“Block That Metaphor,” the New Yorker was wont to exclaim when it spotted a ham-fisted attempt to derive poetic resonance out of everyday events. It’s hard to avoid drawing some meaning, though, in the final voyage of Steam Ship United States. She broke the transatlantic speed record on her maiden voyage in 1952, and was the largest passenger ship built in America — 100 feet longer than R.M.S. Titanic. Now, United States is set to be sunk.

The pioneering ocean liner, which ferried four presidents during a career that saw it cross the North Atlantic more than 800 times, is slated for a new berth. That’s at the bottom of the sea, where it will “become the world’s largest artificial reef,” the Times reports, “off the coast of the Florida Panhandle.” Aptly or not, the United States’s resting place will be the floor of the body of water now designated by President Trump as the Gulf of America.

It’s a humble destination for what was once known as “America’s Flagship” and the “most graceful, modern, powerful and sleek vessel in the world,” as the S.S. United States Conservancy puts it. Her record-breaking debut speed has yet to be matched or surpassed — by any ship, at least. Yet the introduction in 1958 of the jet liner would soon knell for all the great ocean liners. In 1969, the United States was taken out of service.