1. GOING,
GOING,
GONE.
WORDS BY JUSTIN RATCLIFFE
Rusting away in La Spezia, Italy, is a piece of presidential history.
The USS Williamsburg was formerly the official yacht of President
Harry S. Truman, but her days are now numbered. She is shortly
due to go under the hammer, but if the auction doesn’t produce a
buyer she will be broken up for scrap.
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It’s easy to miss the narrow road behind
the imposing Fincantieri facility in La
Spezia that leads to the Navalmare
shipyard. Moored stern to at the
commercial quayside, and dwarfed by
offshore platforms under construction,
is what remains of the USS Williamsburg.
Now little more than a derelict hulk and
showing more rust than paint, the 74m
motoryacht looks forlorn after 20 years
of neglect. But with her faux smokestack
and fantail stern she still clings to her
classic charm and it is not hard to
imagine her in better days as a gleaming
white presidential yacht, cruising the
Potomac River in Washington DC.
Bath Iron Works in Maine launched
the steel-hulled vessel as Aras in 1930
for Hugh J. Chisholm, a wealthy paper
magnate, who owned her for more than
a decade. In 1941, with America on the
brink of joining the Second World War,
Aras was requisitioned by the US Navy
and sent to Brooklyn, New York, where
she was fitted out as a gunboat and
renamed the Williamsburg. From there
she was posted to Halifax, Nova Scotia.
The day after she arrived, the Japanese
bombed Pearl Harbour and America
entered the war.
Her wartime exploits are well
documented and ranged from escorting
merchantmen and rescuing survivors
of submarine attacks in the North
Atlantic to transporting gold bullion.
She later entered the Norfolk Navy Yard
to be converted into an amphibious
force flagship for the war in the Pacific.
But following the atomic bombings
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the
Japanese surrender, the conversion took
a different course when the Williamsburg
was earmarked to replace the USS
Potomac, a former Coast Guard cutter
IT IS NOT HARD TO IMAGINE
HER IN BETTER DAYS
AS A GLEAMING WHITE
PRESIDENTIAL YACHT,
CRUISING THE POTOMAC
RIVER IN WASHINGTON DC.

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Heart & Soul
JUSTINRATCLIFFE
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Opening page: USS Williamsburg in La Spezia.
Previous page: (top) The yacht was transported
to La Spezia in 1993 to be refitted but plans
fell through, (bottom) USS Williamsburg in her
heyday.
This page: Broker David Seal is on a quest to find
a buyer.
Next page: A proposed render of the refit yacht
from Green Yachts, (bottom) Harry Truman,
left, and Winston Churchill, right, on board
USS Williamsburg.
that had served Franklin D. Roosevelt as the
presidential yacht.
One of the modifications requested
by President Harry Truman, Roosevelt’s
successor, was the addition of an upper-
deck lounge and bar, where he liked to mix
business with pleasure (both literally and
figuratively) by playing poker with foreign
leaders such as Winston Churchill. It is
likely that the Marshall Plan, NATO, the
recognition of the state of Israel, the Korean
War and other international matters of state
were discussed on board.
By all accounts, Truman was a keen
yachtsman and cruised on board as far afield
as Florida, Bermuda, Cuba and the Virgin
Islands. He enjoyed the naval camaraderie,
and old film footage shows him swimming off
the yacht with the officers and crew.
The Republican President Dwight
Eisenhower took office in 1953, but it appears
he disagreed with lavish yachts almost
as much as he disagreed with Democrat
policies. He made only one cruise aboard the
Williamsburg, announcing it was “too rich for
my blood”, before she was decommissioned
and eventually struck off the Navy list in 1962.
Following her wartime heroics and glory
days as a presidential yacht, the vessel began
a new career as the oceanographic research
vessel Anton Bruun, voyaging deep into
the Indian and Pacific oceans on scientific
expeditions. Her exploring came to an end
after she was damaged in a dry-docking
incident in 1968. She was acquired by a
commercial company for use as a floating
hotel-restaurant (an operation that lasted
only two years) in New Jersey, but while
being towed up the Salem River, the unlucky
yacht grounded on a mud bank. The
Williamsburg next re-emerged in Philadelphia
where, in the late ’70s, she was refurbished
with Truman memorabilia with a view to
converting her into a private club. The venue
never opened.
It was an ignominious end for a vessel with
such a glorious past, but things were about to
get worse. In 1993, under a group of investors
calling themselves the USS Williamsburg
Corporation, she was transported to La
Spezia to be refitted as a boutique cruise ship
at the Valdettaro Shipyard in La Spezia, but
these plans were never realised due to lack of
funds. When the Valdettaro yard went under,
the bankruptcy court awarded the yacht to
Navalmare in lieu of unpaid bills.
Since then, there have been numerous
efforts to save the Williamsburg. There is, for
example, a USS Williamsburg Preservation
Society, but besides setting up an unused
Facebook page, the organisation has not
achieved very much.
The most proactive efforts to find a buyer
have been made by David Seal, an English
yacht broker currently with Northrop &
Johnson, living in Italy. A keen blogger,
Seal has made numerous appeals through
social media and even produced a video
with Navalmare to highlight the plight of
the yacht.

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“The Williamsburg has one heck of
a history, which is why it’s so sad to
see her rotting away here so far from
home,” said Seal, when The Superyacht
Owner recently went to visit the yacht
in La Spezia. “I’ve had four promising
enquiries from owners who have seen
the online video, but unfortunately we
still don’t have a buyer.”
“She’s been here for more than 20
years, but her time is running out,”
added Stefano Pitton, commercial
director at Navalmare. “We’ve decided
to put her up for auction in June and if
she doesn’t make the asking price, she’ll
be scrapped.”
The asking price will depend on what
a prospective owner wants to do with
the yacht. If they want to restore and
refit the yacht elsewhere, Navalmare
would do just enough to keep her
afloat for a price somewhere above her
scrap value. Alternatively, the shipyard
is equipped to recondition the vessel
in-house to superyacht standards, but at
considerably higher cost (a conservative
estimate for a full restoration is around
$50 million).
To this end, two Italian design studios
have produced initial concept renders.
Studio Faggiono came up with a series
of highly classic interior designs
GREENYACHTS

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The first American presidential yacht was
the steam vessel Mayflower originally built
for Ogden Goelet, who owned vast swathes
of New York real estate. When the war with
Spain began in 1898, she was converted
into a fast gunboat to suppress would-be
gunrunners out of Havana, Cuba. She
served as Theodore Roosevelt’s presidential
yacht until 1929 and was broken up in 1955.
The US Coast Guard cutter Electra
was renamed USS Potomac in 1936
and served as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s
presidential yacht until his death in
1945. It is thought to be one of only
four presidential yachts still in existence
(including the Williamsburg). Preserved in
Oakland, California, as a National Historic
Landmark, the USS Potomac opened to
the public in 1995 following a 12-year
restoration.
The 92ft commuter-style motorboat
Lenore II, built by the Defoe Boat Works
in Michigan, was renamed Honey Fitz by
John F. Kennedy (after the nickname of
his maternal grandfather). He used the
yacht extensively with his family on the
Potomac River and also in Newport and
Palm Beach. She was sold off by the Nixon
administration and has been privately
owned ever since.
Now privately owned, the wooden-
hulled 1925 USS Sequoia served as the
presidential yacht from Herbert Hoover
to Jimmy Carter and was designated a
National Historic Landmark in 1987.
Under Carter’s direction, she was sold at
auction in 1977 as part of government
cutbacks. Although replaced by the Potomac,
the yacht was assigned to the Secretary of
the Navy and served subsequent presidents
and other government officials.
that are sympathetic to the era when
the Williamsburg was built. Green Yachts
in Genoa developed a sleek exterior
profile that offers a more contemporary
interpretation of the existing lines, and
the studio’s principal, Mattia Massola,
has received at least one serious enquiry
from a US owner.
Touring the yacht reveals the full
extent of the damage wrought by
decades of slow deterioration. Make
no mistake, this is a restoration project
that would require a thoroughly
committed owner with very deep
pockets. A few years ago, fire destroyed
the wheelhouse, but thieves had already
removed objects of historic value such
as the brass fittings and helm wheel.
Most of the hull frames are sound, but
much of the steel plating is corroded
beyond repair and the superstructure
would have to be entirely rebuilt in
aluminium. The engine room houses
two massive 16-cylinder main engines
that could conceivably be saved, but it
would make more sense to replace them
with modern engines that are more
compact, economical and reliable.
Still, the task is not impossible and
there are plenty of precedents. The
1920 Big Class sailing yacht Lulworth
spent years mud-berthed in the River
Hamble, followed by a decade awaiting
restoration in Italy, before being
returned to her former glory (with
interior design by Studio Faggioni) and
relaunched in 2006. Built in 1921 for
Horace Dodge, scion of the American
automobile family, the 78m SS Delphine
was sold at scrap value in 1997, but then
fully restored (including her original
steam engines) at an estimated cost of
$60 million.
Not to mention other presidential
yachts that have undergone loving
restoration, such as Roosevelt’s USS
Potomac, known as the ‘Floating White
House’; USS Sequioa, which served
a long line of presidents; and JFK’s
diminutive Honey Fitz, built in 1931. In
an example of history turning a full
circle, Honey Fitz began life as Lenore II,
escort to Truman’s Williamsburg.
The post-war history of the
Williamsburg is one of big plans and
small budgets. There is just time for one
more big plan before this most lavish of
presidential yachts is condemned to
end her days as nothing more than
scrap metal.
OF A
KINDFOUR
MAKE NO MISTAKE,THIS IS
A RESTORATION PROJECT
THAT WOULD REQUIRE A
THOROUGHLY COMMITTED
OWNER WITH VERY DEEP
POCKETS.
Above: A salon concept from Studio Faggiono,
who came up with a series of highly classic
interior designs.