Historic Ships on a Lee Shore
Reaper FR 958
Sequoia on Hard Times Again—A Dispatch From Washington
national historic ships, uk
More than ninety years ago, the elegant, wooden Trumpy yacht Sequoia was launched as a private yacht in Camden, New Jersey, for a wealthy Philadelphian. Six years later in 1931, she was purchased by the US government to help enforce Prohibition. She was later co-opted by President Herbert Hoover who used her as his official presidential yacht, which came with a commission in the US Navy. With that change
photo by ann stevens
in status she became USS Sequoia (AG-23). The 103-foot yacht was subsequently used in this capacity by Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford, but in 1977, President Jimmy Carter ordered her sold into private hands. Three years later, the Sequoia was discovered in a deteriorating condition in Florida and was bought by a small group of concerned citizens who founded the Presidential Yacht Trust. The Trust’s goal was to restore and return the vessel to the Washington for eventual use by the White House; they secured use of a private dock for her on the Washington Channel alongside Potomac Park. Sequoia was fully restored in Norfolk, Virginia, and put back into service, operating on the Potomac River for the next five years, cruising with VIPs to and from the Washington Navy Yard, to Alexandria and Mount Vernon; she spent the winter months each year in Florida. In 1986, under my command, Sequoia made a 6,000-mile tour on American waterways. The Presidential Yacht Trust later succumbed to financial troubles and laid the vessel up for the next decade. In 2000 Sequoia was acquired by a private owner and remained in Washington, DC, and the Chesapeake Bay area. After disputes between owners and lenders, a 2015 lawsuit ensued, leaving the yacht laid up in a Virginia boatyard awaiting a court decision over her future ownership. During this time in the yard, she was exposed to the elements with very little attention given to her Sequoia, 2008 maintenance. The 2016 court ruling included this report on the vessel’s condition: “The Sequoia, an elderly and vulnerable wooden yacht, is sitting on an inadequate cradle on an undersized marine railway in a moribund boatyard on the western shore of the Chesapeake, deteriorating and, lately, home to raccoons.” The court recently awarded her to a Washington bank. The bank has not announced its plans for her, but it is clear she is in need, once again, of a major overhaul. —Captain Giles M. Kelly, USNR (Ret.) 54
photo by tcy wkipedia.com cc-by-sa 3.0
Sequoia underway in the 1980s.
the most comprehensive restoration performed on the vessel since 1903. For the past thirty years, Reaper has sailed as outreach ambassador for the museum, the Fife region, and for Scotland, and in the past few years the vessel has visited more than fifty locations in the UK and received nearly 180,000 visitors. Eagle-eyed fans of the popular television series Outlander will recognize Reaper as a backdrop for that program. Reaper is a Fife sailing herring drifter, an example of the most popular design of fishing boat on the East Coast of Scotland for the greater part of the 19th and early 20th centuries. She was built in 1901 as a two-masted sailing lugger by J. & G. Forbes Ltd of Sandhaven. She continued fishing until the outbreak of World War II, when she was requisitioned by the Admiralty and saw service in the south of England. After the war she returned to fishing until 1957. Between 1959 and 1974, renamed Shetlander, she carried general cargoes. The vessel was acquired in 1975 by the museum, which restored the vessel to her original 1902 rig and renamed her Reaper FR 958. Considered part of National Historic Ships UK’s core collection, she is a rare example of such a vessel kept in seagoing condition. The restoration is scheduled to be completed by May 2018. (www.nationalhistoricships.org.uk) ... Following the completion of a new state-ofthe-art shoreside gaming facility, the Tropicana Riverboat Casino departed the waterfront of Evansville, Indiana, on 30 October, making room for the SEA HISTORY 161, WINTER 2017–18