My late father, WWII US Merchant Marine Veteran and licensed chief engineer, served for the last ten years on the SS UNITED STATES, from Third Assistant Engineer to Second Assistant Engineer in charge of the aft engine room. Although I lost him as a young man, he did see me follow his calling to the sea, when I graduated from State University of New York Maritime College, the first and oldest maritime academy in the United States, where incidentally, all the Masters and Captains who ever commanded the BIG U, had also graduated. But it was the inspirational stories that drove me to the sea, and although he didn’t see it, I know he was looking down on me when I took my first command of a ship as Master. I actually was aboard the BIG U in New York in 1969, albeit as a toddler, when she was in her prime. Years later, in 1991, I took my father, just before he passed, to see the BIG U as she sat in layup at a coal pier in Newport News Virginia, It has been 23 years since my father last saw the BIG U, and I cannot tell you the emotional and moving moment when my father walked up the gangway and touched the hull and he actually said, “I am home.”. He passed away not long after that day.

- CAPT Sean Tortora MS, USMS