for me to see steve be able to produce this book after

basically five years, a lot of research put into this book. i thought i'd -- i read the book, and steve and i worked on probably a dozen stories about that. they are mere outlines of the book. the book is -- such thorough research, i thought it would be fun to talk about things that surprised me. when i read the book. but first, steve, bring everyone a little bit up to speed on the conservancy effort. there's a timine issue here in terms of where the boat stands in terms of viability and the future. >> well, the current status with the ship right now, she is opened by the ss united states

conservancy, which is a nonprofit formed in 2004 that was meant to raise awareness, and in 2010, the ship was put up for sale by the then current owner, norwegian cruiseline, tacked about redoing the ship as a modern cruise vessel, and they decided to pull the plug on the project, and everyone thought, this is it. after evading the scrapper, this is it. well, the day before all scrapping bids were due, jerry called conservancy line, and one of our board members, who was a crew member, picked up. he couldn't believe what he heard. how much to buy the ship? and joe wasn't show this is real but turned out jerry had a keen interest in the ship, mainly because he was a naval officer, and his father helped design portions of the ship.

his father was a naval architect. designed the water-tithe doors and bridge equipment. so the ship was purchased from norwegian cruise lines in 2011 and is now charges with redeveloping the ship as a stationary attractionful the analogy to me is imagine that a 2009 intervention like this happened in the early 60s when penn station was about to torn down. this is an unbelievable opportunity, but jerry provide evidence the controversy si with 20 months of funding to maintain the ship, and if there's not a clear development plan, a real estate deal, and the american public does not rally behind the

project, the ss united states will be sold and sliced into scrap metal, and that would be a painful image. the imagine the pennsylvania station being torn down. >> the ss united states has been on our waterfront since 1996. i passed thatship going over the whitman. didn't really think about it too much. i was struck by her, by the fact she looked fast standing still, but it i really didn't realize anything about her legacy or linkage to philadelphia. tell us about her architect, william frap -- william fran cyst gibbs. >> we have a nice view on the delware ware and that's where it was born, in 1849, boy named

william francis gibbs, stood by his father's side in a cramped shipyard and saw an oceanliner called the st. louis go down the ways, and he said from that moment on, when i saw that ship launched ex-i knew what i wanted to do with my life, and he pursued that passion till he achieved his goal of designing his own oceanlineer. gibbs was bon philadelphia in 1886. his father was a finance 'er, and gibbs was a shy child, tinkering and doodling in his family's house. his father wanted him to be a lawyer because he didn't think a

die seener was a stable profession. then the family had a severe economic reversal, they lose their fortunate and he had to drop out. and he said if i my father hat nod gone bankrupt i would not have the drive i have today to remake myself. so, working his way through columbia do get his ba, and then got his law degree, practiced law for a year and hated it. and then an admiral saw this kid had tall tent, and daryl taught him what he needed to learn, and gibbs moved to new york and started a very successful practice. not designing passenger ships but also naval ships. he designed 70% of all naval vessels built during world war ii. destroyerers, cruisers, the norm

normandie landing craft, and their liberty ship, the cargo ship that helped win the war. basically built ships faster than the germans can sink them. that was his mindset. even throughout his successful career, he still remained focused on the grand five, and what really irritated him was that the european government subsidized their shipping companies with vast amounts of money to build bigger, faster passenger ships, ships not only to be luxurious but also had enough engine power to outdo the previous record-holder and this is the time when the highest average speed across the atlantic meant something. that was the discussion to build an american version. >> tell the folks gathered here a little bit about -- we know that you can make a lot of

shipsful we knew he had an obsession with the united states. talk about his innovation, though. a lot of levels he was doing things other naval architect weren't doing even to he was self-taught. >> when we asked him why are you so innovative, he said i one formally trained and think outside the box, and he used a revolutionary new engine, high pressure steam, which allowed the destroyer to run circles around previous destroyers and the british and japanese destroyers as well, and he work on the innovations made in world war ii into the ss united states. what makes the ss united states so special compared to other passenger ships like the queen mary. she had the greatest power to

weight ratio than any commercial vessel in history and was only outled by two naval vessels. she had a steel hull, well-made steel hull made of lucas steel right here in pennsylvania, and the superstructure was not steel. it was aluminum. the upper deck, and decking was aluminum. so that allowed the ship to save a tremendous amount of weight. the engines were basically high-temperature, high-pressure turbines. and she was just an incredibly powerful vessel, built for speed. in many ways -- she combines the speed and maneuverability of a destroy with the luxury and space of an oceanliner, something that had never been done before. >> talk more about her speed, just in terms of sea trials and

the fact that so much was classified, and why did that happen with this boat? >> well, when that ship -- kind of like steve jobs, and he was terrified of other people stealing his ideas and also, like jobs, very good project manager. a big-picture guy. i want a ship to look like this, i want it to be beautiful and have these specifications and then he would work with the engineers and pester them through the process to make sure they fulfilled his vision and the ship looked the way he wanted it to look. the ship was classified. a lot of her design specks were classified because two-thirds of her $78 million cost was subsidized by the u.s. government, which was pretty impressive because the ship was supposed to be turned into a troop transport should war break out, so she was basically a military ship. she could be turned into a

14,000 soldier troop transport within 48 hours, and all of her officers were on the u.s. navy reserve. so she was basically a military ship. you could not go down in the engine room as a passenger and say, i'd like to take a look. not allowed. can you go on the bridge? no. her speed was classified from the mid-1970s, and during the sea trials, there were reporters onboard but no one was allowed to look at how fast she was going. there's all sorts of speculation how fast she could go. during her maiden voyage she broke the eastbound record, 41 miles-per-hour. but when interviewed by the british reporter, commodore manning said we were cruising. i had even more power up my sleeve. the british didn't like that

since the queen mary could only do 31 or 32 knots. the ss knots could do 38 knot, equivalent of 44 miles per hours are so imagine the chrysler building on its side and going that fast. >> tell the admiral rickover story. >> he was the founder of the nuclear navy and pioneered the nuclear submarine program and he was intensely interested the in the ss united states because she was a steam are powered turbine ship. and there was a crewman making his rounds and he saw six officers on the bridge, all with their binoculars out. he said, that looks interestingful they were clipping along at 32 knots. and a periscope pops up.

the submarine blinks it lights from the conning tower and then goes back down, and then joe goes to the radio operator says, what was that? dn't see anything.s, you you didn't see anything. a few hours later, turns out it was -- everyone found it it was the uss nautilus with admiral rickover onboard. and he asked what was she signaling, and he said, mrs. rickover is on board and he just wanted to wish her a happy birthday. but rickover wasn't as interested in keeping up with the ss united states. he went to newport news ship building afterwards, the company that built the united states, and said, you know who i am. can you please tell me what her stop speed is. so the shipyard official says, let me ask up the food chain. admiral rickover, i have some bad news.

you're not on the need to know list. and knowing rickovers temper, he did not take that very well. >> talk about that for a bit, especially the steinway incident. >> gibbs always felt that fire at sea was a bigger danger than sinking, and he was terrified of fire breaking out on his ships. he was fascinated with fire. he and his brother would galavant throughout the city, when they heard a fire, the coachman would wake up the boys, and say, come on, there's a fire, let's take a look. so he was fast nighted by fire since he was a kid. the disaster that really shaped him took place not -- right off the jersey shore, asbury park, a

steamship designed by a rival was coming back from a pleasure cruise in cuba. the captain was found dead in a bathtub and then the ship caught fire and the fire spread rapidly. the ship was very nicely outfitted with beautiful wood paneling, beautiful carpeting, and the ship was afire from end to end within less than a few hours. the life boats were blocked. sprinklers didn't work, and the ship -- the burning hulk ran aground off asbury park and smoldered for days. people would come and look at it. 130 people died in the disaster. so gibbs was terrified of something like that happening aboard the ss united states. so in building the ship he was adamant that no wood could be used on board the ship, and of

coursele any oceanliner you expect there to be pianos, and he wanted the best so he went to steinway and said i want you to build an anewman numb pea an know. steinway, of the company, says, i can't build you that. it will sound terrible. so there's memos going back and forth and finally a frustrated mr. steinway says let me build you a piano out of special wood, take is in front of mr. gibbs, throws gasoline on it, a match, the piano doesn't burn and gibbs says you can bring these on board. here's my prop of the evening. this is a hammer. my wife uses is. but this wood was also onboard the ss united states. not this hammer, this wood. there were a few splitters on

board that mr. gibbs relented on, and the mallets that matt pecked up is made of a wood which was used to line the propeller shafts, idea for croquet mallets and cricket balls and it's a self-lubricating wood which allows the propeller shaft to turn, and gibbs fit -- figured, these are going to be on the wall so they won't catch fire. >> let's talk about gibbs the man. what type of person he was, the personality, so driven so focused, self-taught. what was he like? >> i think in many ways he was like frank lloyd wright. like wright, he only had a few -- intermittent schooling. wright only had two semesters of

architectureal training, took some classes at harvard and did terribly at them. gibbs was very driven. i believe he was an engineer with the soul of an artist. he was the sort of man who knew engineering but his real strength was project management and being a charismatic leader. he was known for having a very bad mouth, especially when he god angry, and he had a car phone, very early car phone in the 1950s, and it used radio waves to traps submit, and he was always on the phone, always working, and the fcc almost revoked the license for his car phone because he would drop so many four-letter words over the air. but he was -- he was also the sort of man, when you were working for him, he would hover around and make sure things were just as he put it and when he was shown a piece of work he didn't like, he would say, take

it away. bring me the best. he respected people in the arts. very connected with the arts community in new york. a frequent goer to the symphony. he loved heroic symphonic works. his favorite works was the valkyrie, and he saw the ss united states as a symphony in steel and he would make that install. he loved to see ships as total works of art. but he was a very retiring, simple man who didn't like publicity. he hated reporters. he always dressed in very plain, almost shabby clothes. he wore the same hat for months on end. had holes in it. and he also had a very dry sense of humor. even -- you wouldn't expect an engineer to be asked to do -- and be at award ceremonies but

at one ceremony he was -- got up -- at the waldorf-astoria, and it was for an edison award and it was a very long, boring evening, and the audience looked miserable, and then he just got up, dressed in his tuxedo, with a sad face, and said, ladies and gentlemen, i've had many sad experiences, this by far is the worst. >> tell us about life on the ss united states in the heyday, both from the passenger perspective and the crew perspective. >> the ship had three class, which is different. back then the ship was divided in into first, cabin, and tourist class. first class usually was reserved for the very wealthy. it cost the equivalent of

$5,000 and up one way for per person to go first class. and if you traveled first class on the ss united states, especially during the high summer season, you were most likely to run into at least one or two celebrities on board. to name a fewer, salvador dali, the kennedys, marilyn monroe. i don't know if they were onboard at the same time. but -- [laughter] >> so i can't -- i don't know the answer to that one. but actually president truman, eisenhower, and speaking to crew members who served these celebrities, some said they were very -- walt disney would sit in the first class dining room and sign autographs. others were not so nice of judy gar land locked herself up in the suite and only came out once for dinner and was in a very bad mood the whole time. so it was a very formal

atmosphere in first class you did dress for dinner. black tie, gowns, and there were two seatings, and the menu were impressive. multiple courses and as one crew member who was on the maiden voyage and worked for ten years on the ship, said anything that these passengers wanted at any time of the day or night they could have, and you had to make it quick. they were competing against the european ships and the americans thought the european ships had better service, and we were out there to prove them wrong. the service on board the united states was described as friendly but not too familiar. a lot of the european ships, the service was almost servile and americans didn't feel comfortable with that. first class was way up above everything, and one passenger, if you can call it back, was the mona lisa. the united states was seen as the safest way to transport it

to america, and so they put her in a first class stateroom. and they put two big shoes -- a shut of very large shoes, like any fine hotel you leave your shoes out to be signed in the morning or evening, and they put a pair of very large set of shoes out. cabin class was in the stern. very popular with vacations families, business people. still very nice. wasn't cheap. and in many ways a lot of the wealthy people preferred to travel in cabin class because it wasn't as formal. tourist class, located in the bow -- if you were in a storm in tourist class, you were in the bow. you're going to get thrown around a lot. a lot of people got sea sick, and it was cramped. no private bathrooms, which almost seems unconscionable in

first class you had a lot of tourist, like bill clinton, on his way to oxford you had immigrants leaving europe, especially german, looking for a better life in america, came over on that ship. i've spoken to people who said my grandparents who immigrated from germany met on that ship. so the ship really touched so many different lives, ask the crew, it was a very -- it was rough. it was a long work day. they were paid well because in were unionized. the ship had a thousand crew. 800 were devoted to taking care of the passengers. stewards, bell boys, bartenders, stewardesses. whole crowds of people to take care of passengers. >> thank you for answering my

questions. i'd like to open up the forum a little bit so that anyone in the audience who might want to ask the author a question, has that opportunity. do you think that's a good idea? [inaudible] >> the ship was withdrawn from service in november of 1969 after only 17 years of service, and there were two reasons for this. the first was in the late '50s the jet aircraft came in and initially the shipping companies didn't think it was a huge deal. they're not -- people probably want to take a ship one way to relax, but -- ended up being the death knell for the

transatlantic ships and by the early 960s the united states line had a big cash drainer on its hands. and then the u.s. government began thinking we don't need ships anymore to take troops overseas. we're using airplanes. so in november of 1969, the government pulled the plug on the ship's very generous subsidies. the united states said we can't afford to operate the ship without the subsidies and there was a lot of labor unrest, crew strikes, which stopped sailings, and people thought, we'll just fly. so she was laid up in her builder's yard in virginia, and stayed there until the early '80s. they could totally fire her up again and reactivate her, and then a seattle based developer purchased her and basically

stripped the ship of everything and then he went bankrupt. and chen another company bought her and towed her to the ukraine and all of her asbestos was ripped out. william francis gibbs said we don't need to use wood to partition way paneling. we'll just use asbestos. people didn't know back then. and so all that had to be taken out. and she was stripped of her asbestos, in turkey and the ukraine, and then being towed back to america by a new owner, and no one would take her, except for philadelphia. sewso she ebbed up here in '96. >> the various things in the ship, the here, all that kind of stuff, there is any knowledge where all that stuff went?

>> well, a lot of it ended up in the collection of a woman dr. sarah ford, and she bought it for a restaurant she had in north carolina and when she passed away she left it to a mariner's museum. and i went there and went into a storage room and saw stacks and stacks of the famous red chairs from the first class dining room. a piano, furniture. she had saved. now waiting to be reused. a lot of other stuff got scattered in private collections you can go on ebay and find china and crystal and all sorts of things. it's all there, just scattered. [inaudible]

>> right now the conservancy has just launched a new public history and fundraising campaign called save the united states.org. which allows the public, people who traveled on the ship, love the ship to purchase digital sections of the ship. it's based on the wall of honor when lee iacocca was trying to save ellis eyeland and the statue of liberty, and it allows people to purchase sections of the ship and it's a revolutionary way to raise money for the ship's exterior restoration. the conservancy, which i'm on the advisory council, is now talking with a number of potential developers for having the ship as a stationary attraction and an american city.

she'll probably never say again. it would just cost way too much to bring her back, and you look at her today can she looks enormous. she is three football fields long, 12 stories high, but compared to today's cruise ships, she is a quarter of their tonnage, and passengers today want all sort office experiences that in the -- in the '50s people were happy to play card games and eat gourmet meals and watch a movie. today people want to be entertained nonstop and want ball coins. the duke and dutchess of winsor was quite happy with portholes. today people want balconies. that's the conservancies hope, she will be turned into a floating attraction, but if the plan not work out she will go the scrappers like oceanliners before her. >> let me get to the mic.

>> is the conservancy doing anything to retard the degrading of the physical ship from rust? >> yes. the conservancy has retained a very skilled care taking operation which basically pumps out the ship -- her pumps are not operating so had to pump out the bilges. any leaks, they're patched. so there's not the point where the conservancy can repaint her. basically making sure she is well-secured and is not leaking. and so she is -- the actual is actually in very, very good condition. it's 92% original. very, very high quality steel, very high quality aluminum. so structurally she's actually in pretty good shape. just on the outside, all the rust and peeling paint. >> i was struck by the fact that you -- said the whole place was made by steel but were they just

told to supply the steel? >> lukeins built the underwater portion of the hull. below the waterline. it escapes me who built the above-water portion. might have been u.s. steel but not positive. [inaudible] are there other models in other parts of the country or around the world that are similar to this that are serving as a guide or role model what you hope to accomplish, and if not, what are you looking towards to -- >> the two oceanliners who have been preserved as stationary attractions, one, of course, the first queen mary, in long beach, and the problem with that project, they really placed her far away from any sort of

central business district. she is off on the container ports and development around her languished so she is there, isolated at long beach, and they also ripped out a lot of what made her interesting. basically everything below the superstructures, ripped out the engines. so she struggles. another example, which is much more recent, is a ship of similar vintage, a dutch liner called the ss rotterdam, which was completed in 1959, and she said until 2001. the holland america flagship, and at beautiful ship, now a stationary hotel and convention center in her original home port of rotterdam. she was almost sold for scrap and they have done a wonderful job conserving her. >> i just returned from dubai, and they have the qe ii sitting there and they're redoing that as a hotel.

>> i also should have mentioned the qe ii. she was taken out of service in 2008, i believe, after serving -- she was serving 40 years at sea, which is very impressive, and the downturn of the economy affected that project. but it seems like there's -- she is sitting there fully operational. they could fire her up again. i think the project is now restarted. there's talk about sending her to scrappers, but i think they're moving ahead with redoing the qe ii. they're not totally ripping her apart but i think the line is more let's keep her as she was. >> a troop carrier so that was '82. >> i was a passenger on the ship in 1961, on my way to graduate

school in england. and the memory i wanted to share, we tried -- you could feel how fast you were going. you knew you were going fast -- [inaudible] -- >> even though she has large ship, she did roll, and there was a story -- she did not have stabilizers. gibbs would have nothing of it. although the two queens were outfit with them. one story i heard from a steward standing outside the dining

room. he was all dress up and then felt the ship make this movement and he was like, uh-oh, a freak wave heading to the ship, and the ship went right over and this was before the installed seat belts under the chairs so everyone went flying to one side of the ship, and he said it was -- he said he -- no one got hurt but he said he started laughing, and then the chief steward comes in, and screaming, what are you doing? why don't you help these people, and then he slipped on the food, land on his rear end, and then he said it was even funnier. and he said, the chief steward never had a hair out of place and he was smeared in catsup and gravy and wine. the united states was frequently pass uihleins at a

respect distance. it was considered poor form to come up close to a slower ship and zoom past. one captain passed by the queen elizabeth and one reporter said, commodore manning, i understand there was a race between you and the queen elizabeth, and he said there was no race, we simply raced away from her. >> steve, you -- can be protected through designation. there is any type of designation for this boat, and if so, have you looked into that? >> good question. the ss united states is on the national register of historic places and that is -- that's very much -- it's a destination which does allow developers to use tax credits to redevelop the ship.

one possibility is the national historic landmark which, like the academy of music, or other landmarks, that's a possible designation which allows her greater protection and benefits. [inaudible] >> my concern is the ss united states would cost million office dollars to preserve it, and i'm very much in support of that. however, oregon these also need millions of dollars and the new jersey is going to need million 0-dollars pretty soon. so you got a number of different boats asking for this. my concern -- not only my concern -- if you're going to have the ss united states stay here and be successful, i think, part of a much larger overall plan.

i have participated in just about every forum that talks about development, and every forum comes out with the same answer. cover i-95 and bring in the ss united states up here as an iconic centerpiece for that kind of a development. and that was the general conversation up until about two years ago or a year ago when they said, no, we're not going to do that. and now we have a plan here in philadelphia that talks about a viking trail -- biking trail along the river with some parks. that's the new plan. i'm concerned the city government, federal government, state girlfriend, has seemed to abandon this whole general grand idea. do you have any thoughts on their support and lack of support? >> well, i'm not one to -- regarding the ships potential

place in philadelphia, except for the fact that philadelphia is one city that we're looking in. the ship has so much national appeal that new york is a possibility. miami, other cities. so it's not just a philadelphia thing, i don't think. i think it would be wonderful if she was here, and she can be useful because, unlike the new jersey, she is not chopped up inside. you have large spaces. the passenger cabin areas have been gutted so you have a blank slate inside to develop. so, i think it would be wonderful if she was here, but i think that the conservancy is looking at other alternatives, not just philadelphia. >> is there a timeline of 20 months, i believe, after the signing of the purchase.

isn't any -- won't any of the historic designation or national register placement save this -- extend this deadline? any way to extend the 20-month deadline? that's what i'm asking. >> there are two ways. the first is this new product gets off the ground and the public gets involved. the second is if there are firm possibilities of real estate deals taking place. two ways the deadline can be extended. if there are firm, viable opportunities in the future, there's a chance for that to happen, and if the public does rally around the ship -- i believe this new fundraising initiative will really allow people -- once they have discovered, as people -- i discovered here tonight as well -- the ship has carried over a million passengers in 17 years of service, and carried a

thousand crew members on each crossing. that's a lot of people with some connection to the ship. even people -- leak my father grew up on a farm in wyoming in 1950s, and he said i built a model of the ship when i was a kid. the ship has its national appeal. people still remember it. i think that -- i think that will help with this campaign. but at the end of the day, it's a real estate deal that will save the ship. >> you have some personal connection with the ship as well, right? >> yes. my grandparents traveled on the ship in i believe the late '50s, and my grandmother told the story how wonderful it was. she enjoyed the crossing, and in 18996 when we were looking for colleges in the philadelphia area, we were driving over a bridge and the ship just arrived, and i was in the car with my parents and brother and grandmother, and we were driving

on the bridge, and i'd known about the bridge, and i said, there it is. my grandma said, i remember that ship. grandpa and i were on it. and there's so many stories of people who have traveled on it, or associated with it, who then come to philadelphia and are like, oh, my god, it's here. it's still here. a lot of people thought it was scrapped years ago. it's still here. >> a post card from my father in 1952, to daddy is on the best, biggest boat right now. some day when you grow up you'll be able to ride on one of them. then he tells me what he ate. so, i just -- i have always had this, and i've always kept it for some reason. wonderful little post card i kept forever, and here --

>> one thing i discovered is that people, children, people who traveled on the ship as children, loved it. i think gibbs had the same feeling, a feeling of wonder. when he first saw she ship on the delware river in 1894 launch, the first thing that came to his mind was wonder and awe. and there's a very touching moment when the ship finishes the second sea trials and she comes into newport news and has a big broom lashed to her mast, which means she had gone faster than any other merchantship but no one would say how fast she went. gibbs goh out -- got off the ss united states, and she watched all the other men come off, and she observed him leave the ship and get away from the crowd and then sit down on the dock, and he put his chin up to his knees and just looks at the ship. like a child looking at

something that he is very proud of. and i think there's that feeling of awe. i think he ship still represents that feeling of being wowed and awed, like a cathedral or skyscraper. americans love to build things. we love pictures of watching the chrysler building or empire state building going up, and this is an example of a nation of builders we need to revisit. >> spend so much time talking about her. this might be quite obvious, but it's worth mentioning, she is right there we can see her. i don't have to leave my seat. i guess her ears are burping because the smokestacks are red. >> steve, you started by telling

us about the architect's dad. most of news this room know his granddaughter is the head of the conserve -- conservancy. what's his children, son, daughter, were they part of the legacy today? are they alive? did they travel free of charge on daddies boat? >> well, yes. susan gibbs is the director of the uss united states conservancy, and she is a wonderful and capable person who -- she didn't hear about the ship much growing up from her father. william francis gibbs had two sons and one adopted frontal his wife's first marriage. but the children didn't seem particularly interested in pursuing naval architecture himself wife was -- her father was in a law firearm, and vera

was extremely supportive of her husband, and she traveled on the ship frequently. williams francis gibbs only traveled on it once, but vera was described -- described the ship as the family row boat economy, loved traveling on the ship. there was one strange moment, though, when william francis gibbs was asked, do you love that ship more than your wife? and he replied. you're a thousand percent correct, and apparently she wasn't bothered by that. but susan has been involved with the conservancy since 2003 and 2004, and she has basically -- she was previously working on international relations and is now focusing her energy full time on saving her grandfather's ship and is always behind save the ss united states.org project and has done a tremendous job.

>> how much time was spent on board -- [inaudible] >> first sort of a sense of adventure because you're going into a ship that has been out of service for so long. and there's kind of a sadness because the ship has been so stripped. you go inside, and she is stripped to the bare bulk head. you see bits and pieces of what was. you look in the crew partly cloudy see a couple of chairs sticking up that have not been taken away. you climb up the staircase in the darkness and you end up on the promenade deck where the first class accommodations were, and you see these big rooms and you try to imagine what it once was, and then you go to the ballroom and you see the dance

floor is still there peeling at the edges. big dance floor. then you look on the stage and you think, that's the stage where duke ellington once played a set in the late '50s for the passengers' dancing pleasure when the orchestra was on tour. the day the announcement in july 1, 2010, i stood on the first class promenade and took out my phone and i called my grandmother, who was in a retirement home outside of new york city, and i said, grandma, i'm here where you and grandpa were all those years ago, and once you're on board and you really -- you begin to feel -- it's overwhelming. i don't believe in ghosts but if there are any, they're on the ship. and the bridge is incredible. you're 12 stories above the waterline. and i have seen videos of the ship going through a hurricane. waves go over the bow and the

ship is getting tossed around like a toy boat and you're thinking, this is what the ship is facing and a transatlantic liner, they're built like batships. they had to keep a schedule. you kept going and if the united states had to slow down, in a storm, they would use their reserve power to make up extra time. >> what kind of photographic record of the interior do you have? what was the preservation effort, even with the better spaces? what kind of information do you have? >> there are pretty meticulous records of the ship's construction, newport news has a mariners museum which has all the construction documents so we know where everything was.

there's extensive photographic record of theships interior rom fromme -- from brochures and could be reconstructed. but the decision is which spaces the developer wants to use for restaurants. the developer might have other ideas for what spaces could be used for. the conservancy definitely wants to recreate at least some of the principle spaces on board, like the first class dining room or the first class ballroom and have at least one large space dedicated for a museum. but in terms of reconstruction in the passenger cabin, you look at the outline on the floor. the cabins are actually small by today's standards. you think the superrich would occupy these cabins and even the big suites -- i'm surprised how small they were, but back then you were out in the public rooms, out mingling.

>> time for one more question. >> thank you. i just want to say that the conservancy is not being very greedy as far as how much space they want for the museum. only ask for 20,000 square feet for a museum. there were 650,000 square feet of developer space. that's quite a bit. and several areas on the ship like that. and i know that the's preservationists and the conservancy people like to think about keeping it the way it was but that's not sustainable. there's no ship museum in the entire world that is sustainable. you have to have commercial approach to it, and that's what we're planning to do.

>> that's a good point, in that the ship -- you have to be able to -- the ship has to be flexible, and i'm not directly involved with the redevelopment effort, but, yeah, you can't make it as it was. you can't. portions you can. you can imagine yourself being on the deck or the bridge and that can be restored, but any redevelopment has to be practical. >> i want to bring this to a close. i want to thank you so much, steve, for your unique insight and very revealing details about the boat tonight, as well is a read the book. it's a great read. i wish you all the best. there's some books here, folks. steve is here if you want to get an autographed book. also, on august 1st we're going to have a tour of the

delware waterfront, pretty much on the ss united states, and we're going to lead a discussion, happy hour set up. you can find the information on the post cards on your seats. we have 71 people coming already. it's a big boat so we can handle more, many more people than that if you're interested. thank you for your time and coming out tonight. [applause] >> spend this week in ohio state capitol, columbus, as book tv joins c-span's local content vehicle.

>> if we look at the 18th 18th century, journalism started off in 1704 as a very puny and unimpressive kind of enterprise. the very first newspapers were very small, had circulations in the dozens and then in maybe the low hundreds and they were really intimidated by the other institutions in that society, especially church and state, and compared to them these

newspapers were not at all important and very much under their thumbs. but what you see over the course of the next couple of decades a process by which the newspapers become increasingly political on what they focus on, and they get to be bolder and bolder for reasons i go into, in the book. so by 1770 they're in full throat, expressing themselves on all kinds of political issues of the day. on independence from britain, or reconciliation with the mother country. on what -- if we break, what kind of a government should we have. all these huge questions. and the press becomes quite -- it's often -- the products that people are reading are often produced anonymously or pseudo

-- nymously. that's the nature of the press that the founders were from with. the press was very local, very small scale, it was very political. most of those newspapers had very little what we would think of as original reporting, nonfiction material that the staff generated. that was not in the cards. as we see a return to a more to polemical style today, it's not something that is unanticipated or doesn't fit into this constitutional scheme. who invented reporters? >> oh,. >> we tend to think of reporters and journalists as synonyms. but that was not -- >> not at all. no. no. no. it wasn't until the 1830s,

again, here in new york city, another really inventive journalist named benjamin day, created the first so-called penny press newspapers. sold it for a penny a copy. so he was going way down market, trying to reach the broadest possible audience, and to do that he needed to fill it up with surprising, amazing things every day. fires. news from the police stations. dockings of ships. anything like that he could fine. and he had wore himself out trying to fill the paper, and so he hired the first full-time reporter, a man named george wisner, regretably obscure figure? the history of journalism. >> when did journalism become a business in the period you're describing in the colonial

period, doesn't sound like it was -- how did it support itself then? >> well, most of those newspapers were created by people who were really in another trade. that is, they were printers. and in order to keep their print shop's, and in order to bring their customers into the shop to pick up their papers, so they could sell them some stationary on the side or sell them a back -- a book while they were the there they hit upon the idea of a newspaper as a perfect device. it expires every week, and later every day once the pace pick up. and so most of those first enterprises were sideline of someone who really would -- we would think of as a job printer, someone who was open to printing all kinds of stuff from anybody who had business. then it's really in around that revolutionary period, the early federal period where you see that sideline disappears