In 1894, when William Francis Gibbs was 8 years old, his father brought him to see the launch of the SS St. Louis in Philadelphia. William stood with his younger brother, not far from President Grover Cleveland, awestruck by the sight of the 550-foot-long vessel. William became obsessed with great ships, not in the way that little boys grow out of, but with a passion that would change his life, along with the U.S. military itself.
“He didn’t graduate from Harvard because he just wanted to sit in his dorm room drawing ships,” says William’s granddaughter, Susan Gibbs. “He was honored with an honorary degree later, so it all worked out.”
Like many professional naval architects, amateur yacht designers and bar-napkin doodlers, William became obsessed with the idea of creating the perfect vessel. For the better part of 40 years, he incorporated new technologies and tweaked his designs. All the while, he designed World War II-era warships and cargo vessels. He became so respected that his firm, Gibbs & Cox, was asked to design and oversee construction of the SS United States. That 990-footer became William’s perfect ship. It entered service in 1952 as the largest ocean liner entirely built in the United States, and the fastest ocean liner to cross the Atlantic.
“He was obsessed, not only pursuing the project for almost 40 years, but then once the ship came online, he would call it every single day that she was at sea and talk to the chief engineer on the ship-to-shore radio,” Gibbs says. “He would also meet the ship when she returned home from a transatlantic run. He’d watch her glide in from his car in Brooklyn and then meet the ship at Pier 86 so he could be the first one to board.”
Decades later, that treasured vessel had deteriorated into the condition that befalls countless classic vessels, no matter how deeply they were once loved. The SS United States sat rusting on a Philadelphia pier whose owner no longer wanted her there. No location with space big enough for the ship wanted to make room for her, either.
So it was that this past February, Gibbs watched as a tugboat pulled the ship off the Philadelphia pier that had been its home since 1996. The SS United States had been the great love of her grandfather’s life—William had once told a reporter he loved the ship more than his wife. And yet it was bound for a final resting place off Florida’s Gulf Coast, to be sunk as an artificial reef near the site of a future land-based museum.
Gibbs’ first thought, upon seeing the ship head out to sea, was of her father—William’s son, Frank—whose own passion was tugboats along the coast of Maine. “When I was little, we’d go out on Casco Bay on his tugboat,” Gibbs says. “For me, it was so poignant to see that tug towing the SS United States.”
Gibbs also thought about her grandmother, who, for reasons lost to history, actually cruised aboard the ship more often than her grandfather did. “My grandfather only traveled on the SS United States for the maiden voyage, round-trip to Europe,” she says. “But then my grandmother, who was also on that maiden voyage, proceeded to take the ship regularly, like if there was a new restaurant in Paris. She traveled frequently, and I have her journals. She adored the ship. In one of her journals, she said coming aboard was like coming home.”
Mostly, though, as Gibbs watched her family’s treasured legacy get towed out to sea, she felt worried. “I had spun myself up into a bit of a frenzy, fearful that we might not even be able to tow this ship,” Gibbs says. “There was residual fuel in her tanks. There was rust on her skin. There was minimal clearance between her top and the Walt Whitman Bridge. You just worry about every possible worst-case scenario and whether she will make it.”
People had been trying to save the SS United States for years—Gibbs herself was president of the conservancy trying to turn the ship into an on-water museum and entertainment space—but there were simply no other options left. Insurance, dockage and other costs were running $50,000 to $60,000 per month, and no other pier in the nation would make space. The choices were the sandy floor of the Gulf or the scrap heap.
Hence that morning in February when the SS United States left Philadelphia, bound for Florida. If she had sunk before getting there, Gibbs adds, “it would have been horrifying on so many levels—emotionally, environmentally, legally. But lo and behold, she just busts a move. The tow operator was like, ‘She’s amazing.’ You can see it in every photo. She was in her element, flying and gorgeous.”
The sight of the great ship making one last run down the Atlantic Seaboard came more than a century after her grandfather had made his first sketch, in 1914 or 1915. To Gibbs’ thinking, the SS United States still looked pretty darn great out there on the water. One might even say the vessel’s design was, indeed, perfect.
“That was a beautiful thing, after all this time,” Gibbs says. “She still had it.”
May 2025
