Anyone that's been to the Ikea on Delaware Ave (ok, Columbus Blvd) in South Philly has to have noticed the SS United States. I'm dying to get aboard and explore and wondering if it's possible to sneak on the ship. Any thoughts, suggestions?

http://www.ss-united-states.com/

Me too. Somebody out there in internet land must know someone who has been aboard. Speak up.

There was somearticles about a year ago of Norwegian Lines (?) buying it and rehabbing it as an active cruise ship. Since then I have heard nothing.

My idea was to use it as low income housing. We can load all the undesirables on to the ship and and float it out to sea where it will eventually run aground on some foreign shore and become someone elses headache. Sort of like those trash barges.

Seriously, it would be a great night of urban exploration to get on that thing.

Turn off all the lights and hand me a flashlight. I'd love to go skulking around that thing at night.

__________________
Beer Me

Geez. This could have been funny if you had said "prison" or "City Hall" instead.

At some point when I first moved into the city I started doing some research and found some great sites on this. There are a ton of sites if you google it. Here are a few.

http://www.modern-ruins.com/ruins/ssunitedstates/
http://www.ssmaritime.com/ssunitedstates.htm

The ship was stripped quite a while ago, pretty much all of the things that could have been pulled off have been. It would be way dangerous to poke around night or day, so I would just suggest think two or three times about it before staking it out for a possible way aboard.

Norweigian (sp) Cruise Lines still owns it and pays lot's o' cash to leave her where she is. They are playing the familiar Philly game of wait and see. The Jones Act (I think) requires ships that are not built in the United States to "touch" foriegn soil before returning to US soil. So if you cruised from Philly on a ship not built in the good old US you would need to go to the Bahamas or Canada or somewhere else. You couldn't do a trip from Philly to NY or Richmond or whatever. On the East Coast not a big deal, but there is a big market for California to Hawaii. So in theory if the ship was refurbbed it would be deployed on the CA to HA routes, without having to hit other places. I think it's the same with cargo ships.

Here is a site from some ingo from her heyday

http://www.ss-united-states.com/h1.html

I believe Fumo already attempted to do that with the ship he "leased" in retrospect from the Seaport Museum.

Anyway, the dangers aside, I still might scope it out. To get at it you have to go through a gated truck lot which would require climbing a fence. Or if any ex-Navy Seals have an old Zodiac I would be much obliged.

climb the fence.

I think the toughest part might be getting past all that water that surrounds it.