SHE was truly an ocean greyhound, a sleek, powerful liner that cut through the Atlantic waves for 17 years between New York and Southampton.

It was half a century ago that SS United States made her first triumphant entry into port surrounded by a huge flotilla of welcoming small craft and watched on shore by a staggering 70,000 people crammed into every vantage point along Southampton Water.

The crowds had come to see the marvel of 1952, the ship that had smashed the Blue Riband, held by Cunard's Queen Mary since the 1930s, by speeding eastbound across the Atlantic in just three days, ten hours and 42 minutes averaging more than 35 knots or over 40mph.

Unlike so many of her contemporaries United States is still with us, laid up at Pier 82 in Philadelphia in America, a sorry shadow of those once glory days although there are desperate, long-running attempts to restore her to her former elegance.

Many people in Southampton will still remember seeing this magnificent liner in the docks on her many regular visits to the city.

It was back in July, 1945 that formal design work began on the ship after the American government had been so impressed by other Southampton favourites, Cunard's Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, in their vital wartime role as troopships.

The USA wanted a superliner of its own that could easily be converted to military service and her $79m price tag was heavily underwritten by the federal government.

So was born SS United States, nicknamed the Big U. Her maiden voyage from New York to Southampton began on July 3, 1952.

She was constructed so that in just one day the vessel could be converted into a troop transport capable of carrying 15,000 servicemen.

The liner could outrun anything afloat and steam non-stop for ten days at a time. Although she was briefly on stand-by during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, she was never called to troopship duty.

Her 241,000 horsepower engines allowed her to reach a top speed of 43 knots and she had a power-to-weight ratio thought never to have been equalled.

Throughout her career the liner held a near perfect schedule and never experienced an engineering failure.

Arguably one of the safest ships ever, United States was totally fireproof, being constructed completely of non-flammable materials. The owners were always fond of pointing out that the only wood on board were the pianos and the butcher's block in the galley.

There were dozens of public rooms on board and she was the first passenger liner of her size to be air-conditioned and to have a telephone in each stateroom of all three classes. In her heyday the ship carried a glittering list of personalities including actress Merle Oberon, singer Judy Garland, film cowboy William Boyd better know to his fans as Hopalong Cassidy and acclaimed artist, Salvador Dali.

During the 1960s jet aircraft were stealing transatlantic passengers from the great liners and on frequent sailings United States' 1,000 plus crew often outnumbered paying passengers.

In 1969 United States was sent to the Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company in Virginia for her annual overhaul but as fate would have it, her boilers were never fired again.

The years passed and she remained docked with little hope of revival although various schemes to send her back to sea again were put forward nothing happened until June 1992 when the ship was bought and sent under tow to Turkey.

Here the enormous amount of asbestos, used in her original construction, was removed but yet another plan to restore her to service foundered through lack of funding.

In July 1996 United States returned to her homeland, this to Philadelphia where she remains to this day.