The President’s Yacht
The first President to have an official Presidential yacht at his disposal was Theodore Roosevelt, who acquired the use of the re-commissioned USS Mayflower for his personal use. It was crewed by US navy sailors and captained by Naval officers throughout its career as the President’s yacht. Roosevelt first used the yacht as a meeting place where he presented the Russian and Japanese delegates to each other prior to the Portsmouth Peace Conference. Roosevelt found the yacht useful throughout the conference, believing the enhancement to the President’s prestige added to his authority during negotiations.
Woodrow Wilson found the yacht useful in negotiations of another kind, using Mayflower as a setting for several meetings with the widowed Edith Galt. Much of his courtship of Edith was conducted on the yacht on cruises down the Potomac and in the Chesapeake Bay. Mayflower was used for numerous receptions and entertainment of diplomats, foreign heads of state, and other visitors deemed of importance. The yacht did not appeal to Herbert Hoover when he took office, however, and he ordered the stewards from its crew transferred to the Presidential retreat on the Rapidan River in Virginia and the yacht itself disposed of, becoming the first President to decommission a Presidential yacht.
Although Hoover had disposed of the Presidential yacht, he really simply disposed of its being operated as a United States Navy ship. Hoover borrowed another yacht from the Commerce Department, Sequoia, on which since it was not a commissioned Naval vessel, liquor could be consumed aboard. Hoover used the vessel frequently since he was an avid fisherman, and fond of alcohol. In 1933 his successor Franklin Roosevelt had Sequoia commissioned as a Presidential yacht, and during the Second World War, it was decommissioned again but continued to serve the President and other high-ranking officials of the Navy and State departments.
By then there was another official President’s yacht, the USS Potomac. Potomac was the first Presidential yacht to be used as a decoy to hide the President’s whereabouts from the press, complete with a double for Roosevelt aboard. When Roosevelt was secretly transferred from Potomac to USS Augusta to travel to meet with Churchill near Newfoundland, Potomac retained the Presidential Flag – indicating that the President was aboard – and cruised conspicuously off New England, a Secret Service agent posing as the President. The press didn’t learn of Roosevelt’s true whereabouts until the release of the Atlantic Charter.
President Truman enjoyed another Presidential yacht, USS Williamsburg, when it was at anchor off Key West, or on quiet cruises on the Potomac. He did not enjoy the open water of the Atlantic or the Chesapeake Bay, however. Neither did his successor, Dwight Eisenhower, who ordered Williamsburg decommissioned after only one cruise aboard. They were both former Army officers. It took a Navy man, Jimmy Carter, to order the final decommissioning of Sequoia in 1977, leaving the President without a yacht at his disposal.
