record in Slovenia, lists the former aircraft carrier USS Oriskany as the largest artificial reef. Here is how the two compare, using only the sources linked.
| SS United States | USS Oriskany | |
|---|---|---|
| Length | 990 feet (Conservancy) | 888 feet (Guinness) |
| Sunk | Nov. 11, 2026 (6abc) | May 17, 2006 (Guinness) |
| Where | About 22 nautical miles SW of Destin (Pensacola News Journal) | Off Pensacola (Guinness) |
| Depth to bottom | About 180 feet (Pensacola News Journal) | n/a (not in sources opened) |
By length, the liner beats the carrier by 102 feet, which is what the county’s “world’s largest” claim rests on. The Conservancy also says it is more than 100 feet longer than the Titanic. We found no Guinness update yet.
Divers reached the wreck a day later
Rough weather on Thursday morning postponed the county’s planned inspection dive and the first public dives, the News Journal reported. By Thursday afternoon the safety zone around the site had been lifted, opening it to divers, gCaptain and the News Journal reported. Divers Will Hinton and Rustin Cassway of RV Explorer were the first down, and Cassway’s photo shows the stern upright with “United” and “New York” still legible, Get The Coast reported.
Scientists told the Inquirer to expect baitfish within the first week, and grouper, snapper and amberjack within the year. The county lists red snapper, grouper, amberjack, mackerel and tuna as target species.
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Dauphin Island Sea Lab and Louisiana State University will monitor the wreck’s biology and water chemistry, the News Journal reported. On land, the Conservancy is building a museum in Destin-Fort Walton Beach, with the ship’s funnels and mast set aside for it and no opening date named. Next, teams from Destin-Fort Walton Beach and Woods Hole will survey the hull to fix its exact resting position, and those coordinates go to the Army Corps of Engineers.
