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Presidential Yachts |
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 Presidential Yacht Sequoia (1977) |
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Type of Activity |
Presidential Transport |
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Location |
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Location |
Naval Yard, Washington DC |
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Date of Activity |
1880 to May 1977 |
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Coordinates |
38°53'51.2"N 77°02'20.9"W |
Before there was Air Force One, there was the presidential yacht. Dating back to the 19th century, America’s chief executives utilized navy ships and other vessels for recreation and entertaining foreign dignitaries. Nearly a dozen different ships acted as the “Floating White House” between 1880 and 1977, when the last vessel was sold at auction. During that time, they were the scene of international diplomatic summits, congressional schmoozing, and the occasional Potomac River pleasure cruise.
The Presidential yacht “served an important purpose in enabling Presidents to escape the claustrophobic tension of the White House,” former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has written. It “provided a quiet sanctuary; it was handier than Camp David, easier for casual, informal discussions.”
Sherman, Grant, Lincoln, and Porter aboard the River Queen, 1865
Abraham Lincoln made use of a steamboat called the River Queen during the Civil War, but the first official presidential yachts date to the Gilded Age. Starting in 1880, America’s commanders in chief sailed aboard a series of Navy vessels including USS Dispatch, USS Dolphin and USS Sylph. In 1886, Dispatch famously ferried Grover Cleveland across New York Harbor for the dedication of the Statue of Liberty.
Presidential boating entered a new era in the early 1900s, when USS Mayflower took over as the chief executive’s official yacht. Unlike earlier vessels, which were relatively austere in their design, Mayflower was a luxury craft previously owned by real estate millionaire Ogden Goelet. Measuring some 275 feet from stem to stern, it boasted a crew of over 150 and had a sumptuous interior that included a 30-person dining table and bathtubs made from Italian marble.
This vessel was built as the yacht of Ogden Goelet, and was purchased by the Navy in 1898 for service as a gunboat during the Spanish-American war. The USS Mayflower is most famously associated with Theodore Roosevelt, who often used it for family vacation cruises along Long Island. A more official use came in August 1905, when Roosevelt hosted Japanese and Russian envoys aboard Mayflower as part of his attempts to mediate peace talks in the Russo-Japanese War. He would later win the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in ending the conflict.
The Presidential Yacht Mayflower in early 1900
The Presidential Yacht Mayflower served as a presidential plaything for over two decades. Woodrow Wilson is said to have wooed his second wife Edith Bolling Galt during romantic jaunts aboard the ship, and Calvin Coolidge reportedly loved the yacht so much he stationed a Navy chaplain aboard so that he could take Sunday morning cruises without being accused of skipping church. Nevertheless, the ship’s opulence proved to be a sticking point with critics of presidential excess.
The Mayflower served as Presidential yacht until 1929, when President Hoover ordered the vessel decommissioned for economic reasons. The Mayflower was sold and reconverted to a yacht, but was taken into the Coast Guard during WWII as a patrol vessel. Postwar Mayflower was sold and secretly outfitted to carry Jewish refugees from Europe to Palestine. On 3 September 1948 she arrived at Haifa carrying the refuges from Exodus, a refugee ship which had been turned back from Palestine previously. Her subsequent fate is not recorded, but she probably ended her days.in a European scrapyard.
The Mayflower was the largest and stateliest of the presidential yachts, but it wasn’t the last. Hoover—a devoted fisherman—soon began making day trips on a wooden-hulled vessel called USS Sequoia, and he eventually grew so attached to it that he had it featured on his 1932 Christmas card. Franklin D. Roosevelt began his tenure with Sequoia, but later switched to USS Potomac, a 165-foot former Coast Guard cutter that included a special elevator to help the wheelchair-bound president move between decks.
Built as the Coast Guard patrol boat Electra in 1934, the USS Potomac was taken over by the Navy as a presidential yacht in 1935.
FDR occasionally utilized the USS Potomac for official business—it carried him to a 1941 meeting with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill—but it was more frequently used for presidential leisure. In his book Sailor in the White House: The Seafaring Life of FDR, author Robert Cross writes that the USS Potomac provided Roosevelt with “an instant means of extricating himself from the confines of Washington. Roosevelt could escape to the open water, where he could do some politicking and thinking, or relax and entertain on deck with friends and advisors, or simply throw a fishing line overboard and patiently wait for a bite.” President Roosevelt enjoyed fishing and reading on the Potomac. On one memorable fishing trip in 1936, he caught kingfish, mackerel, groupers, and barracuda in the Bahamas.
USS Potomac in Oakland, CA.
In 1942 USS Potomac was condemned as unseaworthy due to added topside weight, and decommissioned in 1945, she served the state of Maryland as a fisheries vessel from 1946 to 1960. After periods as an inter-island ferry in the Caribbean, and as a floating museum dedicated to Franklin D. Roosevelt, she was purchased by Elvis Presley in 1964 and donated to St. Jude's Hospital in Memphis, TN. A series of owners followed, and in 1980 the yacht was seized on suspicion of drug-running. Soon thereafter she sank in her berth, was salvaged by the Navy, and was purchased by the Port of Oakland, CA. Potomac is now owned by the Association for the Preservation of the Presidential Yacht Potomac. She has been completely rebuilt and restored, and is normally docked at FDR Pier.
The Sequoia and USS Potomac served as the presidential yacht for President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the USS Williamsburg served as the presidential yacht for President Harry S. Truman and President Dwight D. Eisenhower. President Roosevelt preferred the protection that the steel of the Potomac offered over the wood of the Sequoia. Additionally, the Potomac was larger than the Sequoia and could accommodate more Secret Service members.
The USS Williamsburg served as presidential yacht from 1945 to 1953.
The Williamsburg served Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, though Eisenhower only made one voyage before having it decommissioned in 1953.
USS Williamsburg National Archives and Records Administration
The Williamsburg was given to the National Science Foundation and renamed Anton Bruun, after the famous Dutch marine biologist. The yacht was decommissioned in 1953 per the orders of President Eisenhower. Laid up from 1953 to 1962, she then served the National Science Foundation until damaged in a dry docking accident in 1968. She was subsequently sold to become a hotel/museum in New Jersey, but she was instead laid up. In 1993 she was sent to Genoa, Italy for conversion to a luxury cruise ship. However, these plans were never realized.
The Williamsburg has been rusting away at a dock in La Spezia, Italy, where it has sat since 1993.
The USS Sequoia served as the “floating White House” from President Herbert Hoover’s administration through President Jimmy Carter’s administration. The 104-foot-long yacht was designed by John Trumpy and built in 1925 by the Mathis Yacht Building Company in Camden, New Jersey. The vessel was purchased by the Department of Commerce on March 24, 1931, transferred to the Navy, and commissioned as the Sequoia for the president’s use.
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| Photo of the U.S.S. Sequoia, Presidential Yacht, from 1933 |
In 1933 she was acquired by the Navy as the presidential yacht. She served in this capacity until replaced by Potomac in 1936. Sequoia then served as the Secretary of the Navy's yacht until 1969, when she became a dual-use yacht for the President and other high-ranking government officials, replacing Williamsburg.
WHCA’s Role in supporting The Presidential Yacht Sequoia
The Naval Administrative Unit (NAU) a division of DCAU the administrative unit of WHCA oversaw the Naval personnel assigned to Sequoia . The Naval Administrative Unit (NAU) was stationed at the Old Navy Yard Bldg. 146 and only maintained the Presidential Yacht Sequoia this unit existed until July 1977 when President Carter returned the Sequoia to the Navy for disposal.
As with all other official Presidential forms of transportation WHCA supported the Secret Service and White House Staff with communications, the Yacht was equipped with FM radio frequencies Baker/Charlie for the USSS, Sierra for Paging and Staff use, finally Y/Z for communications with the Presidential Motorcade.
One of the duties of the WHCA radio group was to carry a pager one week at a time and would be dispatched to the yacht and test the radios prior the arrival of the President or any other authorized user of Sequoia. When the Sequoia went out WHCA transportation would usually get a rush dispatch to take people to the Navy Yard. It was usually someone from the Radio Group and it was always on short notice.
The USCG had three chase boats codename Sharktail they were highly maneuverable, and they were the fastest boats on the river they were primarily used to keep sightseers, and other watercraft a safe distance away from Sequoia while it was cruising the river.
The USSS code name for the Presidential Yacht Sequoia was Helmsman, and the USSS also had a follow follow-up boat, with the codename of Rockfish, the Rockfish was too slow for any chase boat activity. It was mainly used for training and to shuttle people on and off Sequoia when underway.
One other ship assigned to Presidential support was a PT called the Guardian, also assigned to the Navy Yard. The Guardian had no code name that I can find and after the retirement of the Presidential yacht in 1977, the Guardian was transferred back to the Navy and was retired in 1988, being the longest serving PT boat in the Navy.
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| The Presidential Yacht Sequoia on the Potomac 22 November 1966. |
Franklin D. Roosevelt installed an elevator in the 1930s to make the yacht more easily accessible for his wheelchair. Lyndon B. Johnson later replaced the elevator with a bar.
Recreation was also the main role of the presidential yachts during the administration of Harry Truman, who hosted floating poker games aboard Sequoia and the 243-foot USS Williamsburg. Dwight D. Eisenhower was more of a landlubber than his predecessors, but sea excursions became popular again in the 1960s, when Sequoia resumed its former role as the main presidential yacht. John F. Kennedy—who also utilized a yacht called Honey Fitz and a sailboat called Manitou—The presidential yachts offered a brief retreat from the White House for presidents and served as a setting for recreational and social activities.
For example, on May 29, 1963, President John F. Kennedy celebrated his final birthday with a party aboard Sequoia with dinner and a cruise on the Potomac River.
As the longest serving of the executive yachts, Sequoia played host to several chapters in presidential history. The 104-foot vessel was a humbler affair than many of the other yachts, but the seclusion of its elegant, mahogany-paneled saloon made it an ideal location for sensitive political discussions. Harry Truman talked nuclear arms policy aboard the ship with the prime ministers of Britain and Canada. In the mid-1960s, Lyndon Johnson used yacht trips to hash out Vietnam strategy and lobby legislators to support his Great Society domestic reforms. “The Sequoia was a rostrum from which he was trying to persuade congressmen and senators,” former Johnson aide Jack Valenti said. LBJ also installed a liquor bar and enjoyed having movies projected on the main deck.
President Johnson entertains guests on the aft deck
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| The main bedroom in the Presidential Yacht U.S.S. Sequoia |
Richard Nixon was undoubtedly the most the enthusiastic user of Sequoia. The 37th president reportedly made as many as 100 trips aboard the yacht, including one in which he met with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev to negotiate the SALT I nuclear arms agreement.
Richard M. Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev aboard the Presidential Yacht Sequoia
Near the end of his second term, Nixon also used Sequoia as a hideout from the controversies of the Watergate scandal. During one final cruise in August 1974, the embattled president reportedly informed his family of his decision to resign before retiring to the ship’s saloon, quaffing a glass of scotch, and playing God Bless America on the piano.
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| The ship’s dining room and piano |
President Gerald R. Ford organized several informal meetings with his cabinet members to discuss economic policies and diplomatic meetings. on the Sequoia.
The age of the presidential yacht ended in May 1977.
That year, newly inaugurated Jimmy Carter ordered that Sequoia be offloaded in a public sale. Carter later noted that he was disturbed by the yacht’s $250,000 annual upkeep, but he was also following through on a campaign promise to dispense with the extravagance of the presidency. “Despite its distinguished career, I feel that the Presidential yacht Sequoia is no longer needed,” he wrote in a memo to his Secretary of Defense Since then, the yacht has been sold and acquired by several different owners.
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| The Presidential Yacht Sequoia (1977) |
Sequoia, though inactive and was in a state of disrepair, the yacht was once used as a floating museum and private charter boat, and still retains much of its presidential memorabilia. Unfortunately, this foundation went bankrupt in 1988 and the yacht lay derelict for nearly a decade. Eventually coming under the ownership of Norfolk Shipbuilding & Drydock Co.,
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On a barge going from VA to Belfast ME (2019) |
The Sequoia’s current owner is Equator Capital Group, are in the process of restoring the yacht. When the Sequoias restoration is complete, Equator Capital Group plans to bring it back to Washington, D.C to serve as a venue for teaching American presidential history and promote conservation causes.
In the summer and fall of 2019, SEQUOIA was carefully loaded and barged from southern Virginia to Belfast, Maine where she will undergo a complete restoration by master boatbuilders French & Webb.
But the Sequoia, shrouded in plastic in a city-owned parking lot next to the Harbor Walk, is still waiting for the restoration to begin. The delay is due to the 2020 pandemic, according to Amanda Green, the office manager at French & Webb. Now, the company is waiting for a go-ahead from the ship’s owner to get things rolling, she said.
Today, Sequoia and Potomac are the only two former presidential yachts still in existence. Potomac went through several different owners after its presidential service—including Elvis Presley—and is now moored in Oakland, California.
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