Army & Navy: Hardy Perennial

Few ships live long enough to experience as many ups & downs as the onetime U.S. Presidential yacht Mayflower.*

Built at Clydebank, Scotland, in 1896, she was one of the finest steam yachts of her time, a stately and luxurious craft of 1,780 gross tons. (J. P. Morgan’s famed Corsair was 2,181 gross tons.) In 1898 the Navy snapped her up for conversion as an auxiliary war vessel, paying $430,000 to the Ogden Goelet estate. She saw action, took part in the blockade of Havana, chased three Spanish warships, scored a hit on one with a 5-in. shell.

In 1902, she served as Admiral George Dewey’s flagship. A year later she helped quench a flare-up in Panama. In 1905 special envoys of Russia and Japan met on board her during their peace conference at Portsmouth, N. H.

After 1906 the Mayflower settled down to a quieter routine as Presidential yacht: Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Harding, Coolidge reviewed the fleet from her decks. Presidents Taft and Wilson entertained bigwigs on board. In 1929 President Hoover decided she was too costly; she was decommissioned and unsuccessfully offered for sale six separate times. In 1931 she caught fire and sank at her berth in the Philadelphia Navy Yard. Then the Mayflower was put up for scrap, sold to a Chicago bidder for a dismal $16,105. The Chicago firm resold her to a Wilmington, N. C. company, which in turn resold the hulk to the War Department two years ago.

Last week the Coast Guard announced that the 47-year-old Mayflower was getting a complete refit at Norfolk, would soon go to war again, this time as a convoy escort vessel.

* The present Presidential yacht Potomac is a converted Coast Guard cutter of the 165-ft. Icarus type.