TheUSS Sequoia, a 104-foot wooden yacht built by John Trumpy Sr., served nine U.S. presidents from 1933 to 1977, when President Jimmy Carter decided to sell it. Recently her future has been up for debate.
After passing through many hands, the boat has been laid up in a shipyard in Deltaville, Virginia, since 2014. For now, she sits on the hard, waiting for a conclusion from the legal debates about who is the rightful owner and who should pay to repair the ship.
CBS News reported that last month a judge said FE Partners, a company that has already sunk a fortune into the Sequoia, could purchase it for zero dollars from the Sequoia Presidential Yacht Group LLC. The figure reflects the substantial work that would be required to make Sequoia seaworthy again. But FE Partners is now arguing that the ship is worth millions less.
This video from CBS News has more:
The yacht was built in 1925 in a Camden, New Jersey, shipyard for Richard Cadwalader of Philadelphia. In 1931, Sequoia was bought by the U.S. Department of Commerce, which used the yacht for Prohibition patrol and decoy operations.
In 1933, Sequoia was transferred to the Navy and it served as a floating White House. The yacht hosted events that included President John F. Kennedy’s Cuban Missile Crisis strategy meetings, Gerald Ford’s Cabinet meetings and George H.W. Bush’s meeting with Chinese premier Li Peng.
