A Man and His Ship by Steven Ujifusa

Note:  Guest reviewer Bill Wade is an active member of the Nevermore Book club and  history professor emeritus from King College. He thought this was a particularly wonderful and engaging book which deserves a wide readership, so he wrote a review.  Thank you!


Reviewed by Bill Wade

A Man and His Ship:  America's Greatest Naval Architect and His Quest to Build the S.S. United States by Steven Ujifusa is the story of William Francis Gibbs (1886-1967), indeed America’s greatest naval architect, whose life-long ambition was to design and build the world’s fastest, safest, and most modern ocean liner.  It was a quest which began in 1894 when his father took him to witness the launching of the S. S. St. Louis at a Philadelphia naval yard.  From that day forward Gibbs knew his ambition.

Born of a wealthy Philadelphia family, Gibbs was first sent to Harvard to study law, but he found the practice boring and spent his spare time studying technical books on maritime construction, continually adding to his knowledge and refining a set of plans on which he and his brother Frederic collaborated.  When the Titanic sank within hours of striking an iceberg in 1912, partly because its bulkheads did not extend to the full height of the hull, Gibbs made sure that on his liner they would.  Initially no ship-building concern would listen to a twenty year old youth without formal technical education, but the onset of World War I in 1914 gave him access to Admiral David Taylor, chief naval consultant of the U.S. Navy, and plans were drawn for a troop ship that could be converted to a peacetime liner.  But the end of the war scuttled such prospects, and the American acquisition of a former German liner, re-named the S.S. Leviathan, disrupted Gibbs’ hopes for a large post-war vessel.  He was only able to superintend the construction of a smaller liner, the Malolo, but when it was rammed by a Swedish freighter and remained afloat because of its sturdy bulkhead construction, attention was drawn to Gibbs’ design.

By the 1930s the major maritime nations—Britain, France, and Germany—were replacing their outmoded pre-World War I liners, and Gibbs held out hopes that a large American ship could challenge the Queen Mary, the Queen Elizabeth, and the Normandie, but the American Congress was reluctant to provide financial support, and once more Gibbs had to be content with the building of a smaller liner, the America, which was intended to sail in Pacific and Caribbean waters.  Then the advent of World War II meant the end of all pleasure travel on the world’s oceans, and existing liners were commandeered as troop ships.

With the end of World War II, opportunity finally came for Gibbs, now sixty years old.  The United States Lines, with cooperative financial support from Congress, called upon the famed architect to design the largest, fastest, safest liner ever.  The result was the S.S. United States, construction begun in 1949 and completed in 1952.  Without question it was a beautiful ship, the pride of America, boasting the latest technological advances in ship-building.  On its maiden sailing to Europe and back it easily broke all speed records, averaging about 36 knots.  And it set in motion a halcyon time when Americans by droves sailed with pride on this ship.  The retired Gibbs could often be seen at one of the parks of lower Manhattan, watching this beautiful vessel as it came into the harbor.

With the advent of jet airliners the day of the steamship was doomed.  The British suspended all trans-Atlantic sailing of their “Queens” in the late 1960s, and the United States was taken out of service in November 1969.  Fortunately, Gibbs did not live to see that day; he had died in 1967. For the years since there have been many proposals about what to do with this liner; it seemed too beautiful to break up.  Mostly it lay in a Philadelphia naval yard, the interior furnishing having been sold and still to be seen in American coastal restaurants.  Now owned by the United States Conservancy, continuing efforts are made to find a permanent berth for the ship.  Only recently, in 2012 has one more proposal been brought forward to provide some kind of new life, but its future remains uncertain.

This is a beautifully written book, with ample photographs of Gibbs and the United States.  The author is a graduate of Harvard and holds a master’s degree in historic preservation.  He lives in Philadelphia and serves on the Advisory Council of the S.S. United States Conservancy, an agency seeking to find a future for this great liner.