SS United States set to embark on its final voyage

Hours away from the final voyage of the SS United States, the historic ship, which was docked in South Philadelphia for decades, will soon be sunk off the coast of Florida. Yeah, the sinking was moved up a day because of weather conditions down south. Later this afternoon, the historic ocean liner will be the world's largest. Artificial reef, but don't forget it came from Philly. Absolutely, there'll be pretzels down there. Action News reporter John Paul has made the journey to Florida, he is joining us live in Destin. John, you've had your eye on this story for months. You said we have to cover this, it is so cool. We had to. It is so cool. Let me say this at first. It's a lot warmer down here in Florida than it is back in Philadelphia. We've got decent weather, a little overcast today. Right now, I'm standing on what's called the American Spirit. This is the media boat. But I want to show you this. We're already seeing these boats next to us start to fill up. These are all people from all over the country, a lot from Philadelphia, by the way, who want to come out and they want to see the sinking of the SS United States. They have been here for hours waiting to get on these boats. They're all going to be coming out. But tell you what, you guys, They're going to have the best view because we're going to take you along with us. So I'm going to show you where we're going to be. This is the harbor. Destin Harbor is just over this way. It's pretty calm waters, which is what we need. They had to move this whole thing up by a day, as you said, because of the weather. They were concerned about high winds. That is a no-go when you're doing something like this. Listen, they have never sunk a ship this large. It's 990 feet long. That's bigger than the Titanic. It was built... to never sink which is ironic that they're going to send it off by sinking it 22 miles that way out into the gulf that is where we're going to go and we're going to watch the SS United States sink to the bottom about 180 feet down then we're told divers are going to go down they're going to take some video and we're going to show you that video as well we're also going to have drones in the air you're going to get the best view in the house Right here on Action News. But really, why are they doing this? Well, we talked to the Okaloosa County Tourism Board about this. I want you to hear what they had to say. We have no natural coral in our waters so we need these structures for our our fisheries and it's really important to keep them healthy and that's that is our whole basis of doing all of our growing of our artificial reef network and as soon as tomorrow dive shops can go out. She'll be inhabited probably by Friday. They've cut big holes in the ship so Turtles and manatees can traverse and people and you know it's really an educational thing. And we're back out here live you can see there's a lot of tourists bringing their cameras they want to see this thing go down so it is interesting that the ship that carried so many passengers over the decades will have a different kind of I guess passenger once it's at the bottom of the ocean is so they can have a different wildlife go through.