Nobody cares much any longer about the Blue Riband, but for decades it was one of the premier awards in all of travel and transportation. The SS United States, now on its way to becoming an artificial coral reef, was the final holder of the prize, which recognized the fastest transatlantic crossing by a passenger ship.
■ Awards and prizes are powerful things. They focus attention on achievements that otherwise might be considered insignificant or uninspiring. They bring prestige to the institutions that offer them; most people only know the names of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences or the Hollywood Foreign Press Association because of the awards they give out -- the Academy’s website is oscars.org, and the HFPA actually reorganized its entire identity around becoming the Golden Globe Foundation.
■ Awards can make abstract rivalries concrete by giving the contestants literal trophies to lord over one another, and nothing signals the fading of an industry quite like when an award or a prize loses its cachet. In theory, at least, someone, somewhere, was the last Telegrapher of the Year or Grand Champion Carburetor Mechanic.
■ Transatlantic travel by passenger ship (other than for recreational voyages) was doomed by aircraft like the Boeing 747, which could offer comparable prestige and much greater speed. And it’s really something to note that modern airliners are now technologically so much better than the old ones that two engines are enough to make the crossing with adequate redundancy, not four.
■ Still, though, maybe the enduring lesson of the SS United States and its truly incredible nautical speed is at least in part that awards and prizes do matter, especially when they bring energy and attention to a movement, industry, or domain where progress is needed.