Once grand luxury ocean liner to become majestic artificial reef off Florida

If you save EVERY 'large ship of note', pretty soon you'll have 500' long monstrosities tied up in every coastal city, all for a few people to come and see, once in a while. Heck, the Queen Mary is bankrupt, and they were running an actual luxury hotel inside the ship. How much money do you want the gov't to spend keeping a couple hundred obsolete warships and a few 1000'+ luxury liners of 60+ years ago around? No, sorry, time marches on, and eventually most machine's historical value drops below that of it's scrap value....

 

I will never agree with that statement ever.
Three of the coolest things i’ve ever done is take a tour through the USS Lexington and the USS Texas as well as having a front row seat to the Union Pacific 4114 Big Boy come thru my town a few years ago. Without preservation of things that were not originally built with a three year life span and a throw away mentality like we do now we will have no future enjoyment in life. The older stuff was built by craftsmans hands and brain power not computers and robots.

 

But we’re not talking about every large ship of note,this liner brought innovation and ingenuity the likes of which our country hadn’t seen before it.
Part of the issue is the fact that the ship was NEGLECTED when it was laid up. Had the ship been properly maintained and kept in good working order (like ANY MACHINE ) it might’ve been a different story.

This isn’t just about saving a ship-this is about preserving a part of our nation’s HISTORY.

We still have the world’s oldest commissioned naval warship in service-and it’s literally older than ANY of us!
USS Constitution - Wikipedia
And incidentally those “old obsolete” warships can be reactivated if necessary, and some of them wouldn’t be affected by a cyberattack or an EMP.

 

It seems that the biggest issue with preserving big things like that is the billionaires that buy it with great intentions go about it wrong. They only look at what money can they make in the short term with it which is nothing in that shape. That then makes them lose interest and then the item suffers from more neglect. Instead they need to restore the dang thing and let people fall in love with it again and then they can start to earn investment back. It’s a different version of the old build it and they will come deal.
I have never been on a cruise ship for many reasons. #1 reason is way too many people and it seems that everyone I know who has is laid up with some kind of ill ess for a week or two afterwards. The other reason is those big new ships don’t appeal to me. I like classy old things. I wouldn’t hesitate going on a cruise if the ships still looked like the USS United States.

 

And Big Boy can STILL do the job it was designed to do-over 70 years after it was built!!

 

This.
They think “short term” or how to make money quickly. They don’t think about the long term gains or heavy duty maintenance!

 

Yep these kind of things are always sad, but they turn into an old museum or whatever and can never find the funds to keep it up. After a while the hours are cut back because they can only find one or two old retired guys to work there and almost nobody goes to see it anyway. Finally it’s scrapped. Always sad to see them go though.

 

Not many people have an appreciation for history anymore.