We’ve sank dredges and ships and barges and tugboats and all kind of stuff” — David Walter, owner of Walter Marine in Orange Beach, is the go-to-guy. He has done it more than two dozen times from Texas to Florida.

The luxury liner SS United States completed its journey Monday from South Philadelphia to Alabama, where it will undergo preparations before it is sunk in the waters off Florida's Gulf Coast to become an artificial reef.

The SS United States, the former luxury ocean liner that was parked in South Philadelphia for almost 30 years, has reached Mobile, Ala., faster than expected and in one piece, proving the skeptics wrong.