Private yacht, cruiser in the Spanish War, yacht of five Presidents, hulk, World War II training ship, and now, perhaps, destined for the scrap pile—that is the variety experienced in her forty-nine years of life by the U.S.S. Mayflower. If the last be her fate she need feel no shame, well knowing that for her the signal “Well Done” is flying.
Ogden Goelet who had the ship built at Clyde Bank, Scotland, in 1897, for his own use, died on board in British waters four months after her commissioning. Perhaps unconsciously he prepared the way for the many noted passengers that would be on board, for in the short period of his ownership he entertained the Kaiser, the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII), King Carlos of Portugal, and Grand Duke Boris of Russia.
A number of years later Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, a sister of Mrs. Goelet, was a guest of a young lieutenant, one of the Mayflower officers, for tea. She asked to be shown around the ship, and on seeing one of the staterooms remarked, “This, I remember, was the room of my sister’s French maid.” It happened in the Naval Mayflower to be the room of her host, and from that day he was unable to live down the nickname “Hortense.”
When the Spanish War broke out, the Navy was looking for additional strength afloat. The Mayflower was about to be sold abroad by the Goelet estate. Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt recommended she be purchased to be an improvised torpedo boat destroyer, for which she was suitable because of her “high speed.” Her high speed was not quite seventeen knots.
She was purchased, and under Captain “Bull” MacKenzie took part in the blockade of Cuba and in bombardment. Her torpedo boat destroying is not recorded. She did, however, get herself into the Supreme Court by capturing the British steamer Newfoundland and sending her to Charleston with a prize crew under Ensign William V. Pratt, later Commander-in-Chief, United States Fleet. The Supreme Court ordered the release of the Newfoundland but attached no blame to her captor.
In 1900 the Mayflower, which had been decommissioned after the war, was assigned as station ship in Puerto Rico. Our first civil governor there, Charles Allen, had been importuning the Navy Department for a vessel to facilitate his travel and work, and the Mayflower was assigned, though only for a year. Thus it was that she started for Presidential levels by the familiar and conventional route of governorship—of the five Presidents who used her, three had been governors of states, one a lieutenant-governor, and one governor of the Philippines.
After another year’s rest at the New York Navy Yard the ship was again placed in commission to begin her twenty-six years of Presidential service.
In directing the assignment of the Mayflower for his use when required, President Theodore Roosevelt informed the Navy Department that at no time should she be diverted from any Naval work for which she might be needed. She was several times flagship of Admiral of the Navy George Dewey in inspections and combined fleet maneuvers. She cruised to Europe with the Atlantic Fleet and for a time was assigned to the Caribbean Squadron.
For a yacht the Mayflower was large. Displacing twenty-eight hundred tons and drawing nineteen feet, she was two hundred and seventy-five feet long with forty-five feet of extra length on deck due to the overhang of the bow and stern. She had twin screws. She carried nine officers and a crew of one hundred and ninety, including the Marines who did duty as sentries and orderlies.
The ship’s company berthed forward while the President’s quarters and those of his guests were aft. The President’s dining room seated thirty at one large table, though the berthing space for guests was only half that number.
The way in which the Presidents used the Mayflower differed somewhat but generally followed the pattern established by Theodore Roosevelt. If there were a summer White House on or near the Atlantic, that was very apt to be the summer base of the ship.
It was in Oyster Bay in the summer of 1902 that a President of the United States first set foot aboard, the occasion being a round trip to Sandy Hook. It was in Washington late in 1928 that a President used the Mayflower for the last time, the occasion being a one day Potomac River cruise, a favorite recreation of Coolidge.
That first Roosevelt summer, the ship stuck closely to Oyster Bay. One hot afternoon four governors of western states came aboard unheralded to pay their respects to the President. An officer immediately landed to inform the President and found him working in his garden, in tan shirt and trousers and a sombrero. When told of his visitors and the waiting boat, the President said he had his own boat and would be aboard shortly. A half hour later a row boat containing only its rower was seen approaching and the President, still in his garden clothes, arrived on board, chatted with the somewhat astonished governors, and then rowed himself back ashore.
The next summer the President in the Mayflower reviewed the Atlantic Fleet which had come to Oyster Bay for the purpose. His guests for the review included the Naval Attaches of Russia, Britain, Japan, and Germany, Sir Thomas Lipton, who had been on board previously at Cowes as a guest of Ogden Goelet, and officials of the New York Yacht Club. These yachtsmen were assembled for the America Cup races between the Reliance and the Shamrock III.
The Mayflower had no further Presidential duties for nearly two years when, in 1905, at Oyster Bay the President received on board the members of the Russian-Japanese peace delegations. Upon conclusion of the visit, the Russians aboard the Mayflower and the Japanese aboard the Dolphin proceeded to the Navy Yard at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and carried on their negotiations. The peace treaty was signed in the Navy Yard a month after the original meeting with the President. As an expression of appreciation of hospitality the Russian delegates presented the Mayflower with a very beautiful silver figure of a Russian warrior, now in the Naval Academy Museum.
The first Roosevelt, like the second, was keen about the Navy and was especially interested in the improvement of naval gunnery, to which he contributed much. He used the Mayflower several times to take him to the Fleet to witness target practice. On one occasion, for the benefit of some newspapermen on board he had the Mayflower put over a target. The shooting was none too good but was sufficiently “bully” to induce the President to give each member of the gun crew a five dollar gold piece.
The Navy Department desired that every precaution be taken when the President was in the Mayflower. One of these precautions was Captain William Luckett, who served as Potomac River pilot. Luckett began his duties in the days of Theodore Roosevelt and ended them only when the Mayflower ceased her Presidential service.
Pilot Luckett was a great and somewhat spicy story teller, a staunch Republican and an out-and-out American. He must have been over seventy when the Potomac cruises ended. While he had formerly done commercial piloting on the Potomac, his work became Mayflower only. He loved the ship, and perhaps it was not just coincidence that he died shortly after the end of the Mayflower’s Presidential days.
Luckett had a table of river courses which he never let anyone see, and when the magnetic compass was replaced with a gyroscopic one he was upset for days, and of course, had to make out a new secret table. Meanwhile the ship had its own sailing directions for the river, including such items as “Hopkins red barn abeam, change course to south.” Occasionally the people along the river would paint the landmarks a new color with consequent chagrin to the Navigator.
In 1922 the British cruiser Raleigh, flying the flag of Admiral Packenham, visited Washington, and Luckett piloted her from Chesapeake Bay to the Navy Yard. As the ship neared Washington the Admiral noticed a white building back from the river bank on the port hand and asked what it was. “That, Admiral,” said Luckett, “is Mount Vernon. But don’t worry, George is dead.”
A new captain was perhaps a little nervous the first time he traveled the river in a dense fog. The presence of a pilot in no way relieved him of full responsibility. The Potomac is tidewater to Washington, and the currents, flood and ebb, are of constantly changing strength. This nervousness disappeared after a trip or two with Luckett, who in his many years never suggested anchoring because of fog—never touched bottom.
It was in the latter part of the Theodore Roosevelt regime that the Mayflower began taking parties of distinguished guests to Mount Vernon. The host would be the Secretary of the Navy or some other appropriate official. The party would join at the Washington Navy Yard, and before or after lunch on board, would visit Mount Vernon. The Mayflower was too big to go alongside the Mount Vernon wharf, so the guests landed in boats sent down from the Washington Navy Yard.
The occasions for these trips were varied and numerous. Presidents of South American States, royal princes, foreign delegates to international conventions being held in the United States, foreign Naval Officers whose ships were in American waters—these were among the many groups visiting Mount Vernon. One of the most fitting trips was that in 1920 when the Tercentenary celebration of the First American Legislature in Virginia was held. The hosts were the American branch of the Sulgrave Institute, and the guests were the British branch.
Theodore Roosevelt initiated special ceremonies to be observed by naval vessels passing Mount Vernon, and it became the custom for all Presidents and their guests to be on deck and participate.
In December, 1907, Roosevelt in the Mayflower went to Hampton Roads to see the Atlantic Fleet pass to sea on the first leg of its cruise around the world, an operation very near his heart. On Washington’s birthday, 1909, the President again went to Hampton Roads, this time to welcome the Fleet home—a fitting and inspiring occasion for parting company with the Mayflower, in which this was his last cruise.
President Taft, whose flag next flew from the Mayflower's mainmast, used the ship from Washington for trips to Hampton Roads for a Fleet review or other official purposes. Purely recreational cruises were very rare. As Secretary of War he had borrowed the Mayflower to visit Panama, Puerto Rico, and other Army activities, so he lent her to his own Secretary of War for similar purposes.
The summer White House was in Beverly, Massachusetts, and there Taft used the Mayflower much more, mostly for rest and relaxation. On one occasion she carried President Monet of Chile from Boston to Beverly to visit the President. During two summers Taft and a family party made quite extensive cruises in New England waters.
In 1910 the Ambassador from Brazil died and the Mayflower was designated to carry his body from Washington to Hampton Roads, where it would be transferred to the cruiser North Carolina for return to Brazil. Thus began a new activity for the Mayflower which unfortunately had to be repeated several times for foreign envoys who died at their posts in the United States.
Incoming Presidents with many other things on their minds usually did not think of the Mayflower very early in their administrations. So it was that Wilson had been in office four months before he made his first trip down Chesapeake Bay. A year elapsed before he was on board again, the occasion being graduation at the Naval Academy.
During that year the ship made quite an extensive cruise with the House Naval Affairs Committee which inspected Naval activities on the Atlantic Seaboard. Secretary of the Navy Daniels, who was very fond of the Mayflower, used her when possible for his official trips.
With the coming of World War I and the additional strain it imposed on him, Wilson used the Mayflower more and more for trips within Chesapeake Bay, usually accompanied by a small personal party. President Wilson in these short cruises quite often decided suddenly that he would like to land for a walk or some sight-seeing. It was for just such contingencies that two members of the Presidential Secret Service Squad were always in the party when the President was cruising in the Mayflower. While the President was on board, the Navy was responsible for his safety, but the instant he stepped ashore the Navy’s responsibility ended and that of the Secret Service began.
At the beginning of war in 1914 the Mayflower was assigned duty in lower Chesapeake Bay to prevent the escape to sea of foreign merchant vessels without proper clearance. Evidently nothing tried to escape for, within a month, the ship was back in her normal service.
President Wilson married late in 1915, and thereafter there were many short cruises out of Washington as well as some longer ones to New York. Wilson was a good sailor, and an occasional roll of thirty degrees on each side did not bother him. His summer White House was in New Jersey, and there he joined and landed from the ship at Sandy Hook. Mrs. Wilson in My Memoir makes it very clear how much the Mayflower meant to the President in his fatiguing years in office.
After the Versailles conference President- Elect Pessoa of Brazil visited the United States, and a year later Secretary of State Colby returned the visit, the Mayflower as usual providing transportation to Hampton Roads. It was decided that the Secretary of State, who had never had a flag, should have one, to be flown in his ship. The time was short, and the New York Navy Yard, which makes naval flags, modified the old-type President’s flag. The flag was ostensibly mailed to the Mayflower, but not received. Search was without result, so the Navy had to produce a duplicate which arrived on board only about an hour ahead of the Secretary.
The next day the Captain’s old time Japanese steward, looking very sheepish, said to the Captain, “You know ducks your father-in-law send you last week? I put them in ice box and think we have them for lunch today. I open package and find that flag everybody been looking for.”
It may seem strange to envisage a Japanese steward aboard the President’s yacht, but fifty years ago there were a number of Chinese and Japanese serving in officers’ messes. The number constantly dwindled, but in Mayflower days it was quite usual for the President to have a Chinese or Japanese as his cook or steward. These men had been in the Navy thirty years or more, and of their loyalty there was no question.
The President’s mess was in the status of any officers’ mess and the bills were paid by him. The food was good. One day a Frenchman was seen in the galley talking to the President’s Chinese cook. When asked what it was all about, Ah Loy said, “That Frenchman, he Chef Shoreham Hotel (the Old Shoreham). He come aboard ask me how I make something.”
That same cook, who had been in the Navy and of the Navy many many years and could retire any time he chose, came to the Captain one day. “Captain, Missy President say I retire, go cook White House. What you say?” The Captain told him, “Tell her no can do.” After the next trip Ah Loy asked to see the Captain. “I tell Missy President no can do.” And that ended that.
Due to the illness of -Wilson, the Mayflower made no Presidential trips the latter part of his administration, though the ship was quite active in other ways.
When President Harding came into office in March, 1921, he quite soon evinced interest in the Mayflower and made his first trip very shortly to review the Fleet as it entered Chesapeake Bay from Sea. He used the Mayflower a great deal, not only for week-end trips down the Potomac but for trips to New York and even New England.
If a trip was in the offing and time permitted, his first choice of transportation was the Mayflower. In fact when he was planning his trip west and to Alaska which proved to be his final tour, he originally desired to use the Mayflower for the Alaska leg of the cruise. He hoped, too, to leave the West Coast and return to Washington in the Mayflower via the Panama Canal. He reluctantly gave up the plan when his party grew too big.
At that time the ship was converted from a coal to an oil burner and considerably modernized in other respects. Harding made one short trip in his improved yacht.
Before a trip from Washington a number of books for the guests were borrowed from the Congressional Library, a Presidential privilege. Moving pictures were obtained from the various exchanges, these generally being pre-release films. In the days when carrier pigeons were a part of naval aviation, a number of pigeons were taken on board so that guests might send messages home. If the ship were in the Potomac or Chesapeake Bay on Sunday morning, a plane from the Naval Air Station at Anacostia brought the Sunday morning papers. If Potomac shad were running, the ship stocked up on the spot. The Mayflower originally had its own band, but later a unit was formed within the Navy Band which went to sea when the President did.
In the Harding regime the Mayflower had a bad fire caused by wornout insulation in the original electric wiring system. Had the ship been at sea instead of alongside the dock in Washington, the results might have been very serious. The security of the President was a prime responsibility of the Navy, and it became the custom when the President put out into the Atlantic to have an accompanying destroyer, not only for added security but to provide the President with fast transportation in case the radio called him back to Washington in a hurry. Security reasons, too, kept the Vice President from being invited on cruises.
Harding lent the Mayflower several times to the House of Representatives to take its members as guests of the Marine Corps to spend the day at the Marine Base at Quantico. On the first such trip about twenty representatives decided they would stay on board at Quantico and lunch with the Captain. The elastic Japanese steward produced a fine lunch, and as the Captain was thinking of the hole being made in his pocketbook by the unexpected guests, one of the Congressmen remarked, “We feed you fellows pretty well, don’t we?”
At times the ship would remain for quite long intervals at her berth in the Washington Navy Yard and life would become somewhat monotonous. Many of the ship’s company were oldtimers and married, and quite content to base in Washington. If the younger ones wanted service in the Fleet they were immediately transferred. The crew was a fine one. No effort was made to obtain picked men, and it was a tribute to the character of the Navy’s personnel that very rarely was it necessary to transfer a man from the ship because he was not of Presidential yacht timber.
Occasionally, even in her berth, the ship was called upon for some official activity. During the stay in Washington of H.M.S. Raleigh, whose Admiral had been put in his place by Pilot Luckett, the Mayflower gave an evening party for the visiting British ship. Of course many Washingtonian officials attended, including the British Ambassador, Sir Auckland Geddes, and Lady Geddes. Among the devices arranged for the edification and amusement of the guests was a fortune-telling booth. Lady Geddes was persuaded to have her fortune told, and a few moments later emerged pale and tottering. She sank in a chair and said, “Why, that man told me things that only my husband and I know!” Under the fortune-teller’s turban was a telephone receiving set. Up in the radio room the Ambassador was manning the transmitter, entering into the game completely.
Coolidge, who became President on Harding’s death in August, 1923, made a short river trip a month later. He liked it, and no President made more short trips out of Washington than he. He did not cruise in the Atlantic. One summer the Mayflower based in Marblehead and the President made several short cruises in the vicinity, but otherwise he remained within Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. He was more of a fair weather sailor than his predecessors.
President Coolidge had a yachting cap specially designed for him, along the lines of a Naval Flag Officer’s cap. The instant he stepped abroad the Mayflower his steward handed him the yachting cap and relieved him of his shoregoing headgear. Just as the President was departing from the ship the procedure was reversed. Coolidge was curious about the ship and might be found anywhere looking into the gear and equipment.
Most of the Presidents would give ample notice of their intention to use the ship, if their trips were of such duration as to require food and other arrangements. Coolidge, however, might suddenly decide on a short trip down the Potomac. It was not unknown of a Sunday afternoon at the Washington baseball grounds to hear the loud speaker bawl, “All the Mayflower crew return to their ship immediately!” The Mayflower rightfully ran as an automobile, with no regard for time of day or weather, but the Captain had to do some good guessing in the days of President Coolidge.
When President Hoover came into office he informed the Navy Department he would not use the Mayflower. It was decided to place her out of commission at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, retaining for possible future use her fittings and equipment. There in 1931, she burned and was stricken from the list of Naval Vessels. She was sold as a hulk and towed to Wilmington, North Carolina. The Government again acquired her in World War II, and, commissioned by the Coast Guard in 1943, she did valuable work in personnel training.
It was in the latter part of 1928 that Coolidge made the last Presidential cruise, twenty-six years after Theodore Roosevelt made the first. On April 2, 1929, the Mayflower unmoored from her home berth at the Washington Navy Yard and steamed down the river she knew so well—not to return, not knowing what lay ahead, but proud indeed of what lay behind.