In June of this year, I wrote about the USS Jeremiah O’Brien. She’s a fully functional liberty ship—now berthed at Pier 45 in San Francisco—that was at Normandy on D-Day. But San Francisco Bay has several other historic ships accessible to the public.
The USS Potomac served as the presidential yacht for Franklin Delano Roosevelt from 1936 until his death in 1945. She is now open for dockside tours and private charters out of Jack London Square. Photo courtesy of the Potomac Association
By Captian Ray
Published: December, 2011
In June of this year, I wrote about the USS Jeremiah O’Brien. She’s a fully functional liberty ship—now berthed at Pier 45 in San Francisco—that was at Normandy on D-Day. But San Francisco Bay has several other historic ships accessible to the public. This month I’d like to tell you a bit about the USS Potomac, the vessel that served as the presidential yacht for Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
When FDR was inaugurated, there was already a presidential yacht, the USS Sequoia, used by all U.S. presidents from Herbert Hoover to Jimmy Carter. FDR, confined to a wheelchair by polio, had a great fear of being unable to escape from a fire. The all-steel construction of the USS Potomac made him much more comfortable than the all-wood USS Sequoia. FDR had the USS Sequoia decommissioned, thus stripping her of the “USS” status, although by common convention that designation is still often used. He replaced her with the USS Potomac.
Built in 1934 as the United States Coast Guard cutter Electra (AG-25), she is 165 feet long, displaces 416 tons, and cruises at 10 to 12 knots. In 1936, she was transferred to the United States Navy, commissioned as the USS Potomac, and served as the presidential yacht for Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He had the vessel outfitted with an elevator (disguised as a second smokestack) for his wheelchair. Operated by ropes and pulleys, the president would pull himself from one deck to another.
Cruising on the Potomac would help FDR avoid the sticky, hot summers of Washington, D.C. He would use the yacht for meetings with his advisors and Congressional leaders because it provided privacy, security and a sense of informality. Additionally, FDR used the USS Potomac to entertain visiting royalty, including King George VI of Great Britain, the Netherlands’s Queen Wilhelmina, Crown Princess Martha of Norway and Crown Prince Gustav of Sweden.
A few months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt left Washington on the USS Potomac for what was billed as a fishing trip to Martha’s Vineyard. While at anchor, he secretly transferred to the heavy cruiser USS Augusta (CA-31) for a meeting in Newfoundland with Winston Churchill. Roosevelt and Churchill discussed two very significant issues during the course of that top-secret meeting. The first, called the Atlantic Charter, laid out the principles of Allied cooperation during World War II. The second was a plan for the peace that followed; something that Roosevelt called the “United Nations.”
After FDR’s death in 1945, the Potomac was decommissioned and returned to the Coast Guard. She later served with the Maryland Tidewater Fisheries Commission, was used as a private ferry and was even owned by Elvis Presley for a time. In 1980, she was seized by U.S. Customs for her involvement in a drug smuggling scheme and sank while impounded at Treasure Island. Refloated several weeks later and sold to the Port of Oakland, she was restored by the combined efforts of the maritime industry, organized labor and the work of many volunteers.
The USS Potomac is now operated by the Potomac Association, a nonprofit group “committed to preserving the legacy of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt through education for students and adults.” The Association operates a Visitor Center at 540 Water Street in Oakland’s Jack London Square, and the USS Potomac is docked just a few steps away at the foot of Clay Street. She is open for dockside tours on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and is available for a variety of cruises. For more information, contact the association at (510) 627-1215 or usspotomacnews@gmail.com.
Ray Wichmann, is a US SAILING-certified Ocean Passagemaking Instructor, a US SAILING Instructor Trainer, and a member of US SAILING’s National Faculty. He holds a 100-Ton Master’s License, was a charter skipper in Hawai’i for 15 years, and has sailed on both coasts of the United States, in Mexico, the Caribbean, and Greece. He is presently employed as the Master Instructor at OCSC Sailing in the Berkeley Marina.
