What makes SS America your favorite liner?
Why is there only one liner post 2000 on your list? (I assume enshittification, but...)
Okay okay okay, so, I "left" Tumblr quite a while ago, and I rarely open the app any more, but you happened to send this ask while I had the app opened, so I'm going to answer this. And forgive me, but I'm going to answer these questions out of order.
First, why there's only one liner post 2000? Its because only one ocean liner was ever built post 2000. Ocean liners are unfortunately a dying breed. By my count, across the entire planet, only 10 ocean liners still exist. Give or take a few depending on how you define a liner, but personally I dont count cargo ships that also carried passengers. By the end of this year, there will be only 8 left. The MV Astoria (formerly the MS Stockholm, which was the ship which collided with and sank the SS Andrea Doria in the 1950s) is currently being torn apart for scrap. The SS United States, the fastest ocean liner to ever be built (and a sort of sequel to the SS America) is about to be sunk in the gulf of Mexico as an artificial reef. The only liner that is still in active service is the RMS Queen Mary 2, which was completed in 2004. The rest are Museum Ships or awaiting their fate. Of the liners on my favorites list, 4 are left, and one of them is the SS United States.
Ocean liners as a breed of ships were unfortunately just kind of made obsolete by air travel, so past the 1960s new ones become extremely rare. Theres a reason that the Queen Mary 2 spends most of her time doing cruises instead of trans-atlantic crossings. The Queen Mary 2 was only greenlit by Cunards parent company, Carnival, because in 1997 James Cameron's Titanic revived a lot of interest in liners and ocean travel in general. Theres a good chance that once she's retired (hopefully in a very long time) we'll never see a new ocean liner again.
Theres so few liners left for a couple reasons.
1) Lack of foresight. In their time, once these ships were retired, most of them were just seen as obsolete and sent off to be scrapped. It was pretty rare that these ships were thought to have enough historical significance to preserve. Nowadays, lots of us look back at the scrapping of the RMS Olympic as unthinkable, but back then, she wasn't the sister of the ill fated RMS Titanic. She was just... an obsolete liner. She had lots of accolades and an incredible story of her own, but that just wasn't enough to warrant preservation at the time. With only 2 exceptions, the oldest liners that are still around are from the 1930s. One of the two that are older, and the only 19th century example of an ocean liner that we still have, was a ship that we raised from the sea floor. She was preserved, but not in her time. By the time we thought to start preserving these ships, most of the oldest ones were already gone. The second oldest, finished in 1914, the MV Doulos Phos, was only preserved because she was still in service by 2013, so by then, preservation was a no-brainer.
2) Difficulty. Preserving a ship as a museum ship is DIFFICULT. SO much time and money has to go into maintaining the ship, so ships like the SS Rotterdam and RMS Queen Mary operate as floating hotels. The money that comes in from booking rooms subsidizes the maintenance and preservation of the ship. Theres a couple museum ships in Baltimore that I've visited. 3 of them were military ships, and one was a lightship. They're maintained by the national park service, and the lightship was in noticably terrible shape compared to the others. When the maintenance of a ship is dependent on donations, military history unfortunately gets the spotlight.
And now, as for why the SS America is my favorite ocean liner. I judge my favorites based on a scale, of most to least important:
Story
Exterior
Interior
Technology
To me, the most important part of any ships history is her story, and the SS America EASILY has the greatest story of any liner ever. Most ocean liners are lucky to have a career of 25 to 30 years. America was in active service for over 50 years, and they were an eventful 50. Second, the exterior. Most of the surviving photographs of these old liners are unfortunately of the outside, so its harder to judge the inside. Otherwise, the interior design would be above the exterior design. But in both of these categories, America is excellent. I MIGHT prefer the exterior of the SS United States, but the America is excellent in her own right.
America is the one closer to the camera.
And here's my favorite picture of the SS America.
Finally, technology. I think the technological innovations of a ship go a long way in making them who they are, and shaping their story and history. This is probably the category where America is most lacking, but she does have a few interesting tricks up her sleeve.
I was a bit vague in this post, bit thats for two reasons. One, I think you should absolutely watch the Oceanliner Designs documentary about the SS America. He tells her story far better than I can.
Two, I actually have another post where I talk about why I love her, which you can find here.
💬 0 🔁 10 ❤️ 16 · Eheheh but of course! So first of all, here are the 2 side by side. America is the shorter one in the front. On the Ame
If you're going to watch the video, definitely do that first. I "spoil" a lot of it in this linked post. The documentary by Oceanliner Designs genuinely nearly brings me to tears every time I watch it.
Thank you so much for the ask! Im super happy to share my interest in these ships, and its a history that often goes untold.
Looking back, I have a lot of asks about ships that I might briefly come out of retirement to ask...
