Chasing the Big U 1

Ever since it was announced that the SS United States was sold, I knew that she was going to be towed out of Philadelphia, and I knew that I needed to be there to see it. I had been anxious about this for more than four months. I knew that it was going to happen, but I didn’t know when. Any source that listed a date or time would almost immediately get contradicted due to various reschedules and logistical issues. Part of me had vainly hoped that the logistical nightmare of towing a 990 foot-long ship would keep her where she was indefinitely. Complicating matters on my end was that there was no consistent source for updates. The official facebook page for the conservancy was updating very infrequently, and I was worried that they wouldn't announce the date at all. The date was announced to be February 17th, and it didn’t change for nearly a week. I was relatively sure that this was the longest that a date had remained uncontradicted, so I felt comfortable making arrangements. Me and my boyfriend planned an overnight trip to Philadelphia. We would arrive on the 16th, and watch her get pulled out on the 17th. We woke up on the 17th to learn that the towing had been delayed due to high winds. I was pretty worried at this point, because I didn’t know if I’d be able to come back. Regardless, if I couldn’t, I'd at least gotten to see her one last time, and my boyfriend got to see her for the first time. We had a wonderful time in Philadelphia together, and we got to tour the historic ships at Penns Landing. We even got to eat at Moshulu, a restaurant built in the hull of the largest remaining original windjammer. It was very expensive, but the biggest shock was that we walked out of there thinking that it was absolutely worth the price. I’ve never had food like that before or since. The only food that I’ve ever eaten that I can describe as transcendental. The new date was announced to be the 19th and unfortunately, my boyfriend was working on that day. I was hoping that my mother would be able to join me, because I’d never embarked on an adventure of this magnitude before. Furthermore, my mother and I actually have some history together with the SS United States, so I wanted her to be there with me.

I saw the SS United States in person for the first time in 2022. My grandmother loved Wildwood New Jersey, and my family used to go every summer. I believe we stopped in 2020 if I remember correctly, but she somewhat ominously wanted to go one more time before she died (not that she ever told me or my sister that part). By some miracle, she had convinced my grandfather (who by that point was notorious for being something of a layabout) to come, and she asked my parents if they could bring me and my sister. I was 20 at the time, and my sister was 13, but my mom was somewhat hesitant because my grandmother had been plagued with frequent falls and extreme forgetfulness as of late. My mom had informed me of this trip and my grandmother's state, and made the case that maybe it would be for the best if me and my sister went to help take care of her, rather than her taking care of us. I don’t know if this affected my parents' decision, but by some miracle, they decided to let us go with them. On the long car ride to Wildwood, I noticed that we were passing through Philadelphia. Just a few months prior, I had found the Oceanliner Designs Youtube channel, and this reignited my passion for Titanic, as well as spark my current enthusiasm for all ocean liners. One of my favorite videos of his was the one where he discussed what made the SS United States so fast. By this point, I had been bugging my mother to take me to see the SS United States for months. Based on my research, there were only roughly 10 ocean liners left in existence at the time, and at the end of this year, I wouldn't be surprised if it was down to 8. Not only was the SS United States less than a day's drive away, and not only was she a real ocean liner, but she was one of the greatest, and still the fastest to this day. I didn't get my drivers license until later that year, so if I wanted to go, I’d need someone to take me. The thought that she was just… sitting there, waiting for me, it nearly drove me mad. But now, in that car with my grandparents on the way to Wildwood, I was in Philadelphia. Not expecting to find anything particularly exciting, I looked up how far the SS United States was from our location. Fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes was all that separated me from one of the greatest ocean liners of all time. I hastily (and likely poorly) tried to explain to my grandparents and begged them to take a detour. Given that my grandfather was the one at the wheel, and that they were using a GPS that was probably older than my sister, I wasn’t getting my hopes up. But my grandmother, the angel that she was, went up to bat for me and convinced my grandfather to make the detour. I was over the moon, my heart was racing. I remember that the first thing I saw was the funnels. Towering over all of the other buildings. And then, as we got closer, she finally came into view, in all her glory. We had some trouble figuring out where to park, but when we did, I was absolutely manic. I was running up and down the sidewalk taking as many pictures as I could, trying to strategically position my phone's camera through the holes in the fence and the gaps in the barbed wire, and my grandmother even used my phone to take a picture of me. It was drizzling, so I was holding this funny little pink umbrella that my grandmother had been keeping in her car since before I was born. I've never seen my grandmother happier than she was at that moment in my entire life, and it was just because she could see how happy I was. She didn’t understand what the SS United States was, or why she was so special, or what she meant to me. All my grandmother could see was how happy and excited I was. And that's all that she needed. We went on to have an excellent vacation together, but it would quickly be overshadowed as my grandmother would have a medical emergency that resulted in her death just a month later. She was the most important person in my support network, and one of my last memories of her was when she took me to see the SS United States.

In 2023, my family was in pretty dire financial straits. However, to honor my grandmother's memory, my mom wanted to go to Wildwood. My grandfather, ever the pragmatist, begged us not to, but once he learned of our motivations, relented. I asked my mother if we could stop to see the SS United States again, but she was hesitant. I explained the connection I had with her and my grandmother, and like my grandfather, my mother relented, and I got to see the SS United States for the second time. Much of the unbridled excitement of the first visit was gone, but now we had established a tradition.

In 2024, I had a novel idea. If I brought my Game Boy Camera, my Nintendo DSi, and my Nintendo 3DS, and I took pictures of the SS United States with all three, there was a good chance that I’d be the only person on earth to have photographed her with those unique cameras. It was this event combined with my love of the Nintendo DS that inspired my hobby of photography. Not just with the DSi, but photography in general. I made this website to host all my DSi photographs, so this website wouldn’t exist if not for the SS United States.

But now, with all of the backstory out of the way, here I was, the event that was the impetus for the great ship's destruction. My mother was unable to attend because she couldn't take the day off work, but she had an idea: I wouldn’t just be there to watch them pull her out. I’d chase her all the way down the Delaware river. My mother would research in real time the most optimal places along the river to place me to watch her go by. I assume most people were on the Philadelphia side, but I started on the Camden side on my mothers advice, and she was more right than I could have ever imagined. I arrived at Phoenix Park at approximately 11:00 AM (which is somewhat coincidental given my history with the Ace Attorney franchise), and to my shock, I was face to face with a propeller. I did some investigating, but there were no markings on the propeller that I could discern that could hint to its origin. The sign wasn't much help either unfortunately.