SS UNITED STATES Enthusiasts celebrate purchase of superliner

The ship set a trans-Atlantic speed record on its 1952 maiden voyage.
NEWSDAY
News that Norwegian Cruise Lines has bought the SS United States and plans to return the superliner to service brought waves of enthusiasm and gratitude recently from ship buffs who feared that America's greatest passenger ship was heading for the scrap yard.
"There's been a tremendous response -- I didn't know the ship had such a following," said Colin Veitch, NCL's president and CEO. The one-time queen of trans-Atlantic travel, which has been rusting at a Philadelphia pier after failed conversion ventures, will be refurbished and sailed again in U.S. coastal waters under a U.S. flag as part of the line's "Project America," Veitch said.
The SS United States set an unbroken trans-Atlantic speed record on its maiden voyage in 1952. But after 800 Atlantic crossings, the ship was retired in 1969, the victim of faster jumbo jets.
The ship is "an engineering marvel, on a par with the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty," said Robert Hudson Westover, chairman of the SS United States Foundation, which had mounted a last-ditch campaign to save the ship.
NCL will never regret the purchase of the famous liner, which was "designed as the safest as well as the fastest and most elegant," said ship historian Frank Braynard of Sea Cliff, N.Y., whose book, "The SS United States: World's Fastest Ship in the World," was recently updated.
Bought another ship
Veitch said the company has also bought the 52-year-old, 867-passenger Independence, which was laid up in San Francisco when American Classic Voyages filed for bankruptcy protection last year. Both ships will have major reconstruction in a U.S. shipyard. "We'll be building new ships inside the old ships," Veitch said.
He wouldn't disclose the purchase price of either vessel. The United States was reportedly for sale for $35 million last year.
The two ships will join three 2,000-bed vessels that American Classic Voyages had under construction before it ran into financial shoals. All five ships will be U.S-flagged and the two rebuilt ships will "enable us to go beyond Hawaii," Veitch said.