The cost of the maintenance of the president of the United States is about 1.2 billion dollars
per year - that’s about 2,300 dollars per minute. This expense includes the operation
of the white house - its offices, chefs, servants, movie theatre, presidents salary
and allowances, and the cost of the transportation of the president from one place to another in the
most secure and comfortable way possible which involves everything from the armored vehicles,
high-end helicopters to jumbo jets. This expense doesn’t include 2.2 billion dollars
per year secret service that provides security to the presidents and other important figures.
This all sounds incredible and the presidency seems to be at the peak of luxury, yet it
still lacks a feature that previous presidents wholeheartedly enjoyed - THE PRESIDENTIAL YACHT.
Between 1880 and 1977, the presidency of the US came with its own yacht which was primarily
meant for leisure and taking some time off the claustrophobic tensions of the White House.
Presidents used them for entertaining guests, building relationships,
and cracking sensitive deals away from media scrutiny.
These vessels hosted legendary world leaders, witnessed some of the most
iconic moments of American history before they were abruptly decommissioned, sold off to private
owners, got caught up in legal battles, and then left abandoned to die a slow death.
This video is about America’s most
famous yachts and their rather sad demise from the American presidency.
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Before flying was the preferred mode of transportation, America’s commander in
chief sailed aboard navy vessels to reach different parts of the world.
Large ships carried them abroad, while smaller
vessels were used for short-distance travels - as well as for recreation,
fishing trips, and hosting foreign dignitaries over to hold causal informal meetings.
Abraham Lincoln used a steamboat called the River queen to discuss sensitive topics during the civil
wars. Grover Cleveland sailed aboard the boat USS despatch for the dedication of the Statue
of Liberty. USS Dolphins and USS Sylph also worked as yachts for succeeding presidents.
With the popularity of flying, sea travel declined but presidential yachts continued
to be popular among presidents as quick getaways from the white house.
The golden era for presidential yachts came in the early 1900s
when USS Mayflower was added to the fleet.
Unlike previous presidential boats which were modest in design and meant for doing business,
the USS Mayflower was a luxurious steamboat decked with sumptuous interiors, bathtubs made from
Italian marble, and a 30-person dining table. It measured 275 ft and boasted a crew of 150 people.
Mayflower was largest of all; it spoke decadence - signaling
nations rising prosperity and power in the world.
President Theodore Roosevelt famously used the yacht for family cruises along
Long Island. He introduced the Japanese and Russian delegation onboard Mayflower to mediate
peace talks in the Russo-Japanese war, a deed that earned him a Nobel peace prize.
President Colin Coolidge had his Sunday morning prayers on the boat while wooden Wilson used it
to woo his second wife during romantic jaunts. Mayflower was the scene of many diplomatic
events and many members of the world’s royal families signed its guestbook.
But as America’s economy took a downturn, ship’s opulence became a glaring point for the critics of
presidential opulence. It was costing American taxpayers 300,000 dollars in
annual upkeep - roughly 4.5 million dollars in today’s money. So when Herbert hoover
became president he decided to decommission the USS mayflower as an economic measure.
Shortly after mayflower was auctioned off,
president Herbert Hoover began taking fishing trips on a wooden-hulled vessel called Sequoia.
The 104-foot yacht was much smaller and humbler than its predecessor yet it was
elegant enough to suit the American president. It could sleep six and accommodate up to 40 lucky
figures for cocktails on the spacious aft-deck or 22 guests for a formal dinner in its salon.
President hoover and her wife spent both Christmas and New Year’s Eve on sequoia
as part of a 10-day fishing trip. He was so fond of the Sequoia that he featured it on
the White House Christmas card in 1932. A move that many construed as callous as he
sought to steer the country out of the depths of the Great Depression.
President Roosevelt, who frequently enjoyed fishing aboard USS Sequoia, got an elevator
installed on the boat for easier access to his polio-stricken body. He hosted the British prime
minister on a cruise to Mount Vernon, during which the two discussed the great depression,
the rise of Hitler, and strategies for averting the threat of a potential war with Germany.
Quickly, USS Sequoia became the presidents' favorite, earning itself the nickname of
"the floating white house" for the purpose and convenience it provided.
Since the yacht served as a getaway for presidents to relax with friends and conduct business
outside of the public spotlight, official entries don’t exist for many events that took place aboard
Sequoia, and several legends have developed. During world war 2, Winston Churchill and
President Roosevelt are rumored to discuss military strategy on board, as well as
planning the D-day together on the large table in sequoia’s main salon. It is believed that
Roosevelt got USS Sequoia suspended from official duty so that Churchill could drink onboard.
However, officially the wooden-hulled sequoia seemed too dangerous for the president when war
loomed on the horizon. So he switched to USS Potomac - a steel-hulled presidential yacht,
where he entertained guests like King George VI
and Queen Elizabeth on the first visit of British royalty to an American president.
USS Potomac also served as a deception tool amidst World War 2 security tensions. A body
double of the president would be stationed at the yacht signaling president's presence
while the president would be holding strategic meetings with Churchill in another warship.
When Harry Truman became president, USS Williamson replaced USS Potomac as the official presidential
yacht - but the president would still prefer sequoia to hold floating poker games. He made
his own alterations to the boat, adding a piano to the boat’s drinking area for entertainment.
He was on the yacht when he decided to drop the atomic bomb on Japan and the same year,
he cruised with the US' closest allies - the prime ministers of Britain and Canada - and
discussed the promise of nuclear power and the need to control atomic weapons.
A year later, Sequoia was the venue of classified political and military discussions
which would eventually lead to the formation of western Europe in 1948 and NATO a year later.
President John F Kennedy added a king-size bed to Sequoia and held key strategy meetings aboard
the yacht to discuss the Cuban missile crisis - but like much of Kennedy’s presidential tenure,
his stays on the boat are mired in controversies. Marilyn Monroe is rumored to have joined him for a
cruise or two, which is difficult to verify since no official government photographers were allowed
to accompany Kennedy during his trips on the boat, and immediately after he was assassinated,
all personal logs relating to his involvement with the yacht were destroyed by order.
On may 29th 1963, 25 of his close friends and family hosted a cruise party aboard the sequoia
and celebrated the president’s 46th birthday which would later prove to be his last.
This iconic photograph taken that night by a navy officer features Mary Pinchot Peter,
the ex-wife of a CIA offer and reported to be romantically involved with the president.
Her murder the following year has been the subject of several conspiracy theories.
The widowed Mrs. Kennedy made several trips to sequoia
after Kennedy’s death. Two days before what would have been Kennedy’s 47th birthday,
his closest friends and family gathered again on the boat and remembers their loss.
A big fan of Sequoia, President Johnson removed the elevator installed by Roosevelt
and had it replaced by a wet bar. He spent a lot of time on the vessel - more than 35 recorded
trips - relaxing on the boat, drifting along the water, or watching a film. He used sequoia to
lobby congress members and to discuss and dissect the Vietnam war, civil rights movement,
and the ongoing issue of Cyprus.
Richard Nixon made us of the boat more than any other president.
He was aboard Sequoia when he decided to resign and informed his family,
he reportedly asked the crew to switch off the lights and leave him alone.
He then took to the boat’s piano keys to play 'God Bless America' for over 30 minutes.
Earlier he hosted soviet diplomats and general secretary Leonid Brezhnev on
a working dinner cruise where they discussed the nuclear arms treaty and the prevention of
nuclear war. The crucial agreement was signed during the Washington summit two days later.
President ford even hosted a 4-hour-long cabinet meeting aboard the vessel.
The age of presidential yachts came to a sudden end when Jimmy Carter took office
and acted upon his campaign’s promise to dispense with the extravagance of the presidency. He was
unhappy with $800,000 annual upkeep and ordered that sequoia be offloaded in a public sale.
In total, Sequoia served 8 US presidents over more than 3 decades,
witnessing historic feats of diplomacy, alleged extramarital affairs, and Russian intrigue.
Arguably, the most historically significant vessel in American history was auctioned off in
1977 for a just $286,000. President Carter would later regret this decision calling it a mistake.
The vessel then fell into the hands of a series of private owners who offered
this former presidential yacht for private charters to offset the cost of maintenance.
At one point, sequoia was hauling passengers along the Potomac River for $10,000 a day,
which caused irreversible damages to this elderly wooden-hulled vessel of historical importance.
In 1980, a non-profit organization acquired sequoia for $1.1 million and brought it back
to D.C. for use by the president and his cabinet. Sequoia underwent a $2 million restoration and in
1988, it was designated as a national historic landmark, but fearing bad political optics,
the US government refused to bear the cost. They wanted the yacht but without spending money.
The trust was expected to not only pay for the yacht and its operation but also the security
which would be required by the president. Unable to bear this expense, the trust sold sequoia to
a Virginia shipyard. While the yacht rotted in storage, the Clinton White House tried to persuade
Kuwait to purchase sequoia and gift it back to the American people as a gesture of gratitude
to the US for helping Kuwait against Saddam Hussein’s 1990 Iraq invasion. That did not happen.
Starting from 2013, sequoia was the subject of a series of legal battles among owners,
while court cases lingered, the vessel was left abandoned in Virginia.
All this time, the vessel withered and decayed with each passing season without maintenance,
sometimes lying in water and other times in storage.
The damage wasn’t just outside but the inside has faded into squalor.
The place where JFK celebrated his last birthdays
was now infested with numerous raccoons. Wild animals had defected on carpets and
littered the living rooms where presidents held international diplomatic summits.
In 2017, Delaware court ruled in the favour of sequoia new owners,
FE Partners, allowing them to take ownership of the yacht for zero additional dollars.
New owners wish to restore Sequoia to its former glory, which is no small feat.
It will take at least a few years to restore including 9-12 months of careful
planning before the restoration may even begin. Historically correct shipwrights, special wood,
and custom equipment is expected to cost the company at least a few million dollars.
Restoration has been delayed reportedly due to the ongoing pandemic.
While Sequoia’s post-service life was mostly idle, USS Mayflower’s busy life
after retirement earned it the title of the most interesting lives of all vessels in US history.
An intense fire broke out while she was being overhauled by the navy for auctioning,
she sank to the bottom and had to be raised. The wealthy financier who bought her,
went broke while bringing her to former glory and fled the country. Successive owners had a variety
of ideas for the ship including use as a floating dance salon, restoration as a historic relic, and
even sale to the Japanese government. Mayflower eventually ended up with the navy in the end.
She had previously served in the Spanish-American war and world war 1,
and now she was guarding against the german u-boats in world war 2.
Decommissioned again after the war, mayflower worked in the Arctic as
a sealer and as a trading vessel in the Mediterranean.
At one point it was secretly transporting Jewish refugees who were facing mass exodus to Israel.
Israel purchased the mayflower in 1950. Renamed INS Ma’oz,
it served as a training ship until it was broken up in 1955. What remains of this
former presidential yacht today is one of its guns kept at the naval museum at Haifa, Israel.
USS Williamson met a similar end, even a bit sadder. After serving as the presidential
yacht for over 8 years, it was transferred to the national science foundation in 1962 and
modified into an oceanographic research vessel. Until 1968, the ship made ten scientific cruises
to the Indian Ocean and eight cruises to the Pacific Ocean and hosted multinational
teams of scientists on board to study marine life biology in those waters.
The ship suffered extensive damages in an accident during repairs and had to be sold.
New owners had the grand plan of using the ship as a combination floating hotel-restaurant-museum
but it ended up firmly grounded in muddy water in Pennsville Township,
New Jersey for more than a decade.
It rusted and decayed there, for some time worked as a restaurant until it was transferred to
Italy in 1993 for conversion into a luxury cruise ship. That plan was never realized.
By 2015, time & negligence had turned this former presidential yacht
into dilapidated ghost ship, good for nothing except scrapping.
Two White House staffers ran a kick-starter campaign to raise $40 million to prevent the
scrapping of the ship and bring it back to the US to restore it to former “Williamsburg” glory.
They could raise $21,700.
Williamsburg was scrapped in March 2016.
The only presidential yacht, other than Sequoia, that still exists today is USS Potomac. Mexican
drug cartels were using the ship in large-scale drug-running operations when FDR’s eldest
son - James Roosevelt and some other well-wishes of the yacht brought it back to the US.
After undergoing a $2.5 million restoration, the yacht was permanently berthed at Jack London
Square in Oakland. It is open to tours and cruises and the Potomac Association,
chaired by FDR’s grandson looks after the preservation of this valuable piece of history.