Currents: The Potomac Blog
Grounded at Shangri-La
In the fall of 1941 after five years of maritime service including on ocean waters, a panel of Coast Guard inspectors suddenly announced that the USS Potomac was unseaworthy. The cause given was that she was “top heavy” with a new deck added when...
FDR’s Run for a Third Term as Planned on the USS Potomac
George Washington set the precedent, reinforced by Thomas Jefferson, of a two-term limit for United States presidents. It was challenged 141 years later by Franklin D. Roosevelt. He had won two terms by landslides in 1932 and 1936. No president...
USS Potomac’s Role in President Roosevelt’s Tehran Conference
Recent release of the bestselling book, “The Nazi Conspiracy, the Secret Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin & Churchill,” reminds us of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1943 North Africa/Middle East trip including the first meeting with Winston...
Potomac’s Filipino Mess Crew
The Spanish-American conflict was a “splendid little war[1]” that marked America’s entry as an imperial power into world affairs. Coincidentally that same splendid little war was the origin of the USS Potomac’s all-Filipino mess crew and...
Short Term Skipper President Harry S. Truman
Vice President Harry Truman liked to spend afternoons with a bourbon and branch at House Speaker Sam Rayburn’s “Board of Education” hideaway. When he arrived on April 12, 1945, Rayburn told Truman to call Steve Early in the White House...
From a “Rum Chaser” to a “Drug Runner”
For fourteen years between1920 and late 1933, the United States was “dry.” The 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, “Volstead Act,” prohibited alcoholic sales, manufacture, and consumption throughout the United States. Still...