USS Sequoia (presidential yacht)

Richard Cadwalader was a prominent Philadelphia banker and his wife, Emily Roebling Cadwalader, was an heiress to the Roebling fortune. Emily was the granddaughter of John Augustus Roebling, chief engineer and original designer of the Brooklyn Bridge, and was named after her paternal aunt, Emily Warren Roebling.[9]

Emily Roebling Cadwalader became the driving force behind the four exceptional yachts constructed for the Cadwaladers, culminating in 1931 with the 446-foot Savarona II.

Local newspapers recount that on October 26, 1925 after arriving with her party in two Rolls-Royce automobiles, Mrs. Cadwalader broke a bottle of champagne against the bow of the Sequoia II commemorating its service to her family. Oddly, these accounts of Sequoia II's christening make no mention of prohibition when discussing the champagne.[5] The Cadwaladers sailed Sequoia II on various high-profile trips to the coasts of Florida during 1925 and 1926, including to West Palm Beach and Miami.[10][11]

Three years after being built for the Cadwaladers, Sequoia II was sold to William Dunning, a Houston-based oil executive who used the vessel for various gambling trips to Cuba and business-related travel along the Mexican coastline.[9] Dunning was forced to sell Sequoia II during the Great Depression.

Herbert Hoover was known to have an affection for Mathis-Trumpy houseboats, such as Sequoia, and had spent time both between his election victory and inauguration and during the early part of his administration cruising and fishing in Florida aboard the yacht Saunterer,[12] a 98-foot Mathis-Trumpy house boat owned by his friend, Jeremiah Milbank.

Having decommissioned the former presidential yacht The Mayflower in 1929, Herbert Hoover initiated Sequoia II's presidential service by using her on various occasions during the final years of his Administration. This included four documented voyages from 1931 to 1933 for official presidential business as well as for pleasure cruises.[13] Various news outlets reported on the status of Hoover's fishing trips aboard Sequoia.[14] During 1932, President and Mrs. Hoover spent both Christmas and New Year's Eve aboard the Sequoia II as part of a ten-day fishing trip along the Georgia and Florida coastlines.[15] Hoover used a photo of the indulgent yacht on his 1932 White House Christmas Card, when many Americans were suffering through the Depression and struggling for basic necessities.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt departs U.S. Naval Academy aboard Sequoia (1935)

President Franklin D. Roosevelt used the yacht more frequently, with over fifty recorded outings between 1933 and 1935.[16] On March 25, 1933, what was now known simply as Sequoia and no longer Sequoia II, became the official presidential yacht after it was transferred from the Department of Commerce to the Naval Department.[17] An elevator was installed to enable access for the polio-stricken President, who, like Hoover before him, enjoyed fishing aboard Sequoia and also used the vessel for important meetings and summits.[17]

On April 23, 1933, President Roosevelt hosted British Prime Minister James Ramsay MacDonald as his first guest on the Sequoia. During a cruise to Mount Vernon they discussed the Great Depression, demilitarization, Adolf Hitler's rise and strategies for averting the threat of a potential new war with Germany.[18][19] As it became clear these efforts were failing and war approached, the wooden Sequoia was deemed unsafe for the President, and on December 9, 1935, Sequoia was officially reassigned to the Secretary of the Navy and the steel-hulled USS Potomac was designated as the presidential yacht.[20] For the next three decades, Sequoia served at the pleasure of the United States Secretary of Navy until its recommissioning in 1969 as a presidential yacht.[20]

President Harry Truman and prime ministers Clement Attlee and Mackenzie King board the Sequoia for discussions about nuclear weapons, November 1945

While serving as the yacht for the Secretary of the Navy, U.S. presidents and members of the Cabinet continued to use the Sequoia, often providing the backdrop for critical moments in American history.

President Harry S. Truman who used the USS Williamsburg as his official yacht, nevertheless called upon Sequoia to host the first atomic arms control talks. Just three months after the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was aboard the Sequoia during a November 1945 cruise down the Potomac past Mount Vernon that Truman first discussed the promise of atomic power and the need to control atomic weapons with the United States' closest allied leaders, Prime Ministers Clement Attlee of Great Britain and Mackenzie King of Canada.[21] On September 16, 1946, then General Dwight David Eisenhower's calendar shows he met aboard the Sequoia with U.S. Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, General Carl Spaatz, and British Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery. This meeting, under the guise of a cruise to Mount Vernon, initiated a series of highly classified political and military discussions from which emerged the Western European Union, which formed in 1948, followed by NATO a year later.[22] General Eisenhower later served from 1951 to 1952 as the first Supreme Commander of NATO.

On election to the presidency, Eisenhower ordered his Joint Chiefs of Staff (including Admiral Arthur W. Radford, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs) to meet on the Sequoia to further formulate and develop a plan for implementing Eisenhower's “New Look” defensive policy. On August 6, 1953, Admiral Radford and his fellow Chiefs set sail in the Chesapeake Bay aboard the Sequoia. The military leaders understood the President wanted a consensus and it was not until late on August 8, once the Chiefs had all signed what would be known as the "Sequoia Report", that the Sequoia returned to Washington.[23] The Sequoia Report helped introduce a defensive strategy to reduce the overall size and cost of the military and rely heavily on nuclear deterrence, a doctrine that would serve as a defining turning point in U.S. strategy during the Cold War.[20]

Secretary of the Navy John Connally welcoming President Kennedy Aboard Sequoia July 11, 1961

President Kennedy's use of Sequoia is not as well documented as that of other presidents. Government photographers did not accompany him on the yacht, and curiously, immediately after his assassination, an order was given to destroy all personal logs associated with Sequoia's use during Kennedy's Administration.[20] At the time, Paul “Red” Fay, one of Kennedy's closest friends and confidants, served as Acting Secretary of the Navy.

John F. Kennedy opening gifts with family and friends on board USS Sequoia May 29, 1963

During October 1962, President Kennedy held strategy meetings on Sequoia to discuss the Cuban Missile Crisis.[24] On May 29, 1963, the Kennedys hosted a cruise to celebrate the President's 46th and final birthday. At 8 pm, the couple boarded Sequoia to the music of two orchestras. With 25 friends and family, the President and his guests danced after a meal of roast filet and Dom Perignon.[25][26] In the words of Clement Norton, a close Kennedy family friend who was aboard that night, “You never can imagine anything happier or more normal or nice.”[27] The iconic photographs documenting the President's last birthday were not taken by an official White House photographer, but by the navy officer in charge of Sequoia using his own Kodak Instamatic camera. Mary Pinchot Meyer's presence at the intimate celebration and her murder the following year have been topics of much speculation.

At the time President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963 he and the First Lady were scheduled to host friends for a Sunday cruise aboard Sequoia, two days later, on November 24, 1963.[28] In April 1964, the widowed Mrs. Kennedy spent an evening aboard Sequoia with a group of President Kennedy's closest friends. Frank Gannon, the piano player aboard that day, recounts a poignantly sad story of Mrs. Kennedy requesting him to play “Me and My Shadow” a song about being alone.[28] On May 27, 1964, two days before what would have been Kennedy's 47th birthday, his closest family and some friends once again gathered aboard Sequoia for a dinner cruise documented by Kennedy speechwriter and presidential historian, Arthur Schlesinger Jr.

President Johnson has dinner with guest aboard the Sequoia as Secret Service Agent Rufus Youngblood stands in the background, July 15, 1965

In an interview after her husband had left office, former first Lady, Lady Bird Johnson, remembered the Johnson's “love affair with the Sequoia goes back indeed to 1949.”[29] Having become friends with then Secretary of the Navy and soon to be Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal, the future president and First Lady had been invited guests aboard the ship on numerous occasions during the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations.[30]

As Kennedy's vice president, Johnson made eight recorded trips aboard Sequoia. As president, Johnson's use of Sequoia would increase, with more than 35 recorded trips during his 5 years in office.[31] During 1964, President Johnson ordered FDR's elevator removed and a bar installed in its place.[32] Johnson used Sequoia to lobby members of congress on critical legislative matters including civil rights and to strategize with his advisors regarding important decisions including escalation of the Vietnam war.[33] Sequoia was used for hosting foreign ambassadors, as well as the leaders of Turkey and Greece who discussed the ongoing issue of Cyprus.[34] President Johnson frequently used Sequoia as a place to unwind and watch a film.

President Nixon and Secretary Brezhnev on board the Sequoia June 19, 1973

Sequoia's most frequent presidential passenger was Johnson's successor, Richard Nixon. President Nixon recorded more than 80 trips aboard the yacht while in office.

On June 19, 1973, when a party of U.S. and Soviet diplomats accompanied the President and General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev on a working dinner aboard the yacht. Throughout their cruise, the leaders discussed an agreement between the U.S. and U.S.S.R regarding the prevention of nuclear war, which was signed by President Nixon and General Secretary Brezhnev two days later on June 22, 1973 during the Washington Summit.[35] It was aboard the Sequoia that President Nixon decided to resign and informed his family.[36] In a 1983 interview conducted by Frank Gannon of the Nixon Foundation titled, "The Smoking Gun and the Sequoia" former president Nixon describes the August 5, 1974 cruise aboard the Sequoia during which he learned a Court had ordered him to release - the transcript of a tape recording that showed he approved the cover-up of the Watergate break-in.[37]

President Gerald Ford holds a Cabinet meeting Aboard the Sequoia May 1975

Following President Nixon's resignation on August 9, 1974, Gerald Ford assumed the presidency. Ford used Sequoia less than Nixon. In May 1975, Ford was the first known president to host a Cabinet meeting aboard the vessel. Lasting four hours, the President and his cabinet discussed wide-ranging issues facing the United States, including a discussion regarding Congressional relations, confronting the issue of Vietnamese refugees, and the status of the U.S. Energy program in light of the 1973 oil crisis.[38]

Later that summer, Mrs. Nelson Rockefeller, wife of Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, entertained Mrs. Takeo Miki (wife of the Prime Minister of Japan) on a cruise along the Potomac during a state visit.[39] Similarly, in October, 1975, the yacht would cruise along the Potomac to entertain Emperor Hirohito and the accompanying delegation from Japan. Another notable visitor aboard the Sequoia during the Ford years was the prime minister of Canada, Pierre Trudeau, who in 1976, had a working dinner with the President aboard Sequoia.[40]

President Ford celebrated his 62nd birthday on the Sequoia shortly after a surprise party given by White House staff.[41] In 1975, Susan Ford hosted a pre-prom party aboard the yacht with a group of friends, and then celebrated her 19th birthday aboard Sequoia the following year.[42] First Lady Betty Ford hosted a June 9, 1976 Sequoia cruise in celebration of Happy Rockefeller's 50th birthday.[43]

After 46 years of government service, citing cost concerns – the Sequoia cost taxpayers an estimated $800,000 annually – President Carter ordered the Sequoia be sold at auction. Carter would later recall selling the yacht as a mistake. In a conversation with broadcaster Ray Suarez, Carter said: “People thought I was not being reverent enough to the office I was holding, that I was too much of a peanut farmer, not enough of an aristocrat, or something like that. So I think that shows that the American people want something of, an element of, image of monarchy in the White House.”[44] In his 2015 autobiography "A Full Life: Reflections at 90" Presidential Carter wrote of selling Sequoia, "I was determined to be strict on expenditures for the nation, and to set an example in my personal life. I decided to sell the presidential yacht Sequoia, and to minimize the playing of “Ruffles and Flourishes” when I arrived at public meetings. I was surprised when some of these changes proved to be quite unpopular, and to learn how much the public cherished the pomp and ceremony of the presidency."

Sequoia served as refuge for presidents to relax with friends and conduct business outside of the public spotlight. As a result, no official documentary evidence exists for many events which took place aboard the yacht, and certain lore has developed, particularly regarding British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's activities aboard Sequoia. This includes, but is not limited to, Churchill and Roosevelt planning D-day together on the large table in Sequoia's main salon, Churchill gifting deck chairs from the Queen Mary for Sequoia's upper deck and Churchill being the impetus behind Roosevelt decommissioning the USS Sequoia so that the two leaders could drink on board – alcoholic beverages were prohibited aboard commissioned naval vessels. Despite these persistent legends, Churchill was never documented as being aboard the yacht.