The SS United States Has a One-Way Date in November

Okaloosa County set the SS United States to leave Mobile in the second week of November 2026 and sink as an artificial reef off Destin. The 990-foot liner will be towed about 22 nautical miles southwest of Destin-Fort Walton Beach, weather allowing.

That window closes a Philadelphia eviction, a mixed-use plan that never got a pier, and 19 months of paid waiting at an Alabama dock while the county sat on an Army Corps of Engineers permit.

Okaloosa Named a November Window in a Hurricane Week

The Okaloosa County Board of County Commissioners dated the move in a release on October 9, 2026. Public information officer Nick Tomecek said the ship would go down in the second week of November 2026, about 22 nautical miles southwest of Destin-Fort Walton Beach, and that the day can still shift with the weather.

The notice went out the same evening Hurricane Isaias came ashore near Destin as a Category 2 storm with maximum sustained winds of 105 mph. Tomecek said the overlap was chance. The county had promised the public a plan 30 days before the ship moved, and October 9 was always that day. Thirty days from that release is November 8, the start of the second week of the month.

“We’re looking to deploy in the second week of November,” Tomecek said after the release. “It’s pretty exciting to be so close to the end.”

Spring 2026 had been the first target. The hull sat in Mobile after crews finished the clean-out, waiting on the Corps and the Environmental Protection Agency. In early September, Tomecek called the remaining paper an amendment to an existing reef permit, a change in how much open water must sit over the wreck so passing boats do not hit it. He said a sink date would likely fall within 30 days of that sign-off.

Asked later whether the Corps had given vessel-specific approval, he said more details would come and that the county was excited to finish the project for the environment and the diving community. The November window is public. The stamped Corps packet is not.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The window: Okaloosa County says the ship will be sent out in the second week of November 2026, weather allowing.
• The place: About 22 nautical miles southwest of Destin-Fort Walton Beach, in the Gulf of Mexico.
• The work: County documents from September say all remediation for reefing is done and the idle time is now dockage.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The hour: No calendar day or tow time has been posted.
• The Corps file: The county has not published a vessel-specific Army Corps approval with an issuance date.
• The show: Officials say more event details, including how the public can watch in person and online, will follow.

People who followed the February 2025 tow already talked about the wreck as a dive, not as a ship still in play. The live argument now is narrower: whether a decades-old reef permit, rewritten for depth and clearance, is enough to put this hull on the sand.

Philadelphia’s Eviction Left Only the Reef

The SS United States Conservancy had owned the liner since 2011, after pulling her off the scrap path. She had been tied at Pier 82 on the Delaware River since 1996. In 2021 the pier operator, Penn Warehousing & Distribution, doubled the rent. The Conservancy kept paying the old rate. Penn Warehousing sued in 2022.

On June 14, 2024, U.S. District Judge Anita Brody found the Conservancy did not owe the doubled dockage. She also held that the berthing deal could be ended at will and ordered the ship off the pier by September 12, 2024. A mixed-use rebuild with hotel and real-estate partners, framed after five years of planning as a privately funded, permanently moored destination, had no berth and no government backer on that clock.

Susan Gibbs, Conservancy president and granddaughter of the ship’s designer, William Francis Gibbs, put the bind in writing when the pier fight settled on October 11, 2024, and title passed toward Okaloosa County.

Unable to save the SS United States in her current state and under a binding court order, we faced the painful but unavoidable choice between scrapping America’s Flagship or converting her into an artificial reef in tandem with a land-based museum. We chose the latter as the most dignified path.

Susan Gibbs, president, SS United States Conservancy

Gibbs also said that once the ship is down, more people will see and learn about her in one year than have had that chance since she left service more than half a century ago. That is the county’s tourism case in the Conservancy’s voice. A New York group later sued to stop the sinking; the case was dismissed in August 2025.

FROM RECORD RUN TO REEF BERTH

1. July 3, 1952: She leaves New York on her maiden crossing and takes the Blue Riband eastbound.
2. November 1969: United States Lines lays her up as jets take the Atlantic trade.
3. 1996: She is towed to Pier 82 in Philadelphia, where she sits for nearly three decades.
4. 2011: The Conservancy buys her and begins a long attempt at a stationary museum.
5. June 14, 2024: Judge Brody rejects doubled rent but orders her off the pier by September 12.
6. October 11, 2024: The Conservancy settles with Penn Warehousing and contracts with Okaloosa County.
7. February 19, 2025: Tugs pull her off the Delaware. The Conservancy said the run covered more than 1,800 miles in 12 days.
8. March 2025: She arrives in Mobile for stripping and stays through the Corps wait.

Okaloosa County paid $1 million for the hull in August 2024. The Conservancy kept the story, the collection, and a land museum still on the drawing board.

The Prep Contract Is Now $11,420,000

Coleen Marine did the Mobile work. On September 15, 2026, the county board added $1.242 million to that job and locked a berth through December 31, 2026. County papers said every task tied to getting the liner ready as a reef was finished, and that the ship had been waiting on the Corps for months. Idle time still billed dockage the county said it could not control.

Tomecek put that parking cost at $100,000 a month in early September and called the fee normal for a hull this size. After the amendment, the Coleen Marine contract is worth $11,420,000. The county wrote that there is no precedent for a project of this magnitude, that core contracted tasks stayed within about 10 percent of the original budget, and that outside delays drove the extra spend.

THE MOBILE TAB

• Purchase price: Okaloosa County bought the ship from the Conservancy for $1 million in August 2024.
• Prep contract: Coleen Marine’s agreement stands at $11,420,000 after the September 15, 2026, amendment.
• Monthly wait: Dockage in Mobile has been running $100,000 a month, per Tomecek.
• Shore building: Plans call for a $1 million onshore visitors center on the ship’s history.

In Mobile, crews pulled 120 fuel tanks, the windows and glass, paint, and other hazardous material. They took off the two smokestacks. Openings were cut for a non-explosive sinking. County papers say the work followed EPA and Maritime Administration best practices for ships turned into reefs. Some scientists and preservationists have still flagged zinc chromate primer on the hull as a pollution risk in the Gulf.

How Deep Will Divers Get?

Tomecek said the liner will rest in about 160 feet of water, with the remaining superstructure 75 feet below the surface. That upper band is ordinary recreational scuba depth. The sand is not. Funnels came off in part so the high point would sit in reach of sport divers; technical divers can work the lower decks.

Okaloosa County is billing her as the world’s largest artificial reef, a rank now held by the aircraft carrier USS Oriskany, which was sunk on May 17, 2006 off Pensacola. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission puts Oriskany on the sand at 212 feet, 22.5 nautical miles southeast of Pensacola Pass, with the top of the island decking at 84 feet. Tomecek said the new wreck will sit just to the east of that carrier and that a diver could do both sites in one day.

TWO HULLS ON THE PANHANDLE SAND

Fishing charters want the same steel. County tourism staff have talked up snapper, grouper, and amberjack on a new high-relief wreck. The site sits far enough offshore that a visit is a full boat day, same as Oriskany, not a shore dive.

America’s Fastest Liner Still Owns the Atlantic Record

William Francis Gibbs designed the ship at Gibbs & Cox. Newport News Shipbuilding laid the keel on February 8, 1950, as Hull 488. She was christened on June 23, 1951, and delivered in June 1952. The U.S. government paid a large share of construction so the liner could convert to a troop ship if a war started. She never carried that load.

On her maiden run, July 3 to 7, 1952, she went from Ambrose Light to Bishop Rock in 3 days, 10 hours, 40 minutes at an average of 35.59 knots over 2,942 nautical miles, taking the Blue Riband from Cunard’s Queen Mary. The westbound return also set a mark. No passenger liner has beaten the eastbound time. Gibbs built her light, with an aluminum superstructure and almost no wood, chasing speed and fire safety at the same time.

Jets ended the transatlantic trade that paid her bills. United States Lines laid her up in November 1969. Interior fittings later went to auction, and asbestos came out, so the hull that tugs will pull from Mobile is already a stripped shell of the ship that held the record. The record itself does not move when the hull floods. It stays on the 1952 crossing.

A Museum Built From What Came Off

The Conservancy is now a partner, not a protester. In an October 10, 2026, update it repeated the county’s November window and said it is advancing a land museum near the boats that will run future dive trips. It has already taken large pieces off the ship for that building, including the funnels, radar mast and stem anchor.

WHAT COMES OFF THE HULL

• The funnels: Both stacks are off the ship and reserved for the Destin-Fort Walton Beach museum.
• The radar mast: Saved with the stacks as a signature piece of the 1950s profile.
• The stem anchor: Held for the same land exhibit, with other components still being catalogued.

Gibbs’s 2024 statement promised recreations of interior spaces with original material, plus rotating shows drawn from the Conservancy’s art and fittings. The county’s $1 million visitors-center figure is the public cash beside that plan. No opening date is set. For people who cannot dive 75 feet in open Gulf, those parts on land will be the ship they can walk through.

If the weather holds, tugs will take the hull out of Mobile in the second week of November 2026 and flood her on the Destin range. If a storm slips the window, the December 31 berth is already paid. The funnels will still be ashore either way.