Letting Go

Ships were a love of mine even before I really got interested in buildings. Of course, changes in ship technology and people’s travel patterns mean that passenger ships are even more a thing of the past than historic buildings are. For anyone who knows anything about the history of passenger ships, the current voyage of SS United States is depressing. The ship will be cleaned, anything of value that might remain removed, and then it will be sunk as an artificial reef.

It’s not really the ship being sunk at this point. The United States was last in use in 1969, its interiors were removed long ago, and its famous engines no longer function. It’s a lifeless hulk that’s being disposed of. There was an effort to save it last year, but that was far too late; the conservancy that was established to save it had been trying for years without being able to generate enough interest or cash. Once it started to rot from disuse, as the interiors were removed, it became more and more difficult to save. If someone had stepped forward last year to save it, the restoration would have been tantamount to constructing a new ship. Maybe the time to save it was 1970.

I’ve said this before, and I still believe it to be true: human-made objects, whether ships, or buildings, or furniture, or tchotchkes, don’t matter to us because they are important. They are, in themselves, meaningless. They are important because people care about them, because we assign them value. I was five the last time the United States carried passengers, but as best as I can know it – through pictures, descriptions, films – it was beautiful and astonishing.