SS United States

The **SS United States** is an ocean liner and holder of the prestigious Blue Riband. She is also the fastest ship to ever cross the world's oceans.

## History

The *SS United States*, or Big U as she is more commonly known, is a well-known ocean liner named after the country in which she was built.

The ship was built in 1952 as a culmination of the world's most advanced technologies of the time. Possessing many firsts for her time, such as the first ship-to-shore communications in every stateroom, the Big U was also the world's most luxurious ocean liner. But when it came to surprises, she had a number of them in store.

The first was her hull, being lightweight and strong at the same time, mixing aluminum with steel to make her lighter than other ships of comparable size and length. The bottom of her hull was also built with battleship grade armor, making it stronger than a regular hull. Her watertight compartments were also more numerous, and her bulkheads went well past the waterline.

She also possessed a reputation for being fireproof, as evident by the earth Dust that had been infused into her metal structure, boosting its durability considerably. Additionally, she carried way more lifeboats than she had passengers, making her an overly engineered maritime marvel.

But what really drew passengers to her was not just her luxury or safety features.

It was her speed.

The *United States* was not just safe or stylish, but also fast. Possessing four shafts with four screws, her engines were monstrous in terms of their horsepower. With eight boilers, two per shaft, she was a speed demon. No ship of the time could catch her, and as technology and engineering progressed, her speed has only gotten faster.

In the early 1960s, a huge surprise came when, despite the promised safety of the coming jetliners, a large swarm of avian Grimm, primarily Nevermores, attacked a solo jetliner as it traversed the air above America's Darklands. The plane was damaged badly and crashed into a field near St. Paul, Missouri. All passengers and crew aboard the plane died upon impact, along with several hundred others who were on the roadways at the time. This was the largest loss of life in an aerial Grimm attack ever. That loss rattled the public's perception of the aircraft, making them see it as a liability. Although they were equipped with radar, most started to prefer airships, which were being phased out at the time, mostly due to the fact that they were reliable and provided a much better platform to arm for defense against the Grimm.

The ocean liners also were given a new chance due to a surprising discovery around 1965.

A blue variant of Dust was mined not too far from the former city of Detroit. The city's inhabitants discovered that this form of Dust provided them with power to their machines and technology, quickly catching the military's interest. Cyan Dust caches were probed and scouted out over the next few years, and the *SS United States* was the first ocean liner to undergo conversion to run on cyan Dust a decade later. Her boilers were converted to burn cyan Dust, giving her greater endurance and increasing her speed.

But the ship's reputation as a speedster would be bolstered by her record in outrunning one of the deadliest sea Grimm to ever prowl the ocean depths...

## Specifications

Length: 990 feet long

Width: 101.5 feet wide

Draft: 32.4 feet

Tonnage: 53,330 Gross Registered Tons

Displacement: 47,264 tons

Decks: 12

Horsepower: 248,000 (registered)

Propulsion:

4 × Westinghouse double-reduction geared steam turbines

8 × Babcock & Wilcox boilers operating at 1000 psi (later reduced to 925 psi) and 975 °F (524 °C)

4 × shafts

Speed:

28 knots (minimum service speed)

38.3 knots (maximum service speed)

~43 knots (maximum speed)

25 knots (in reverse)

Capacity: 1928 passengers

Crew: 900

Range: 10,000 nautical miles (12,000 miles)

## Records

The Big U is not just the fastest ship in the world, but is also the only ship ever to outrun the dreaded Kraken Grimm. She is also the oldest ocean liner in service, with many more years ahead of her.

## Gallery

Big U sails at top speed across the Atlantic
## Trivia

* The *SS United States* is a real ocean liner, docked in Philadelphia at Pier 82.
	+ She holds the Blue Riband, and is still the fastest ship that ever sailed the seas