Inside The Engine Room of the Fastest Passenger Liner on the Atlantic, SS United States

I rode on the S.S. United States in October of 1957, as a young child, with my family. We actually passed the Queen Mary, on the way to New York. It was incredible.

Part of the reason for her good condition is she was in active preservation at least until the mid 1980s. I had the chance to tour her in 1984 and all the dehumidifers were running. I was amazed that some of the tile decks were still shiny and slick after more than 20 years out of service. All of the engineering plant equipment was also lubicated and in good working order (i.e., valves turned, doors opened and closed). We were told during the tour that the engineering plant was a "copy" of the plant used on the Roosevelt aircraft carrier. I was never able to confirm that.

I knew based on the million dollar engineering study Crystal Cruises had undertaken on the Big U about 7 years back that’s she’s solid as a rock. The faded paint and missing interior makes people thinks she’s in poor shape. She’s not, and way structurally more sound than the Queen Mary.

I was an engineer on the USS Kitty Hawk. Her boilers are closer to Forrestal/ Kitty Hawk class. We had 1200psi boilers, but we had Foster/Wheelers. I was an HT and did a lot of pipe fitting it's AMAZING how utterly brutal 1200psi is on piping, and the metals are very exotic and worth more in weight than gold.. We also had 285,000 shp.

An amazing ship, it's a shame she had such a short life. You'll never get to cross the Atlantic again in such class, for such a reasonable price

In 1953 I was a passenger with my Mother sailing from NYC to France and then to Germany. . The Captain was John Anderson who lived across the street from my family in Bergenfield NJ. He was Commodore of US Lines and captain of USS United States. I was a very young boy at that time. Recalling Captain Johnson and the USS United States and its luxuries was permanent in my mind.

I served aboard the USS Proteus, AS-19. My “Sea and Anchor” detail was down in the port side shaft alley. Accessible only by a vertical ladder that went from the second deck down to the bottom of the ship. The overhead (ceiling) was too low for me to stand up. I’m guessing the shaft alley was 30-40 feet long with a catwalk than ran alongside the length of the shaft on one side only. There were three or four spring bearings that I had to monitor for overheating by occasionally touching the bearing housing with the back of my hand to the housing. It was rather mesmerizing to watch the shaft rotating one direction then stopping and rotating the other direction as we were maneuvering when docking. I was often the only guy down there, communicating to main control with sound powered headphones.

For those of you who are as interested as I am in the engineering of the Big U, there's a book coming out in June called "SS United States: An Operational Guide to America's Flagship" which is written by a team including one of the former caretakers and is supposed to have a bunch of new operations and engineering data that hasn't been released before.

That ship is a global icon. I really hope someone eventually finds her a new role. She certainly looks a lot better condition than the reports suggested.

My roommate’s uncle worked at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard and we got to tour the dry dock area and foundry February of 1980. I believe it was USS America CV-66 and a nuclear sub which were in dry dock at the time. The size of ship’s equipment and foundry tools was mind blowing. When we were there, one of the America’s 12 foot propellers was on a balancing stand in the foundry. The pitch of the SS United States’ propeller is much steeper than my recollection of USS America’s. The erosion caused cavitation shown in the video is an interesting sight.

One key difference in a warship steam plant vs a non-warship plant is that part of the feed system extends upward into the uptakes (stack), the feed pumps are supplied by gravity from a tank located well above the engine room, whereas a warship uses a pressurized Deaerating Feed Tank (DFT) (pressurized with Auxiliary Exhaust). This keeps the entire steam/ feed system low in the vessel.

Thank you for this video! Back in 1972 I was in the US Navy as machinist mate onboard the USS Neoshow A.O. 143. She was a twin screw 600 psi system. Our home port was the NOB piers at the Norfolk VA naval station. And just a couple of piers down was the SS United States and I fell in love with that beautiful ship with the graceful lines! And back in 1972 she was only 20 years old and her paint was still in good shape. Do know that you brought joy to this old machinist mate’s heart today. Thanks for the memories! I still think I could take light off or secure an engine room! And yes, I would still call it a shaft alley it’s bigger than most I’ve seen!

Thank you. My father was a menber of her crew. He was so proud of the ship. We had a Model of the ship at home in the livingroom. My first ship. I became a sailor like my dad. William M. Herndon, USNRET.

Our family was sailing to NYC on the SS United States and I was offered a tour of the engine room. Unfortunately, my parents couldn't find me to tell me of the opportunity. At least in this video I can see what I missed. Still, to have seen the area in action would have been incredible.

I had been told for ages that the ship was not just gutted, but dangerously decrepit and derelict condition. I'm really surprised to see how good it looks in there.

One of the few working steamships i have been on was the Training Ship Empire State, originally built as a cargo ship for States Lines as SS Oregon in 1961. She was a MARAD C4 class built to be used for merchant shipping in peacetime and military cargo transport in wartime. They had something like a 17,500HP plant driven by a single engine room around the center of the ship. This meant that there was about 200 feet of shaft in a separate tunnel that I only ever heard referred to as "shaft alley". And it was pretty spacious, with a catwalk on one side and plenty of headroom.

According to , John R. Cain ( Fomer president of Newport News Ship Builders) in April 1978, he stated that the ship reached a top speed of 38.32 kts at 160 shaft rpm at nearly 232,000 hp during initial sea trials.

I worked on this ship as a first class bell boy for 3 north Atlantic crossings in the winter, Bremerhaven, Le Havre and Southhampton, I was in college and able to get thru the catch 22 that kept people out of the NMU.

My father arrived in North America via SS United States. My whole time growing up there was a deck of playing cards in the china cabinet with this big ship on them. That's as far as my 8 year old mind went with it. Years later my dad explained that voyage was full of trades men from post war UK coming to jobs in aviation waiting for them in the U.S. and Canada. Otherwise I'd be speaking with a heavy Glasgow accent instead of like a Canuck. So many of them were the draftsmen and machinists from companies like Rolls Royce (dad), A.V. Roe, deHavilland, etc. that played their part in the aerospace technology boom.

I've always been fond of the SS United States. My mom took my sisters on a trip to London from NYC back in the 1960's on her. Whenshe was berthed in Norfolk I visited several times, you could go go in on certain days and buy things like life preservers, plates, chairs and silverware etc. I picked up a half dozen orange kapok life preservers with "United States" stenciled on them. They were $5 bucks each.