When Sumner B. Besse was hired by Newport News Shipyard in the late 1920s, he didn’t know that one day he would help to design the fastest ship the world had ever seen. He still didn’t know it in 1930, when he left the shipyard to become one of the first employees of the new Mariners’ Museum, next door. For the next 10 years, he repaired artifacts, built ship models, and took photographs for the museum.

When World War II began, and the museum’s model shop closed, Sumner returned to the shipyard as a hull designer. After the War, as Newport News transitioned back to peacetime operation, Sumer found himself at the center of one of the most exciting projects in the history of shipbuilding: the creation of the SS United States.

His son, Bradford Besse, recalls Sumner’s work: “The ship was designed to have a top speed of X knots. When they towed a model at the museum model basin the data said it would go Y knots, Y being greater than X. The data was hush-hush because the ship was designed to be convertible for the military, but it seemed to be common knowledge.”

The SS United States was completed in 1952, and Sumner left the shipyard one year later. But there was still time to celebrate: Bradford remembers how “My father and I played the grand piano in the giant ballroom. It was ‘The Darktown Strutters’ Ball.’ He played melody, I played bass.”