Posted on 08/05/2016 8:01:14 PM PDT by rockinqsranch
My. Father worked for many year formUnited StatesLines, the owners of the SS United States. I sent him the article and this is what he wrote beck to me:
The USL Chief Engineer who monitored and supervised the construction of the US was a friend of mine. He was heart broken when the ship was laid up. He told me that when it was returned to the Government (MARAD I presume) they drained the entire hot water heating system. As a result, within a year all the washers throughout the ship were dried up and that it would be economically impossible to ever restore the ship to service for that reason alone. There have been repeated efforts to re-examine the situation but they are up against a stone wall, and all their efforts have been for naught. Complicating the situation is an asbestos problem. Scrapping it in the US may be impossible and the only alternative may be to tow it to India where they have no constraints. That will cost money too and the ship is in private hands. The architects family is involved and I guess they just don’t know what to do.
An interesting problem. If only they had kept water in the pipes and heat in the hull success would have come long ago.
Make it a hotel—like the Queen Mary. Or fix it up as a floating University. We may need her as a troop ship in the future! I bet Trump could make it work.
I’d like to see the California Maritime Academy operate her between San Francisco and Honolulu for those of us that have had enough of TSA.
No. recycle the tens of thousands of tons of aluminum and the tens of thousands of tons of steel, the tons of copper, molybdenum, rubber, paints, etc.
The asbestos? No.
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