Built in 1952 at Newport News, the SS United States was designed from the outset to be the fastest ship afloat. Taking the Blue Riband on her maiden voyage from New York to Southampton, she made the voyage at an average speed of about 35 knots. In 1969, she was retired from service and laid up and has spent the last forty years abandoned. Her interiors were stripped out and sold in the 1980s and she has lain at a berth in Philadelphia for much of the last twenty years. Sold in 2009, it is rumoured that she is off to the breakers' yard soon, which would be a sad end to one of the finest ships ever built.