Seventy years after her launch in Newport News, Virginia, and a quarter century as a fixture of Philadelphia’s waterfront, the SS United States is celebrating another milestone. This February marks ten years of tireless work on the part of the SS United States Conservancy to celebrate and save this iconic symbol of America.
Prior to COVID, Jens-Erwin Siemssen, artistic director at Das Letzte Kleinod, had prepared a theatrical production to be shown in Bremerhaven as a tribute to the old terminal that was scheduled to be torn down and refurbished. As part of his research, Siemssen visited the ship at her pier in Philadelphia, and conducted interviews with Conservancy President Susan Gibbs, former crew member and Conservancy Board Member Joe Rota, and former crew member and Conservancy Hampton Roads co-chair Joe Muchulsky about the ship’s history, and the unique stories that make America’s Flagship special. While the program awaits its premiere, now scheduled for Autumn 2021, Siemssen provided his reflections on the ship and the interviews he conducted in a story special to to Nordsee-Zeitung.
In the first half of the 20th century the transatlantic liner market was dominated by ships flagged in Britain, France, Italy and Germany. The coveted Blue Riband speed record changed hands mainly between the ships of those nations, but one man, William Francis Gibbs (1886-1967), had a dream to design and build a superliner which would put the United States at the forefront of liner technology, and take the coveted record.
