I guess one small upside of having a really bed memory is that sometimes I get to rediscover things that I have that I had either forgotten about or possibly never knew that I had in the first place.
Along those lines, today while finally getting around to cleaning part of my house I came across a complete set of the Booklet of General Plans for the SS United States. Several years ago I had worked for the Naval Architecture firm Gibbs & Cox around the time that they were cleaning out thier library. Before stuff went to the dumpster they allowed the employees to take whatever they wanted, and apparently for me that included these drawings.
I tried to take some pictures to share, but the full set is 5 sheets, each about 10ft x 3 ft, so I ended up only taking a picture of a small part of each page, as shown below.
Hopefully these may help me whenever I get around to building my 1/600 Revell SS United States model [:P]
I see you stated you worked for Gibbs and Cox. How do you feel about the way she’s existing now? I, as a former Captain and other bridge officer positions for a competing cargo company(Shell.B.P. on the British side)( Such Jobs were tight here!).
I always wondered why we have a British Queen in an American City, But, the last holder of BOTH Blue Ribands And American Built, Designed and American crewed Ocean Lady Deserves better! I believe when you do the Model You will do her justice!
As a former docent on the U.S.S. Hornet ,I must say, In her formative Museum time was in better shape when we got her, so I cringe when I see photos of the S.S.United States Now!
I guess as an engineer (naval architect) I kind of have mixed feelings. I realize that nothing lasts forever and eventually even the most impressive buidlings, structures, ships, etc may get torn down, scrapped or begin to deteriorate. But right now, eventhough the ship is still an impressive sight to see, its kind of depressing that she kind of almost seems to exist neither in this world (as an ocean going ship, museum, or monument) nor has she really “passed on to valhalla” or anything like that. As it is she just kind of sits, as an off limits relic that you can see from the distance, across the street from a shopping center parking lot.
Interestingly, around the time that I was at Gibbs & Cox their Newport News office statrted offering a 3D laser scanning service and they did a 3D walkthrough of parts of the SS United States in part as a demonstration of that capability. I remeber manning the both at trade shows with the walkthrough on a loop, where in some places you could actually make out the outline of some plants that had sprung up on one of the decks where some branches/leaves & seeds or whatever had gotten through a broken window and had begun to sprout.
Here is a link to an external walkthru of the 3D scan that is posted on the SS United Stated Conservancy site (scroll down to the bottom of the article at the link to see the video)
