John Delach

On The Outside Looking In

Month: October, 2024

October 30, 2024

The Big U’s Forty-Five Years in Purgatory

In 1969, when United States Lines took the SS United States out of service while the ship was receiving her annual check-up at Newport News Ship Building, the operators essentially walked away from America’s flagship. However, US Lines was only the operator. The real owner was Uncle Sam under the control of the Maritime Administration, MARAD, that still had plans for this magnificent ship.

The Department of Defense proposed that the Big U be converted to a hospital ship as her size and speed would allow the liner to be rapidly deployed to address any crisis around the world. The plan would have included up to 23 operating theaters,  1,600 hospital beds and a full set of specialist rooms comparable to any major land-based hospital. The navy ultimately rejected the plan as being too expensive and impractical.

MARAD decided that the holding on to the Big U was also impractical and the navy finally declassified the ship’s design features.  In 1980, MARAD disposed of the liner by selling it for $7 Million to a Seattle based developer who planned to revitalize the Big U as a floating condominium. But this owner’s financial status deteriorated so he neglected the vessel still docked in Norfolk. Consequently, her interiors became thoroughly ruined with water damage and mold.

The ships fittings and furniture were spared this fate, but not in a good way. They were gone before the water damage took place because he sold them at auction to pay creditors. Three hundred thousand fans and collectors participated in the week-long auction and raised $I.65 million for the objects taken from the ship. Still, the owner was forced into bankruptcy. The United States was seized by US Marshals and put up for auction.

The new owners planned to refurbish the ship and return it to trans-Atlantic service paired with the Queen Elizabeth 2.  They only paid $2.6 million at auction as the Big U was loaded with asbestos as its insulation. This was common for ships built in the 1950s. As we know, the world had come to understand that breathing in asbestos would cause cancer that can kill the victim. So, it had to be removed.

On June 4, 1992 the ship was towed to the Sevastopol Shipyard in Ukraine and underwent asbestos removal from 1993 to 1994. The interior of the ship was almost completely stripped down to the bulkheads. The open lifeboats were also removed as they were obsolete and violated international rules. In June of 1996, she was once again towed across the Atlantic to a new home in Philadelphia. Starting in 1997 a continuous chain of potential saviors entered the scene with all kinds of “what if ideas” only to eventually slink away into the night.

They included Operating the ship as a cruiser in Hawaii and convert her to a floating  hotel like the Queen Mary in Long Beach.  Norwegian Cruise Lines, (NCL) bought the ship, deemed the hull to be sound and in 2004 commenced feasibility studies regarding retrofitting the Big U. Once NCL realized this would cost between $700 million and One Billion, they lost interest.

The SS United States Conservancy was created in 2009 led by William Gibbs granddaughter, Susan Gibbs, who set out to save the ship from being scrapped by raising funds to purchase her. On July 30, H. F. Lenfest, a Philadelphia media entrepreneur and philanthropist, pledged a matching grant of $300,000 to help the Conservancy purchase the ship from NCL. In November of 2010, the Conservancy announced a new plan to develop a “multi-purpose waterfront complex as part of a stalled Foxwoods Casino project only to have this idea collapse a month later when the state Gaming Control Board revoked Foxwood’s license. Still, the Conservancy bought the Big U from NCL in February of 2011.

The Conservancy’s record for re-purposing was no better than all the others. Every project to re-locate the Big U failed; in particular, New York and Miami. All the while, the Conservancy’s funding could not keep up with the monthly costs of $80,000 to keep the vessel moored in Philadelphia.

By 2018, the situation became more desperate. Several developers proposed variations on the same old solutions. By 2021, the owners of Philadelphia’s Pier 82, where the ship had rested all these years had had enough. They went to court to increase the daily rent to $1,700 and sued for $160,000 in back rent. In June of 2024, Federal Judge, Anita Brody found in favor of the pier’s owners and gave the Conservancy 90 days to remove the Big U.

That’s when Florida’s Okaloosa County announced plans to buy and sink the ship to create the world’s largest artificial reef. MS Gibbs welcomed this solution.

Let’s face it, forty-five years is much too long. Let her go. Let the Big U’s purgatory finally end. For everyone who loves the Big U, let us pray that this plan becomes a reality.                   

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October 23, 2024

The Beginning and Demise of the Big U

Recently, I came across an article in the industry magazine, Professional Mariner, about the ocean liner, SS United States, or those of us fond of this magnificent ship called her “The Big U.”

Inactive since 1969, her luck had’ finally run out and The Big U was being evicted from her long-term berth on the Delaware River in Philadelphia. The owners, The SS United States Conservancy, had run out of options of other locations and sadly agreed to “Reef” the ship. Reefing means sinking her so she becomes a home for sea creatures and for divers to explore the ship, both inside and outside.

The Conservancy’s president, Susan Gibbs, granddaughter of the ship’s designer, William Francis Gibbs, explained,

In the long and storied history of America’s Flagship, these last two-years of this unfortunate litigation (with the owners of her berth) have perhaps been the most difficult, and the conflict at the pier has drastically impacted our plans for the ship’s long-term future.

While this is not the outcome we originally  envisioned, the ship will have a future. This next chapter of the SS United States’ story will bring thousands of people annually from around the world to experience her. Okaloosa County has now allocated more than $10 million to reactivate the SS United States as the world’s largest artificial reef in tandem with creating the Conservancy’s land-based museum and visitor center.

The cost to sink the Big U may be more than $10 million. Oskaloosa County has agreed to absorb the cost needed to accomplish this project. The Big U will be towed to Norfolk, Virginia where extensive preparations will be undertaken to prepare the ship to become the promised reef.

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William F. Gibbs was the premier designer of ships in the first half of the Twentieth Century. For years, he had envisioned a super trans-Atlantic liner that could out-perform all other liners while carrying over 1,900 passengers and a crew of 1,044. America’s experience during World War II convinced the military that our own merchant marine should have the best ship possible under American Flag to transport our troops to England or any other destination. After conversion, the Big U could accommodate 14,000 soldiers, a remarkable number and sail at high speed.  

In 1945,  the War Department put out bids for such a ship, and a long story short, Gibbs was awarded the contract. Finally, his dream had become a reality and he became the tsar of the Big U’s design and construction. Newport News Ship Building became the builder of choice and so they deserved to be; to this day they are the premier American ship builder, especially for military vessels.

But the SS United States was also designed to be a commercial ocean liner for United States Lines and Gibbs designed the plans that would include all the ambiance that a great liner would have. The first was that all of the superstructure would be made of aluminum to lighten the ship. The other was to eliminate all wooden construction. The only exceptions were the butcher’s block and the Steinway Piano. As a liner, the ship could carry 834 in First Class, 524 in Second Class and 554 in Tourist Class.

The Big U was launched in 1952. Before United States Lines and the Government’s Maritime Administration, (MARAD) Inspectors signed off on the vessel’s performance, the builder’s staff had to put the ship through its trial runs.  On June 10, 1952, Newport News Shipbuilding sailed the ship out of Norfolk and into the Atlantic Ocean with US Lines and MARAD engineers on board to witness the Big U’s performance. US Lines went first and the Big U met their speed challenge of 32 knots without any problems or complications. 

All of the US Lines representatives were excused and left the ship. Then, the MARAD engineers and the Newport News engineers manned the ship’s second boiler room and engine room and the captain called for military speed. The addition of these two units increased the speed to 38.22 knots sustained speed with spurts as high as 44 knots, a record never before achieved and immediately deemed top-secret.  

The Big U’s first voyage as an ocean liner was in pursuit of the Blue Ribbon, the recognition of the fastest ship to cross the Atlantic. The RMS Queen Mary held the record set in in 1936 of 33 knots. The Big U blew that away with a run just under 40 knots. The ship was welcomed as America’s flagship being new and attractive, popular and a nice money maker for US Lines. In addition, Uncle subsidized  the owner to maintain trans-Atlantic service no matter the profitability.

However, the world was changing and in 1957. for the first time, piston-powered aircraft carried more passengers across the Atlantic than ocean liners. The entry of the early jet powered aircraft like the Boeing 707 and the Douglas DC-8 only exacerbated the conquest of airplane over ship. US Lines tried to freeze salaries, but this led to a series of strikes and ate away any profits. The last profit-making year for the Big U was 1959 and by 1960, she was operating at a deficit of $2 million. By 1968, this had risen to $4 million.

On Octobert 25, 1969, the Big U completed her 400th voyage. She was ordered to start her yearly overhaul at Newport News early. On November 11, US Lines announced that the ocean liner was being withdrawn from service. All work stopped, the ship was sealed with all furniture, fittings and crew uniforms left in place. The Big U was relocated from the ship yard to a terminal across the James River from Newport News.

The SS United States would never sail under her own power again and her afterlife would be a series of failures.

(To b continued.)

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October 16, 2024

Robert Caro’s, “The Power Broker” celebrates 50 Years

I look over at my copy of The Power Broker that I recently placed on top of a file cabinet in my office. A bit of bragging, my hard cover copy is a First Edition. Whenever I gaze at it, the first thing that strikes me is its bulk. The damn thing has over 1100 pages of text, 83 pages of notes and an index of XXXIV pages.

This piece you are reading has a type size of 12. The type size in my copy of Caro’s book must a eight at max. If I had bought that book today, I wouldn’t attempt to read it with that small a type size. As it was, when published in 1974, the print size combined with the sheer density of the content limited the amount of information I could absorb at any one sitting. Truth be known, it took me three years to finish Mr. Caro’s monumental study of Robert Moses, (RM.)

Curiously, it turns out that I am not alone. The New York Historical Society is celebrating the 50th Anniversary of its publication with an extensive exhibit of RM, his power, glory, downfall  and his legacy, or as Caro put it, “the good the bad and the evil.” In an effort to insert a bit of humor into this serious exhibit, their gift shop is selling coffee cups that read: “I Finished The Power Broker.”

“Caro usually dislikes cracks about the book’s length.

‘Did you see this?’ he asked, holding up his coffee.’

 ‘I’m not supposed to say this’ he said, ‘but I kind of like it.”

In the mid-1950s, my mother began taking me on weekend trips from Ridgewood, Queens to Hempstead, Long Island where her best friend, Helen McBride, and her husband, Richard had re-settled. The McBride’s were the first couple we knew who abandoned Ridgewood for Long Island. Many would follow over the years.

But I digress; my first encounter with RM and his mandate came during a weekend visit to the McBride’s house in the late 1950s. Back then, they lived on Alabama Ave. close to the Southern State Parkway. I went for a walk with my mother and Aunt Helen. Helen steered us toward the parkway to point out the earth movers expanding the roadway from four to six lanes.

Proudly, Aunt Helen pointed out the new construction to Mom and noted, “Isn’t this amazing. Moses promised that the Southern State would one day, be six lanes wide and now that construction is underway.”

I was stunned, shocked and confused. “How is it possible that Moses is expanding highways on Long Island. Good grief, is this the same guy who  parted the Red Sea a very long time ago? But,  Aunt Helen was always right. Still, still, how is that possible?”

Eventually, I figured it out. I took to RM like he was my hero once I came to understand all of his accomplishments, especially those in New York City and Long Island.

But I did get a shocking glimpse of the harm that RM’s philosophy did to those unfortunate people who happened to live in the path of one of his projects. Like the Army Corp. of Engineering, RM believed in building a road in a straight line from points A to B regardless of what was in his way. The only exception was if the powers to be in that path had more clout than RM. He spoke about this in a documentary that aired on TV in the early 1960s.

He spoke of the Triborough Bridge’s Manhattan exit. “If the bridge had been built in a straight line across the East River from Astoria, Queens, it would have reached Manhattan at 86th Street. That would have disrupted the heart of the Upper East Side and that wasn’t going to happen. Instead, he picked it’s landing at 125th Street, where he could force through an exit into Harlem.

It was about 1955 when I saw what RM could do to a neighborhood. His target was Maspeth, Queens that wound up directly in the path of the new Midtown Tunnel Expressway that ran from Long Island City to Queens Boulevard and joined Horace Harding Boulevard in Elmhurst. The path cut through Maspeth on a diagonal and devastated blocks and blocks of semi-attached single-family homes. Hundreds of families were summarily evicted and were forced to move to other destinations while their former homes were destroyed.

I do remember walking with my mother through this devastation on my way to my cousin’s home and thinking what a terrible thing this was to see. However, I still believed that it was a necessary sacrifice to progress. I was young and naive.

Also, RM was at his apex of engineering the construction of New York’s transportation network. He extended the Long Island Expressway (LIE) to it’s intended destination, Riverhead, LI. He built the Throgs Necks Bridge across Long Island Sound and, his crowning glory, the Verrazano Bridge across the Narrows from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn to Staten Island framing the entrance to New York Harbor by this magnificent crossing.

In the early 1960s he managed the construction of Shea Stadium, the new home for the Mets and the Jets and was appointed as the tsar for the 1964-1965 New York Worlds Fair to be held in Flushing Meadows Park.

Meanwhile, opposition grew against the now older RM. John Lindsay the new mayor moved against Moses, Lindsay was instrumental in deleting plans for the Mid-Manhattan Expressway and the Lower Manhattan Expressway. The mayor also drove the plans for a new super transportation agency. The Metropolitan Transportation Agency (MTA) that would swallow RM’s personal gem, the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, (TBTA).

Moses still had Governor Nelson Rockefeller on his side in support of his last big project, the Oyster Bay Long Island to Rye, New Rochell Long Island Sound crossing. But in the end, Rocky gave in to the intense opposition to this project and abandoned Moses.

RM was done. He couldn’t understand why. Instead, he asked, “Why weren’t they grateful?”

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October 2, 2024

Liverwurst and Other Cold Cuts, Gone but Not Forgotten

Needless to say, the outbreak of listeria in a plant Boar’s Head contracted with in Virginia to produce their brand of liverwurst is a major crisis for this brand, the premier cold cut processor and distributor throughout the New York Metropolitan area.

Boar’s Head radio advertisements historically took the high road: We’re Boar’s Head and all the other deli meats and cheeses are not. The snobbery in those ads was complete. They warned the public that just because a deli or a super market proudly informed their customers that they carried and served Boar’s Head products, you Mr, Miss, Mrs or MS customers should be alert to the deli worker trying to substitute an inferior product. People swore by Boar’s Head.

But that lousy plant in Virginia may have ruined everything! That listeria outbreak killed nine people and sickened dozens. Liverwurst was the main culprit. Boar’s Head reputation has been badly shaken and must be saved, otherwise the company’s very existence may become questionable.

Last week, Boar’s Head announced that they have ceased doing business with that flawed plant. They didn’t stop there. That announcement also stated that Boar’s Head had permanently ended producing their brand of liverwurst.

Least we forget the individuals who deliver the Boar’s Head products to stores from the corner delis to supermarkets and giants like Walmart and Target are  independent operators who buy those routes from existing owners who want to retire or move on in life. Those routes are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and maybe even millions.

Dan Berry  wrote a piece about the demise of liverwurst for The New York Times that he called: “Farewell to a Lost Love of Lunches Past.”

In his piece, he made this comment, “Besides, who in the world will bemoan a diminished supply of a cold cut that has the look and consistency of wet cement? Whose very name is an argument for vegetarianism?”

“Me, for one. And as I write this, I can almost hear the long awkward pause before someone, somewhere, sheepishly whispers, ‘Me too.”

And so I, John Delach, declare, me too, but I don’t whisper it. I shout it at the top of my lungs: ME TOO!

I didn’t discover liverwurst until I was an adult. To me, the idea of eating liver was a death wish and, because of its name, I considered liverwurst to be the same thing. We had plenty of bars and delicatessens in Ridgewood, being a German community. My Mom lived on a tight budget and most of the time we ate Taylor Ham and Bologna. On good days she ordered Virginia Ham and the king of cold cuts, Roast Beef on very good days.

In my retirement, since 2000, I learned the joy of going to the extensive deli counter at North Shore Farms, one of our local super markets. Without a doubt, a liverwurst sandwich became one of my favorite treats. I would order my sandwich on rye bread with a generous slab of deli-mustard and nothing else. Another favorite was prosciutto ham and provolone cheese, again on rye with deli mustard.

I went out of my way to limit treating myself to these marvelous sandwiches as I do for my most special treat, pastrami. Ben’s is my destination for this delicious treat. Again, my taste is simple, plain pastrami on their special rye bread. I don’t concern myself with mustard as each table at Ben’s has a full container of deli mustard which I use extensively.                   

Their livelihoods are on the line and Boar’s Head must salvage their name and reputation to save the company and its deliverers to re-gain the public’s trust.

It’s a mess, but admittedly, pales when compared to the possible results in the coming  presidential election.

So instead of ending this piece with any form of morbidity, I have chosen instead,  dear reader, to introduce you to a different take on liverwurst by the late, great satirical musician, Alan Sherman and his 1960s take on this cold cut:

(Sung to the rhythm of “Down by the Riverside)

When you go to the delicatessen store,

Don’t buy the liverwurst.

Don’t buy the liverwurst.

I repeat what I said before,

Don’t buy the liverwurst.

Don’t buy the liverwurst.

Oh, buy the corned beef if you must.

The pickled herring you can trust,

And the lox puts you in orbit AOK.

But that big hunk of liverwurst

Has been there since October First,

And today is the Twenty-Third of May.

So, when you go to the delicatessen store,

Don’t buy the liverwurst.

Don’t buy the liverwurst.

Don’t buy the liverwurst.

It’ll make your insides awful sore,

Don’t buy the liverwurst.

Don’t buy the liverwurst.

On the Outside Looking In will not publish next Wednesday and will return October 9th.

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