Queen Mary
Long Beach, California
The RMS Queen Mary sailed on its maiden voyage in 1936. For years it was the most elegant way to cross the Atlantic, but by the mid-1960s rich people preferred to travel between Europe and the U.S. on passenger jets. The British sold the ship to the city of Long Beach, California, for $3.45 million. After one last voyage, and an extensive overhaul, the Queen Mary opened as a permanently docked tourist attraction in May 1971.
A 1,000-foot-long boat requires a lot of maintenance, even for one that isn't going anywhere. When Long Beach took control of the Queen Mary from its private owner in 2021, it learned that the ocean liner needed millions of dollars in repairs just to keep it from capsizing. The city considered scuttling the ship, then learned that it would cost more to sink it than to repair it. The pandemic offered a tourist-free opportunity to patch up the Queen Mary, and enough of it was repaired that it was able to reopen for tours to the public in January 2023.