Currents: The Potomac Blog
Florida Fishing Trip 1941 & The Lend-Lease Act of 1941 (The Aid to Democracies Act)
USS POTOMAC MINI-HISTORY BY WALTER ABERNATHY The mooring was poor, the seas rough. The Presidential Yacht, the USS Potomac, was rolling continually from 25 to 30 degrees and yawed wildly during the night of March 26, 1941, while anchored at Settlement Point in the...
USS Potomac Passenger With Most On-board Miles (Franklin D. Roosevelt excepted)
Murray the Outlaw of FalahillFALAApril 17, 1940 – April 5, 1952Sources: Fala Biography - FDR Library & Museum, Hyde Park; US Navy Ship Logs USS Potomac (AG25) Fala was President Roosevelt’s usual companion on his many cruises on the USS Potomac, including in...
FDR’s Texas Fishing Trip – May 1937
USS POTOMAC MINI-HISTORY BY WALTER ABERNATHY FDR’s Texas Fishing Trip - May 1937 After dinner on April 27, 1937, FDR left the White House to overnight on his special train en route to New Orleans and a rendezvous with his Presidential Yacht USS Potomac. The train...
King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Luncheon Cruise – June 9, 1939
USS POTOMAC MINI-HISTORY BY WALTER ABERNATHY King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Luncheon Cruise - June 9, 1939 King George VI1 was the first reigning British monarch to visit the United States. It was June 1939, when war in Europe was imminent. Three months earlier,...
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...