HISTORY | The memory should suffice: a famed 1950s-era ocean liner and why scrapping it seems the logical choice

What’s undignified about ship demolition, scrapping, dismantling – call it what you will – although these days we are encouraged to define it as “recycling”, regarded as a far more "cuddly" term? It is how most ships end their lives and although there may be a tinge of regret at the end of an era, it is a sensible and practical conclusion, wringing the last bit of value from the steel, non-ferrous machinery and fittings that the recycling yards will extract as they perform their last rituals.

There is all sorts of angst about the decision in the United States to finally put the old Atlantic liner United States out of her 55-year misery of unemployment by scuttling her to become the world’s biggest man-made reef. Nobody wants her, rusting away in their ports while ever more hair-brained ideas are dreamed up for a new and exciting career for the more than 70-year-old hull.

She may have been the world’s fastest in her day, her top speed a closely guarded secret in Cold War times, and the last word in trans-Atlantic modernity. It was said that the only piece of wood on the ship was the chopping board in the butcher’s shop – a resolute answer to the apparent flammability of passenger ships of that era.

"Throughout all this, the ship continues to break hearts and rack up costs as the years tick away."

However, as is the case with all those wonderful post-war liners, the era of sea voyages was to be doomed by the onset of ever cheaper air transport, and the arrival of the Boeing 707 was to drastically shorten the profitable lives of these thirsty giants.

And while with few exceptions, these ships were demolished without too many tears, United States lived on, albeit in a state of suspended animation in various east coast locations, against the possibility that the Cold War could heat up and require thousands of troops to be rushed to any trouble spot.

Eventually, this thin possibility vanished and the ship, her colours fading, gradually mouldered away, while enthusiastic ideas for a new life themselves lived and died. She could be a cruise ship, a floating exhibition of American excellence, a maritime museum.

Then there was a realisation that asbestos was not the wonder insulating material it had been advertised and the environmental campaigners got in on the act. She was towed to Turkey to strip out this frightful stuff, then towed back again when the protesters invoked legal powers.

Throughout all this, the ship, which has managed to retain almost totemic significance, continues to break hearts and rack up costs as the years tick away. You might feel very charitable as a port operator, but the old United States takes up a lot of wharf as she lay alongside, for which you might believe could be more economically employed. A fine old ship, but would you mind taking her somewhere else.

This new fashion for consigning unwanted ships to the deeps to provide delightful habitats for all manner of sea creatures has rather caught on. The United States Navy has been ridding itself of all manner of ship in this so-called environmental way of late – a redundant aircraft carrier was so scuttled recently. It might be considered somewhat woke, but is not cheap, as the hull must be scrupulously cleaned of any materials which might choke a fish or poison the questing barnacle.

"Eventually everything, whether above the sea or below, disappears."

Then there has to be agreement about a site and the cost of a powerful tug which will not lose it en route. When you consider the light weight of a large warship, or indeed United States and what a scrap buyer might be persuaded to offer, there surely is no contest.

Would it not be far more dignified and perhaps more lucrative for those who have lost money on the old ship during the last 55 years of inactivity, to flog her to one of the ecologically approved recycling yards on the Gulf Coast? You could retain some mementoes, like the splendid radar mast or one of the funnels (which purists considered rather too large).

The nuclear ship Otto Hahn is remembered in Germany with such a mighty artefact alongside a museum, which might give the owners of Savannah ideas. We don’t have Titanic any more, but her name is coining it for the proprietors of the Titanic “Experience” in Belfast.

And eventually everything, whether above the sea or below, disappears. Just scrap United States and let her die with dignity. The memory should suffice.