Why Should I Care?

About the fate of S.S. United States that is?  She lies as I write this astride a dock in Mobile, Alabama, awaiting a final scouring of environmental hazards before she is towed to a spot off the coast of Florida where she will be sunk, with due ceremony and fanfare, her demise no doubt to lead the "evening news," except that there is no longer such a thing as the evening news. 

At just shy of 1000 feet in length, the United States will be the largest artificial reef in the world.  Those responsible for her fate, who tried in vain for decades to secure for her a more dignified retirement, like that of Cunard's Queen Mary, which is now a first-class dockside hotel in Long Beach, California, spin her nestling into the grave as a fine thing, relative to all other financially-viable alternatives that is.  But to me it is as if Jim Thorpe, washed up as an athlete at age 40, were offered a painless suicide so that the taxidermists could prepare to display his magnificent form at the Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC.

In 1969, the United States was withdrawn permanently from passenger service, rather abruptly, by her owner/operator, which was U.S. Lines.  Competition from jet aircraft had erased her viability, and U.S. Lines was facing other financial challenges.  The principal business of the company was not the transportation of passengers but the transportation of freight.  It owned a large fleet of old-school freighters, all of them called either "Pioneer X" or "American Y."  They themselves were losing their viability, as it became apparent that the future lay in large container ships because of their efficiency and also the protection that the containers themselves offered against pilferage.

In the winter of 1966-67, I was a high school sophomore living in Winthrop and schooling under the tutelage of the Salesian Brothers in adjacent East Boston.  On a cold evening in March of that year (perhaps as cold as the first few days of this March of 2025), S.S. American Ranger might be passing through President Roads with a Boston Pilot aboard to guide her through the islands and the shoals that dot the outer harbor, just as U.S.S. Constitution passed through President Roads after her triumphs in the War of 1812.  Someone at U.S. Lines just then might have picked up his rotary-dial telephone and dialed 846-3102, my home number in Winthrop that is.  The message for my dad would have been simple -- "Four and one in the morning."  Four common dockworkers and a foreman to oversee them, all to appear at 7AM at shipside, Pier One East Boston.  (The outline of the massive warehouse at Pier One can still be seen in aerial photos of the city, although the surrounding neighborhood is finally giving up its Italian and Latino roots to gentrification -- high rises with spectacular views of the city within two subway stops of Boston's Financial District.)

My dad's job was to supply not only the muscle but also the paraphernalia to facilitate the loading and unloading of cargo at Pier One, as well as the Boston Navy Yard -- lumber, barrels filled with ten-penny nails, rope, wire and huge turnbuckles.  He was also the man whose expertise was needed to ensure that the "shoring" of the cargo was safely executed.  But it seemed that much of his time on the job, in a little shack just adjacent to Pier One, was spent making payroll and keeping the books for The Marine Company, the contractor principally to U.S. Lines that was founded by his father and owned in the '60s by his older brother, my Uncle Connie.

And so, when in 1968 or so U.S. Lines, facing those same financial straits, decided to shut down its freight operations in Boston, The Marine Company was doomed.  My dad, fast approaching 50 with four kids and only a high-school education, had to re-invent himself.  After many months he managed to do so, taking on a job as a file clerk for an insurance company in Quincy, Massachusetts.  He made about the same amount of money at the new job as at the old one, which wasn't much, but after a time he got his dignity and his good humor back.

The same forces that mothballed S.S. United States, I mean to say, knocked my dad off the docks as well and soured all of our spirits at 66 Cottage Park Road in Winthrop.  If he were alive and alert today at age 105, Alpheus Donovan would be following the last voyage of the United States with great passion and a keen sense of her special place in nautical history.