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The Floating White House: A Brief History of the Presidential Yacht

By: Evan Andrews

Updated: October 31, 2023 | Original: August 18, 2017

Before there was Air Force One, there was the presidential yacht. Dating back to the 19th century, America’s chief executives utilized navy ships and other vessels for recreation and entertaining foreign dignitaries. Nearly a dozen different ships acted as the “Floating White House” between 1880 and 1977, when the last vessel was sold at auction. During that time, they were the scene of international diplomatic summits, congressional schmoozing and the occasional Potomac River pleasure cruise.

The executive yacht “served an important purpose in enabling Presidents to escape the claustrophobic tension of the White House,” former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has written. It “provided a quiet sanctuary; it was handier than Camp David, easier for casual, informal discussions.”

Abraham Lincoln made use of a steamboat called the River Queen during the Civil War , but the first official presidential yachts date to the Gilded Age. Starting in 1880, America’s commanders in chief sailed aboard a series of Navy vessels including  USS Despatch , USS Dolphin and USS Sylph . In 1886, Despatc h famously ferried Grover Cleveland across New York Harbor for the dedication of the Statue of Liberty .

Presidential boating entered a new era in the early 1900s, when  USS Mayflower took over as the chief executive’s official yacht. Unlike earlier vessels, which were relatively austere in their design, Mayflower was a luxury craft previously owned by real estate millionaire Ogden Goelet. Measuring some 275 feet from stem to stern, it boasted a crew of over 150 and had a sumptuous interior that included a 30-person dining table and bathtubs made from Italian marble.

USS Mayflower is most famously associated with Theodore Roosevelt , who often used it and  USS Sylph for family vacation cruises along Long Island. A more official use came in August 1905, when Roosevelt hosted Japanese and Russian envoys aboard  Mayflower as part of his attempts to mediate peace talks in the Russo-Japanese War . He would later win the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in ending the conflict.

Mayflower served as a presidential plaything for over two decades. Woodrow Wilson is said to have wooed his second wife Edith Bolling Galt during romantic jaunts aboard the ship, and Calvin Coolidge reportedly loved the yacht so much he stationed a Navy chaplain aboard so that he could take Sunday morning cruises without being accused of skipping church. Nevertheless, the ship’s opulence proved to be a sticking point with critics of presidential excess. In 1929, with economic concerns on the rise, Herbert Hoover  finally had  Mayflower decommissioned.

Mayflower was the largest and stateliest of the presidential yachts, but it wasn’t the last. Hoover—a devoted fisherman—soon began making day trips on a wooden-hulled vessel called USS Sequoia , and he eventually grew so attached to it that he had it featured on his 1932 Christmas card. Franklin D. Roosevelt began his tenure with Sequoia , but later switched to USS Potomac, a 165-foot former Coast Guard cutter that included a special elevator to help the wheelchair-bound president move between decks.

FDR occasionally utilized the ship for official business—it carried him to a 1941 meeting with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill —but it was more frequently used for presidential leisure. In his book Sailor in the White House: The Seafaring Life of FDR , author Robert Cross writes that Potomac provided Roosevelt with “an instant means of extricating himself from the confines of Washington. Roosevelt could escape to the open water, where he could do some politicking and thinking, or relax and entertain on deck with friends and advisors, or simply throw a fishing line overboard and patiently wait for a bite.”

Recreation was also the main role of the presidential yachts during the administration of Harry Truman , who hosted floating poker games aboard Sequoia and the 243-foot USS Williamsburg. Dwight D. Eisenhower was more of a landlubber than his predecessors, but sea excursions became popular again in the 1960s, when Sequoia resumed its former role as the main presidential yacht. John F. Kennedy —who also utilized a yacht called Honey Fitz and a sailboat called Manitou —celebrated his final birthday with a party aboard Sequoia. Lyndon B. Johnson installed a liquor bar and enjoyed having movies projected on the main deck.

As the longest serving of the executive yachts, Sequoia played host to several chapters in presidential history. The 104-foot vessel was a more humble affair than many of the other yachts, but the seclusion of its elegant, mahogany-paneled saloon made it an ideal location for sensitive political discussions. Harry Truman talked nuclear arms policy aboard the ship with the prime ministers of Britain and Canada. In the mid-1960s, Lyndon Johnson used yacht trips to hash out Vietnam strategy and lobby legislators to support his Great Society domestic reforms. “The Sequoia was a rostrum from which he was trying to persuade congressmen and senators,” former Johnson aide Jack Valenti said.

Richard Nixon was undoubtedly the most the enthusiastic user of  Sequoia. The 37th president reportedly made as many as 100 trips aboard the yacht, including one in which he met with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev to negotiate the S ALT I nuclear arms agreement . Near the end of his second term, Nixon also used  Sequoia as a hideout from the controversies of the Watergate scandal . During one final cruise in August 1974, the embattled president reportedly informed his family of his decision to resign before retiring to the ship’s saloon, quaffing a glass of scotch and playing God Bless America on the piano.

The age of the presidential yacht came to a close in 1977. That year, newly inaugurated Jimmy Carter ordered that  Sequoia be offloaded in a public sale. Carter later noted that he was disturbed by the yacht’s $250,000 annual upkeep, but he was also following through on a campaign promise to dispense with the extravagance of the presidency. “Despite its distinguished career, I feel that the Presidential yacht Sequoia is no longer needed,” he wrote in a memo to his Secretary of Defense.

Today, Sequoia and  Potomac are the only two former presidential yachts still in existence. Potomac went through several different owners after its presidential service—including Elvis Presley —and is now moored in Oakland, California. Sequoia, though currently inactive and in a state of disrepair, was once used as a floating museum and private charter boat, and still retains much of its presidential memorabilia. Both vessels are now registered as National Historic Landmarks.

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What Ever Happened to the Presidential Yacht?

The "floating White House" once provided a venue for American officials, prom parties, and leisurely afternoons offshore. Now it's rotting away in a boatyard and has become home to raccoons.

• The USS Sequoia was built in 1925 and served eight presidents before Jimmy Carter put it up for auction in 1977
• John F. Kennedy added a king-size bed to the yacht and celebrated his 46th birthday on the boat. Marilyn Monroe may have also joined him for a cruise or two.
• It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1987 and commanded rental fees of $10,000 a day at one point.
• It's now reportedly deteriorating in a Virginia boatyard. Following a prolonged legal battle, a judge last year awarded a Washington, D.C.-based company the right to acquire it for $0.

Presidents travel in style. Perks of the office include a custom Boeing 747 for long range journeys, a Sikorsky Sea King helicopter for shorter jaunts, and an apocalypse-proof armored Cadillac limousine, nicknamed "the Beast," for ground transit. As luxurious as this sounds, one form of transportation has been conspicuously absent from the chief executive's lineup for 40 years: the presidential yacht.

Numerous ships have been commissioned to carry the president since 1880. The longest serving and most famous among them is the USS Sequoia , which carried eight presidents as a "floating White House" from 1933 until 1977. Docked at Pier One in the Washington Navy Yard, the presidential yacht provided an easily accessible and secure location for conducting meetings, entertaining dignitaries, and avoiding media scrutiny.

Designed by renowned Norwegian naval architect Johan Trumpy in 1925, the 104-foot, mahogany-hulled motor yacht could sleep six and accommodate 40 revelers for cocktails on the spacious aft-deck or 22 guests for a formal dinner in the salon. Trumpy yachts represented the pinnacle of seafaring luxury in their day and were sought out by titans of industry like DuPont, Chrysler, Firestone, and Dodge for their speed, range, and comfort.

Purchased from a Texas oil tycoon by the U.S. Government in 1931, the Sequoia was briefly deployed by the Department of Commerce as a decoy ship on the Mississippi in an effort to capture rum-runners during Prohibition. It was officially commissioned by the Navy in 1933 and President Hoover promptly sailed the newly christened USS Sequoia to Florida for a sport-fishing expedition. President Hoover had decommissioned the 318-foot USS Mayflower as an austerity measure early in his term but was so fond of the Sequoia that he featured it on the White House Christmas card in 1932. A move that many construed as callous as he sought to steer the country out of the depths of the Great Depression.

Franklin Roosevelt also fished from Sequoia , often pulling perch from the Potomac River, but primarily used the boat for more serious matters. During World War II he and Winston Churchill discussed military strategies on board, meetings that required FDR to officially decommission the ship to accommodate the prime minister who would not drink on a Navy vessel. The change in official status allowed for the guilt-free consumption of "Churchill Martinis" while the two discussed D-Day cruising the Chesapeake.

Each president updated Sequoia to serve his personal needs and tastes. FDR installed an elevator to more easily access each deck by wheelchair, and Harry Truman added a spinet piano to the main salon. LBJ lowered the floor of the shower to accommodate his six-foot-four frame and replaced FDR's elevator with a wet bar.

John F. Kennedy, whose modifications included the addition of a king-size bed, used Sequoia sparingly. He did celebrate his 46th, and final, birthday on board, however, and it is rumored that Marilyn Monroe joined him for a cruise or two. It is hard to know for sure, though, as a crewmember destroyed all of the relevant ship's logs after Kennedy's death.

Richard Nixon was the most avid sailor of the Sequoia , logging 88 trips while in office. Some voyages were better than others. He negotiated the SALT I nuclear arms treaty with General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev on board and anguished over the decision to resign with a bottle of scotch at Truman's piano. He went on to announce to his family the plan to resign the presidency, rather than face impeachment, while cruising the Potomac.

The first family was often aboard but no presidential offspring made better use of Sequoia than Gerald Ford's daughter, Susan. She and friends from Holton Arms School enjoyed the sunset and a dinner of beef stroganoff in the main salon before celebrating their senior prom at the White House in 1975. She also celebrated her 19th birthday on board and joined her father for many of his cabinet meeting-cum-dinner parties, which the gregarious president visibly enjoyed.

In an interview about the Sequoia with Newsweek in 2012, Henry Kissinger explained the unique day-to-day role of the yacht: "It's important for the president to be by himself, to remove himself from the machinery of the White House. Of course, he can get on a plane and go to Florida or anywhere else, but that requires throwing the machinery into motion. But here, he just can say at five o'clock, 'I'm going to the boat, I'm taking four or five people. And you don't have to call it a meeting and you don't have to prepare the papers.'"

Its reputation as a diplomatic instrument and suitable refuge for wary presidents could not protect the Sequoia from the prevailing political tides of 1977. The tab for keeping the Sequoia shipshape and staffed was running $800,000 a year when Jimmy Carter took office, and he viewed the expense as "unjustified and unnecessary." In keeping with his campaign promise to trim the trappings of the "Imperial Presidency," President Carter ceremoniously auctioned it off for $236,000, bringing to an end the era of the presidential yacht.

For many years following President Carter’s sale, the Sequoia enjoyed celebrity status in the private sector. Famed not only for her long service to presidents, but also as one of the best-preserved Trumpys still floating, the yacht commanded rental fees of $10,000 per day. The Sequoia was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1987 and renters were able to experience a yacht preserved to presidential standards.

As with all wooden hulled vessels, the Sequoia required near constant maintenance, often having to be hauled out of the water for repairs. During one such refit Washington attorney Gary Silversmith, whose Sequoia Presidential Yacht Group LLC operated the vessel, became entangled in a lawsuit with a lender . The boat remained "on the hard" (on land) as the case wound its way through the courts, allowing it to fall further into disrepair.

Vice Chancellor Sam Glassock, the presiding judge in the case, noted the depressing state of the once-glamorous ship in his 2016 ruling : "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."

Glassrock ruled that FE Partners LLC , a joint venture between the D.C.-based Equator Capital Group and members of an Indian family with connections to the mining and shipping industry, could acquire the yacht for $0. FE Partners, which also owns Joseph P. Kennedy’s 31-foot yawl Tenovus, has said it plans to return the Sequoia to her home waters once the raccoons are evicted and the restoration is completed.

This will be no small feat but Michael Cantor, managing partner at Equator Capital Group, is determined to see Sequoia sail again. He speculates that journey will require a specialized crane to remove the yacht from the marine railway to a boatyard staffed with at least 20 historically trained shipwrights who will need to source three specific types of wood for the keel, frame, and hull. The price tag for the restoration could ultimately reach into the millions of dollars, but to Cantor the cost and effort are worthwhile to preserve what he views as the most significant piece of American history in private hands. He adds that should any president want to use the yacht once it is completed, it will certainly be available to them.

Throughout its storied career, the Sequoia bore witness to all the hallmarks of the modern presidency: historic feats of diplomacy, alleged extramarital affairs, and Russian intrigue. The office still claims many of those traits, but it no longer has the yacht. That ship has sailed.

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• Bell Harbor 2023
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• Presidential Yachts

1. River Queen

Served grant and lincoln, 1865-1866, 2. uss despatch , 1873, served cleveland, 1880-1891, 3. uss dolphin 1884.

Dolphin was the first Navy ship to fly the Flag of the President of the United States during President Chester A. Arthur's administration, and the second Navy ship to serve as a presidential yacht.

4. USS Sylph , 1890

USS Sylph (PY-5) was a steam yacht that served as a presidential yacht from the late 19th century through to the early 1920s. A converted yacht, she was purchased in June 1898 from her builder, the Delaware River Iron Shipbuilding and Engine Works, of Chester, Pennsylvania, and commissioned on 18 August 1898 at the Norfolk Navy Yard.

5. USS Mayflower , 1896

Mayflower —a luxurious steam yacht built in 1896 by J. and G. Thompson, Clydebank, Scotland for millionaire Ogden Goelet who died on board the Mayflower in August 1897.  The following year she was purchased by the U.S. Navy to help fight the Spanish Navy off Cuba.  Around 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt had her re-purposed as a presidential yacht, which could be used to conduct diplomacy in addition to serving as a nautical means of transportation for the Commander-in-Chief. With her long bowsprit, tall masts, elegant lines, and white paint, she was sure to make a good impression on visiting foreign diplomats. In fact, that same year aboard the ship President Roosevelt hosted the formal negotiations between Russia and Japan to end the Russo-Japanese War. The  Mayflower  continued to serve as the presidential yacht under Presidents Taft, Wilson, Harding, and Coolidge. One of Herbert Hoover's early acts as president was to dispense with Mayflower as an economy measure, saving upkeep costs of $300,000 per year. (More about Mayflower at the Coolidge Foundation .)

6. USS Sequoia , 1925

The yacht is 104 feet (32 m) long, with a wooden hull, and was designed by John Trumpy Sr., a well-known shipbuilder. It includes a presidential stateroom, guest bedrooms, a galley and dining room, and was at one time retrofitted with an elevator for Franklin D. Roosevelt (Lyndon Johnson had it removed and replaced with a liquor bar).

The ship was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1987. Following years of neglect and legal battles over ownership, Sequoia is last reported to be in extremely poor condition in Chesapeake Boat Works in Deltaville, Virginia (2017). Her owners estimate that removal of the yacht would require a specialized crane and complete reconstruction of the hull.

7. USS Potomac , 1934

USS Potomac (AG-25) , formerly USCGC Electra , was Franklin Delano Roosevelt's presidential yacht from 1936 until his death in 1945. A National Historic Landmark, Potomac is now berthed in Oakland, CA, and is available for public tours and cruises.  https://www.usspotomac.org

Potomac is also an Honorary Member of the CYA.

8. USS Williamsburg , 1930

The USS Williamsburg   relieved Potomac as presidential yacht on 10 November 1945. She served Presidents Truman and Eisenhower.

During Truman’s tenure, she embarked such American and foreign notables as Secretary of State George Marshall, President Miguel Alemán of Mexico; and two successive British Prime Ministers, Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee. During the ship's first tour as presidential yacht, she cruised the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay regions, while occasionally venturing into the open sea for cruises to Florida, Bermuda, Cuba, and the Virgin Islands.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, made only one cruise in Williamsburg before ordering her decommissioned.  Accordingly decommissioned at the Washington Navy Yard on 30 June 1953, she was turned over to the Potomac River Naval Command for maintenance and preservation. Subsequently shifted to Newport, Rhode Island, she remained in "special status" from about 2 April 1959. Williamsburg was struck from the Navy list on 1 April 1962.

9. Honey Fitz , 1931

The 93-foot wooden yacht was originally built in 1931 by Defoe Shipyard in Bay City, Michigan for Sewell Avery, a prominent businessman from Chicago, who mostly used it to cruise around Lake Michigan. On June 23, 1945, Lenore became a tender for the USS Potomac . Retaining the yacht’s original name, Truman renamed the tender the yacht Lenore II and mainly used her as a tender for the Williamsburg .

Eisenhower decided the Williamsburg was “too rich for my blood,” and retired her, choosing instead the Lenore II, which he renamed Barbara Anne after one of his granddaughters.

The wooden yacht acquired a more public profile in the 1960’s during John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s presidency. JFK renamed her Honey Fitz , the nickname used by his maternal grandfather.

Johnson continued to use the yacht during his administration, mainly for dinner and cocktail parties.

By the time Nixon came to office, the Honey Fitz was a well-known yacht. Although Nixon renamed the yacht Patricia after his wife, the press and indeed everyone, continued to think of the yacht as Honey Fitz. Nixon sold Honey Fitz in 1970.

Honey Fitz has been fully restored and is available for charters in Florida. Honey Fitz Facebook page

10. Manitou , 1937

Manitou is a 62-foot-long performance cruising yacht designed and built for racing. She served as J.F.K.'s yacht during his presidency. She was built in 1937 at the M. M. Davis & Son shipyard in Solomons Island, Maryland, Design No. 99 of naval architects Sparkman & Stephens, who built many America's Cup racing yachts.

After a successful racing career, Manitou was sold in 1955 and donated to the US Coast Guard to be used as a training vessel at the United States Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut.

President Kennedy used Manitou while he was in office. Manitou was returned to private ownership in 1968 when she became a training vessel for the Harry Lundenburg School of Seamanship in Maryland.

She had an extensive refit in 2011, and is now in the Medeterranean and available for charter on the French Riveira.

U.S. State Yachts

1. washington state: olympus , 1929.

Launched as "Junaluska" in 1929, the yacht came west in the thirties and was used by the military in WWII.  Following the war she was acquired by the State of Washington and renamed Olympus .  She was ostensibly intended as a fisheries patrol vessel, but was actually used as a yacht by the governor, Mon Walgren.  After failing to win re-election in 1948, the state sold the yacht. 

Current location: New York

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The Floating White House was originally commissioned as the USCG Cutter Electra in 1934. In 1936, it was renamed the USS Potomac and served as Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Presidential Yacht until his death in 1945.

More than half a million people have visited and sailed aboard the former president's beloved floating white house, the uss potomac, since it opened to the public in the summer of 1995. over a 12-year period, $5 million was spent to restore the 165-foot-long vessel as a memorial to the president who authored the new deal and led the united states during the great depression and the world war ii years. join us aboard this national historic landmark for a cruise on the bay.

Watch the fascinating, colorful history of the USS Potomac.

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Picture your family and friends around you to witness the beginning of your life’s greatest adventure on one of the most beautiful wedding venues in the Bay Area. Have your ceremony dockside or while cruising beautiful San Francisco Bay. For information or to schedule your wedding event, call (510) 627-1215 or email: [email protected].

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Main Content

USS Potomac: Franklin Roosevelt's Presidential Yacht

Evan Phifer Research Historian

How Long? 6 minutes

Many presidents have used ships for both relaxation and diplomacy. From fishing to meetings with foreign dignitaries, water travel provides variety and a momentary change of scenery from life and work in the White House.

From 1936 to 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt enjoyed travel aboard the USS Potomac . The ship, originally named the Electra , was built in 1934 as a Coast Guard Cutter and was commissioned by the U.S. Navy in 1936 after refitting and trial runs at Norfolk Navy Yard and in the Chesapeake Bay. 1 Roosevelt desired a historically inspired name for the ship that would not cause confusion between ships already in service. After consulting with Captain Wilson Brown, his naval aide, the president decided on the name Potomac .

This new ship was preferred over the previous presidential yacht, the Sequoia , partly because of security concerns. While the Sequoia was made of wood, the Potomac was made of steel, which made the ship less fire-prone. The larger ship was also able to accommodate more members of the Secret Service protecting the president onboard. 2

The ship was not only used for recreation but also for informal political and diplomatic meetings. To accommodate the president’s need for wheelchair accessibility, a concealed elevator was installed in what had been the rear funnel to carry the president from the main deck to the boat deck.

USS Potomac , ca. 1938

Show Me More

Roosevelt delivered one radio address from the Potomac . His remarks gave insight into his enjoyment and relaxation while aboard the ship. During a March 29, 1941 address to participants of annual Jackson Day fundraising dinners, he said, “I am sitting in the little cabin of the little ship Potomac, in the harbor of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after a day of sunshine out in the Gulf Stream . . . I try to get away a couple of times a year on these short trips on salt water. . . Even when I go to Hyde Park or to Warm Springs, the White House office, the callers, and the telephones all follow me. But at sea the radio messages and the occasional pouch of mail reduce official work to not more than two or three hours a day.” 3

During the 1936 presidential campaign, Roosevelt once told his opponent, Kansas Governor Alfred “Alf” Landon, “If you are elected President, I can give you one good piece of advice. Get yourself a boat to go down the Potomac.” 4

While relaxing on board, the president fished, read detective stories, and worked on his stamp collection. On Sundays, a sea plane would often land alongside the ship to deliver newspapers, mail and anything requiring the president's signature. 5 Newspapers occasionally reported on the fishing prowess of the president, with one paper commenting on a 1936 fishing trip that, “when the yacht reached Caicos Island in the Bahamas . . . the Roosevelt luck returned. . . the catch including large kingfish, mackerel, groupers and barracuda.” 6

One of the most well-known prewar uses of the boat occurred during the June 1939 visit of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain. The ship carried the royal couple and President and Mrs. Roosevelt down the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. to nearby Mount Vernon, the former home of George Washington. Newspapers described the ship with the royal standard of the King of England on the foremast and the U.S. presidential flag on the main mast. 7 A 21-gun salute greeted the royal couple as they entered the Navy Yard prior to boarding. Soon after arriving at the first president’s estate, the Potomac was moored to dock where one news reporter noted, “the stifling, windless day had left the river flat and seemingly motionless as the vessel was tied against the wharf.” After a tour of Mount Vernon and a visit to Washington’s tomb, the royal and presidential entourage returned to Washington, D.C. via automobile. 8

The USS Potomac with President Franklin Roosevelt and the King and Queen of Great Britain onboard as the ship travels from Washington to Mount Vernon and back on June 9, 1939.

The ship was also used in August 1941 as part of a stealth operation while President Roosevelt secretly met with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to draft the Atlantic Charter. 9 Afterwards, President Roosevelt hosted a press conference onboard the Potomac in which he explained the secrecy of the meeting, given the potential threat of a German submarine attack: “Things of that kind cause trouble, if you make known the exact location on the high seas of the President and the Prime Minister.” 10

After the death of President Roosevelt, the Potomac was decommissioned. Under President Harry S. Truman, the Williamsburg , a former World War II gunboat, became the new presidential yacht. 11 Before the Williamsburg became the official presidential yacht in September 1945, Truman and his family enjoyed the Potomac briefly, including one early May 1945 Potomac River excursion. 12

For several decades, the Potomac served a variety of roles for a number of owners. Briefly returned to the Coast Guard, the Potomac resided in Maryland for about a decade. The ship then served as a ferry between Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. The ship was then taken to California with the intention of serving as an attraction at the 1962 Seattle World Fair. This plan failed and it seemed as if the historic ship was destined for the scrap heap.

Music legend Elvis Presley intervened and bought the ship in 1964 with the desire that it be given to the March of Dimes Foundation and preserved as a “national shrine.” Elvis’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker said of Presley’s intentions that “Elvis feels the yacht could be a strong source for donations in memory of the late Presidents Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy.” 13 The foundation, concerned over maintenance cost and the overall mission of their organization declined the offer with regret.

President Franklin Roosevelt enjoys time aboard the Potomac while on the Hudson River in 1937.

After several more owners, the ship sank after being towed to Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay when several pilings pierced her hull. Raised two weeks later, the ship was sold by U.S. Customs to the Port of Oakland. Spearheaded by the Port, the Potomac was preserved and restored during a 14 year collaborate effort by President Roosevelt's son, James, multiple organizations, and many dedicated volunteers.

The Potomac , now a National Historic Landmark, is maintained by the Association for the Preservation of the Presidential Yacht Potomac. It resides today in Oakland, California and has been open to the public since 1995. 14

President Franklin Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt with the King and Queen of Great Britain aboard the Potomac in 1939.

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An Inside Look at JFK’s Presidential Yacht, “Honey Fitz” [PHOTOS]

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The former presidential yacht, “Honey Fitz”

With the 50 year anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s death upon us, it’s only appropriate that we honor his legacy here on gCaptain by featuring a photo tour of the presidential yacht, “Honey Fitz”.

The 93-foot wooden yacht was originally built in 1931 by Defoe Shipyard in Bay City, Michigan for Sewell Avery, a prominent businessman from Chicago, who mostly used it to cruise around Lake Michigan. The yacht was purchased, or possibly expropriated, from Avery in 1942 by the U.S. government and assigned to the coast guard.

The yacht first gained Presidential status with President Harry S. Truman, who used it mostly as a tender for the much larger, and more lavish, Williamsburg . In all the yacht was used by five U.S. Presidents – Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon – but was most famous for its role as the presidential yacht for John F. Kennedy, who renamed it “Honey Fitz” after his grandfather.

Kennedy is said to have spent some of the happiest times of is life on the Honey Fitz. During he presidency, he would use it extensively to entertain family and close friends, cruising up and down the eastern seaboard from the Potomac River in D.C. to Cape Cod.

The yacht was eventually sold to a private buyer during the Nixon Administration in 1970. Recently, the yacht underwent an extensive, two-year restoration to bring it back to its “Camelot” era glory days it is most known for.

P.S. – Yes, JFK also enjoyed cruising onboard the other presidential yacht, the familiar USS Sequoia, too.

Lone Stateroom:

Wheelhouse:

Dining Room:

President John F. Kennedy with his daughter, Caroline, aboard the Honey Fitz in 1963.

Sources:  http://www.myhoneyfitz.com/

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Courtesy of the U.S. Navy archives (1939).

The Sequoia: The Floating White House

by Bob Cerullo

August 31, 2021

Emily Roebling Cadwalader was the granddaughter of John Roebling, the man who designed and built the Brooklyn Bridge, and she was wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of even the very wealthy. She was a socialite, philanthropist and passionate about her yachts .In 1923, she and her husband wealthy banker, Richard Cadwalader, commissioned John Trumpy to design a lavish 85-foot yacht they named Sequoia . Trumpy designed the Sequoia to cruise the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays in summer. In the winter, it was to sail down the Intercoastal Waterway to Florida to show off the couple’s enormous wealth.

 However, Emily Cadwalader soon concluded her new yacht was not big enough or grand enough to truly represent their colossal wealth and position. Richard Cadwalader was a member of the prestigious New York Yacht Club. Emily simply had to have a bigger yacht. In just a year from having taken delivery on the Sequoia, she commissioned Trumpy to build her a bigger and grander 104-foot yacht to be named the Sequoia II . Trumpy was chosen because of his growing reputation for building luxury yachts with shallow draft which made Trumpy yachts ideal for the Chesapeake Bay and the Intracoastal Waterway. The Sequoia II had a draft of four and half feet and a beam of 19 feet. The yacht was built at the Mathis Yacht Building Company in Camden, New Jersey. The Sequoia II was delivered in 1925 and cost $200,000 ($3 million in today’s dollars). Even the brand-new Sequoia II did not make Emily Cadwalader happy for long. Within a year she ordered a new 195-foot yacht. Still not pleased with the size of that yacht, she ordered a 265-foot yacht. In 1932, she bought an even larger yacht, the 446-foot yacht named the Savarona . At the time, it was hailed as the largest private yacht in the world.

In 1928, the Sequoia II was sold to a Galveston oil tycoon named William Dunning. Dunning kept the Sequoia II at the Corinthian Yacht Club in New York City. He cruised extensively from Maine to Cuba and Mexico City. With his business damaged by the stock market crash, Dunning sold the Sequoia II to the United States Department of Commerce in March 1931 for a price of $48,860. Prohibition was the law of the land at that time, and the Sequoia II was used as a decoy yacht or inspection vessel to catch unsuspecting rumrunners who cruised the Chesapeake offering illegal liquor to yachts and other boats.

Over the years, there were several Naval ships that were unofficially used as presidential yachts, such as the USS Dispatch , the USS Dolphin , and the USS Sylph . In 1921, the USS Mayflower became the

Courtesy of U.S. Navy archives.

President Hoover enjoyed using the Sequoia in the 1930s. It became the official presidential yacht at the request of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Secretary of the Navy’s yacht. Built in 1896, she was 318 feet long. Originally, she was a yacht then converted to a warship. In 1905, the USS Mayflower was converted back to a yacht for the use of President Theodore Roosevelt. She was used by Presidents William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge for recreation as well as to hold presidential meetings. In 1929, President Herbert Hoover had the USS Mayflower decommissioned to save money. In 1931, Hoover called upon the Department of Commerce to put the Sequoia II at his disposal. Hoover used the Sequoia II on April 25, 1931, for a trip between Washington, D.C and Cape Henry, Virginia. Hoover became very fond of the Sequoia II and even used a photo of it on his 1932 Christmas card. He took a lot of criticism at a time when many Americans were in bread lines.

After his inauguration on March 4,1933, President Franklin Roosevelt spread the word around various government departments that, if it was available, he wanted the Sequoia II as his official presidential yacht. On March 23, 1933, the yacht became the official presidential yacht. Roosevelt liked to fish for perch on the Potomac River. On one of his fishing trips, he came by limousine to Deltaville, Virginia and met the yacht Sequoia II at the wharf at the end of North End road. Roosevelt liked to fish the wrecks in the Chesapeake Bay. Because Franklin D. Roosevelt was wheelchair bound, he had an elevator installed. Oddly, Lyndon Johnson had the elevator removed, and a bar installed in its place.

Roosevelt’s first invited guest was the Prime Minister of Great Britain. The president liked to cruise with cabinet members, foreign dignitaries and close friends. Joseph Kennedy, Sr., was one of those friends. The Sequoia II served President Roosevelt for nine years. In 1942, the Sequoia II was transferred to the US Coast Guard, and her name was changed to the Sequoia .

President Truman invited British Prime Minister Clement Atlee, Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King and US Secretary of State James Byrnes for a cruise on Armistice Day, November 11,1945. President Eisenhower utilized the Sequoia rarely and, essentially, only for official business. Lord Louis Mountbatten, Chief of British Defense, was one of his few guests in 1959.

Photo courtesy of Robert Knudsen

John F. Kennedy aboard his beloved Manitou.

President John F. Kennedy loved boats. He often sailed a US Government owned sailboat named the Manitou . During his presidency, much to the chagrin of the Secret Service, he sailed the Manitou himself and enjoyed cruising on the Sequoia and another presidential yacht, the Honey Fitz . Kennedy’s speech writer and aide, Theodore Sorensen, said, “On board either the family or the presidential cruiser the president read history or biography or fiction, chatted with family and friends, waved at passing boats, watched local sailing races and enjoyed the distance between himself and the Secret Service.” Kennedy celebrated his 46th birthday on the Sequoia .

According to Jack Valenti, a former aide to Lyndon Johnson, “Lyndon Johnson used yacht trips on the Sequoia to hash out Vietnam strategy and lobby legislators to support his Great Society domestic reforms.” Johnson had the top deck modified so she could accommodate more people. “The  Sequoia  was a rostrum from which he was trying to persuade congressmen and senators.” Richard Nixon used the Sequoia more than just about any of his predecessors. The 37th president reportedly made as many as 100 trips aboard the yacht, including one in which he met with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev to negotiate the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT). When the pressure from Watergate got too heavy, Nixon also used the Sequoia  as a hideout from the controversies of the scandal. It was on one of the final cruises in August 1974 that embattled President Richard Nixon reportedly informed his family of his decision to resign as President of the United States. After telling them, he retired to the ship’s saloon, quaffed a glass of scotch, and played  God Bless America  on the piano.

President Ford felt that his cabinet members and his children should be able to enjoy the Sequoia. Ford entertained Japanese Emperor Hirohito, USSR Deputy Prime Minister Ignaty Novikov and other international statesmen on the Sequoia .

The Sequoia cost $250,000 a year to operate. President Carter, in a cost cutting effort, and to fulfill a campaign promise, ordered her sold in 1977. Carter told his Secretary of Defense, “Despite its distinguished career, I feel that the Presidential yacht Sequoia is no longer needed.”

The Sequoia was eventually sold and used as a charter party yacht in Washington, D.C., commanding $10,000 for a one-day charter. During that period, she had a varied history, from being used as a charter boat for political and corporate events to touring as an historical exhibit. The Sequoia was berthed at the dock at Hain’s Point in the Washington Channel for seven years. She was available to President Reagan but was unused by him. In 1984, the Sequoia embarked on a six-thousand-mile odyssey cruise to raise money for her owners at that time, the Presidential Yacht Trust. During that time her maintenance was at times adequate and at other times dubious. Eventually, she wound up at Deagle’s Boat Yard in Deltaville, Virginia and was in much need of repair. Legal problems ensued, and for several years she remained on dry land in Deltaville while the elements advanced her deterioration and raccoons nested onboard.

Courtesy of Wolfe House and Building Movers.

USS Sequoia onboard the barge.

Just when any hope of saving the Sequoia seemed totally lost, she was ordered by the court to be turned over to an investment group with the stipulation that she would fully be restored. The price ordered by the court was $0.00. Restoration was awarded to the French & Webb Inc. in Belfast, Maine. Since the Sequoia had deteriorated to the point where she was no longer seaworthy, Wolfe House and Building Movers was given the Herculean job of moving the Sequoia from dry land onto a massive barge for the trip to Maine.

When the Sequoia arrived at Belfast, Maine in October of 2019, she was positioned in the French and Webb yard. Eventually, a building will be constructed to cover the Sequoia . There will also be a viewing area where visitors can watch the work in progress. Todd French of French and Webb was quoted in the January 2020 issue of Soundings Magazine . He said, “The public is connected to it. We’ve had so many people show up and look reverentially at this project, it’s like people are just in awe, taking pictures. It’s like they’re coming to church.” The restoration will take about three years at which time the Sequoia will once again cruise the waters of the Potomac River.

It is strangely ironic that the Sequoia , which was not grand enough nor large enough to please wealthy socialite Emily Roebling Cadwalader, became the floating White House and was used by five presidents of the United States and visited by future presidents and by countless international celebrities. It is perhaps the most important historical yacht still in existence. The Sequoia was designated as a National Historic Landmark on December 23, 1987.

In his book, Sequoia, Presidential Yacht, Captain Giles M. Kelly, USNR (ret) recounts his years in command of the Sequoia. There is a great video of the Sequoia being loaded onto a barge at the Chesapeake Bay Marine Railway. See USS Sequoia - Presidential Yacht Relocated on YouTube

2017 The House & Home Magazine

Here's what happened to America's presidential yachts — and why there isn't one anymore

The president of the US gets to travel in style anywhere he goes.

In the air, a specially designed Boeing 747 becomes "Air Force One" as soon as the commander in chief is on board.

But the president rarely travels by boat anymore, if at all. And having a presidential yacht for leisure isn't the best PR move. ( Just ask Britain .)

Many ships have served as presidential yachts throughout the past hundred years — so Business Insider is taking a look back at the retro method of executive travel. 

The first naval ship to carry the presidential flag was the USS Dolphin. One of the first steel-bodied ships produced for the US Navy, it carried Presidents Grover Cleveland and William McKinley from 1893 to 1897.

After the Dolphin was decommissioned, the first ever wireless-radio broadcast originated from its decks while docked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York.

USS Mayflower, a recommissioned a luxury steam yacht, was put into service on July 25, 1905, by President Theodore Roosevelt.

Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Howard Taft, and Herbert Hoover would also use the Mayflower before it was decommissioned in 1929. Here, President Taft boards the Mayflower.

In 1934, when the US had a better financial foothold in the world, Franklin Delano Roosevelt commissioned the USS Potomac to serve as an executive cruiser.

FDR had the presidential seal emblazoned on the bow of the ship, which is now docked at Jack London Square in Oakland, California. It offers regular cruises on San Francisco Bay.

The USS Williamsburg served as presidential yacht from 1945 to 1953.

The Williamsburg served Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, though Eisenhower only made one voyage before having it decommissioned in 1953.

The Williamsburg was given to the National Science Foundation and renamed Anton Bruun, after the famous Dutch marine biologist.

Today, the Williamsburg is rusting away at a dock in La Spezia, Italy, where it has sat since 1993. And it’s for sale, if you’re interested, by Monaco-based Camper & Nicholsons yacht brokers.

The most recent, largest, and longest-lived of presidential yachts is the USS Sequoia.

The 104-foot executive cruiser was used by commanders in chief from 1936, until Jimmy Carter sold the ship in 1977.

Here, Franklin Delano Roosevelt relaxes on the Sequoia's deck with his entourage.

In 2013, the Sequoia was sold for $7.8 million. The new owners have kept much of the presidential memorabilia around.

The vessel is available for hire, and anyone can feel like the president for a night.

Toiletries are included, too, but you might want to bring your own.

You can find the Sequoia docked in the nation's capital, reminiscing about its days of presidential service.

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Former US Presidential yacht Sequoia arrives in Maryland to resume halted restoration

The famous former US presidential yacht  Sequoia  is resuming her long-awaited restoration at a new location. On Monday 30 October the 31.9-metre historic vessel arrived at the Richardson Maritime Museum in Cambridge, Maryland, covered in shrinkwrap and in the same condition as she was in 2019.

Sequoia has spent the past four years on the hard in Belfast, Maine where she was scheduled to undergo repairs with French & Webb. In a press release, the Richardson Maritime Museum said it had been determined that an enclosed, indoor facility was needed for work to commence, which was the reason for the move (as well as general delays as a result of COVID-19).

Now, it is anticipated that the full renovation may take up to five years and require the skills of up to 20 shipwrights. Sequoia will then become part of the revival of the Richardson Maritime Centre – with a building to house the restoration being considered as part of those plans.

"[Her] permanent home will be on the water," owner Michael Cantor added, "but Cambridge could be its home for repairs and refitting." Cantor had previously suggested that Sequoia be based in Washington D.C and used to teach presidential history.

Built in 1925 by John Mathis & Company, Sequoia was originally owned by banker Richard Cadwalader before being sold to Texan businessman William Dunning. She was sold again in 1931 to the United States government.

From then, her history became closely entwined with some of the most famous US presidents – John F Kennedy spent his last birthday on board while Herbert Hoover used  Sequoia  to visit his mother in Florida. Franklin D. Roosevelt, meanwhile, had a wheelchair lift installed so that he could use her as an operational base during World War II.

Richard Nixon was particularly fond of  Sequoia , taking more than 80 trips on board, including the night before he decided to resign in 1974.

Following her presidential reign,  Sequoia  was made available for charter in Washington, D.C. But the yacht was hauled out at the Chesapeake Boat Works shipyard in Deltaville, Virginia in December 2014 and from there, began to fall into disrepair. In the years that followed, she was at the centre of a drawn-out legal battle which was eventually resolved in 2016 . 

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Why the U.S. put a $1 million bounty on a Russian yacht’s alleged manager

On Sept. 3, 2020, the staff of a $90 million yacht placed an order with a U.S. company for a set of luxury bathrobes that came to $2,624.35.

For roughly two years before that, according to federal prosecutors, the yacht’s management had been falsely claiming it was working for a boat named “Fanta.” But the luxury bathrobes came embroidered with a monogram that, prosecutors said, revealed the yacht’s true identity: “Tango.”

That was a problem, officials say in court papers, because Tango was owned by a Russian billionaire under U.S. sanctions, and doing business on his behalf violated federal law.

Late last month, U.S. authorities unveiled a $1 million reward for information leading to the arrest and or conviction of the man they say was running the yacht staff and orchestrated the deception with the robes — Vladislav Osipov, 52, a Swiss-based businessman from Russia. In a new indictment , federal prosecutors say Osipov misled U.S. banks and companies into doing business with the Tango yacht despite the sanctions on the Russian owner, whom the Justice Department has identified as billionaire Viktor Vekselberg .

Osipov has denied the allegations. Osipov’s attorney has said that the government has failed to demonstrate that Vekselberg owned the yacht, and that its management was therefore not a sanctions violation.

The reward offer for Osipov reflects the latest stage in the evolution of the West’s broader financial war against Russia two years into the war in Ukraine, as the United States and its allies increasingly target intermediaries accused of enabling Russian oligarchs to circumvent sanctions.

Many Russians close to President Vladimir Putin have been under sanctions dating to 2014, when Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine and sent proxy forces into that country’s eastern Donbas region. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, President Biden vowed to deal a “crushing blow” with a barrage of new sanctions on financial institutions, industries, business executives and others tied to the Kremlin. But roughly two years later, Russia’s economy has proved surprisingly resilient after the nation poured tens of billions of dollars into ramping up its military industry. Moscow has also worked around the sanctions, finding new third parties to supply it with critical military and industrial hardware, as well as countries beyond Europe to buy its oil.

Now, the West is trying to increase the reach of its sanctions by digging deeper into Russian supply chains. Late last month, the Treasury Department announced more than 500 new sanctions targeting Russia , primarily on military and industrial suppliers. The Justice Department also announced charges against two U.S.-based “facilitators” of a Russian state banker who is under sanction, as well as the guilty plea of a dual national based in Atlanta who was accused of laundering $150 million through bank accounts and shell companies on behalf of Russian clients.

Prioritizing criminal charges against — and the arrests of — Western employees of Russia’s elites represents a new escalation of the U.S. financial war against Putin, experts say. One Moscow businessman, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said many influential Russians are concerned about the arrest of two associates of Andrey Kostin, the head of VTB, Russia’s second-biggest state bank. These associates, Vadim Wolfson and Gannon Bond, were charged with helping Kostin evade sanctions by maintaining a $12 million property in Aspen, Colo., for Kostin’s benefit while concealing his ownership. Kostin has said that the charges of sanctions evasion against him are “unfounded” and that he has not violated any laws . Bond has pleaded not guilty; Wolfson hasn’t made an initial court appearance yet.

Wolfson, also known as Vadim Belyaev, had been a Russian billionaire until the Russian government took over his bank in 2017. Bond, 49, is a U.S. citizen from Edgewater, N.J. For all Russians living abroad and working with people in Russia, the threat of criminal charges is a much more worrying prospect than the sanctions imposed by the Treasury Department last month against hundreds of individuals and entities, the businessman said, in part because sanctions are far easier to dodge than criminal charges.

“What you have seen through today’s public announcements are our efforts at really targeting the facilitators who possess the requisite skill set, access, connections that allow the Russian war machine [and] the Russian elites to continually have access to Western services and Western goods,” David Lim, co-director of the Justice Department’s KleptoCapture task force, which is tasked with enforcing U.S. sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, told reporters last month.

Thad McBride, an international trade partner at the law firm Bass Berry & Sims, said the crackdown on intermediaries reflected the natural evolution of the U.S. sanctions campaign in response to Russian adjustments.

“It seems to me they have gone through a comprehensive list of the oligarchs, and you can debate whether or not it’s had a meaningful impact on the Russian war effort,” McBride said. “Because they’re getting smarter about who’s who, they’re finding other people who play meaningful roles in these transactions, even though they’re not showing up in the headlines.”

The charges against Osipov related to his alleged management of the Tango yacht illustrate the mounting potential consequences for people in Europe and the United States who attempt to do business with Russians targeted by Western allies, as well as the opaque structures allegedly employed by those seeking to evade sanctions.

With a net worth estimated by Forbes in 2021 at $9 billion, Vekselberg, 66, has long drawn scrutiny from the West — and sought to safeguard his wealth. He made his initial fortune in aluminum and oil in Russia’s privatization of the 1990s and then expanded into industrial and financial assets in Europe, the United States and Africa, with Putin’s blessing. In addition to the yacht, federal prosecutors say, Vekselberg acquired $75 million worth of properties, including apartments on New York’s Park Avenue and an estate in the Long Island town of Southampton.

Vekselberg, who declined to comment for this article, has not been criminally charged by the Justice Department. In a 2019 interview with the Financial Times, he denounced the sanctions as arbitrary and harmful for international business, saying he had been targeted just because he was Russian and rich and knows Putin.

In April 2018, the Treasury Department under the Trump administration sanctioned Vekselberg and six other Russian oligarchs as part of broader financial penalties over the Kremlin’s invasion of Crimea, support for President Bashar al-Assad in Syria and interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Vekselberg was also targeted for his work for the Kremlin as chairman of the Skolkovo Foundation, an attempt to create Russia’s version of the Silicon Valley — evidence that appeared to undermine the Russian businessman’s claims that he operated independently of the Kremlin.

But with Vekselberg’s payments monitored by U.S. banks, according to the federal indictment , Osipov used shell companies and intermediaries to avert the bite of sanctions. Vekselberg kept other major assets out of the reach of U.S. authorities by making use of the Treasury Department’s 50 percent ownership rule, which stipulates that it is illegal to transact with firms only if an owner under sanction controls more than 50 percent of the business.

For example, a month after Treasury imposed sanctions on Vekselberg in April 2018, his Renova Innovation Technologies sold its 48.5 percent stake in Swiss engineering giant Sulzer to Tiwel Holding AG, a group that is nevertheless still “beneficially owned” — meaning, owned in practice — by Vekselberg through Columbus Trust, a Cayman Islands trust, according to Sulzer’s corporate filing. Vekselberg’s longtime right-hand man at Renova, Alexei Moskov, replaced one of Vekselberg’s direct representatives on the board. Moskov told The Washington Post that he stepped down from all his executive positions at Renova Group in 2018 after U.S. sanctions were first imposed and from that moment ceased to be Vekselberg’s employee.

The attempts to circumvent the sanctions appear to have found some success in the U.S. legal system. Columbus Nova, a U.S.-based asset management fund controlling more than $100 million in assets in the U.S. financial and tech industry, is run by Vekselberg’s cousin, Andrew Intrater. The firm battled for more than two years to lift a freeze on Columbus Nova’s assets, imposed by Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control because of the sanctions on Vekselberg, and won, reaching a settlement agreement with the Treasury Department. After renaming itself Sparrow Capital LLC, Columbus Nova successfully argued that Intrater — not Vekselberg — owns the fund. Intrater argued that the company was 100 percent owned by U.S. citizens and that no individual or entity under sanction held any interest in it. Intrater said Columbus Nova had earned fees for managing investment funds owned by Renova. He said he had repeatedly told Treasury he would not distribute any funds to Vekselberg.

Now Osipov, the alleged manager of Vekselberg’s $90 million yacht, is attempting a similar argument as U.S. authorities seek his arrest on charges of bank fraud, money laundering, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and violations of sanctions law.

The federal indictment states that the Tango was owned by a shell corporation registered in the British Virgin Islands that was in turn owned by several other companies. The Virgin Islands shell company, authorities say, was controlled by Osipov, who also served in senior roles for multiple companies controlled by Vekselberg. U.S. officials also say Vekselberg ultimately controlled the other companies that owned the Virgin Islands shell company.

According to the indictment, a Tango official instructed a boat management company in Palma de Mallorca, Spain, to use a false name for the yacht — “Fanta” — to disguise its true identity from U.S. financial institutions and firms, which try to avoid doing business with an entity or person under sanction.

Working at Osipov’s direction, according to the indictment, employees for Tango bought more than $8,000 worth of goods for the yacht that were unwittingly but illegally processed by U.S. firms and U.S. financial institutions, including navigation software, leather basket magazine holders provided by a bespoke silversmith, and web and computing services. The management company running Tango, run by Osipov, also paid invoices worth more than $180,000 to a U.S. internet service provider, federal prosecutors say.

The Tango was seized by the FBI and Spanish authorities in the Mediterranean not long after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, and Osipov was first indicted last year. The owner of the Spanish yacht management company hired by Osipov, Richard Masters, 52, of Britain, was criminally charged last year by federal prosecutors with conspiracy to defraud the United States and violating federal sanctions law. A request for comment sent to Masters’ firm was not returned.

But in recent court documents, Osipov’s attorney argues that the yacht was not more than 50 percent owned by Vekselberg, and that the government hasn’t demonstrated it was. Barry J. Pollack, an attorney at Harris, St. Laurent and Wechsler, also says the government never warned Osipov of its novel and “unconstitutional” application of federal sanctions law.

“The government points to no precedent that supports its extraordinary interpretation and cites no authority that allows the traditional rules of statutory construction to be turned on their head,” Pollack wrote in a defense filing. The filing adds: “[Osipov] is not a fugitive because he did not engage in any of the allegedly criminal conduct while in the United States, has never resided in the United States, did not flee from the United States, and has not concealed himself.”

Still, the State Department’s Transnational Organized Crime Rewards Program has said it will provide up to $1 million for information leading to Osipov’s arrest, warning that he may visit Herrliberg, Switzerland; Majorca, Spain; or Moscow.

The case demonstrates the extent of the U.S. commitment to tighten the screws on those seen as aiding Russian elites, even if they themselves are not closely tied to the Kremlin.

“When DOJ levels legal action against an individual or entity, they have quite a bit of evidence, especially because the threshold to press charges for money-laundering and sanctions evasion is so high,” said Kim Donovan, director of the Economic Statecraft Initiative within the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center. “We’ve had quite a bit of experience targeting Russia directly, and what you’re starting to see is the U.S. go after the facilitators enabling sanctions evasion. That’s where the U.S. is focusing its efforts right now.”

From Russia, Elaborate Tales of Fake Journalists

As the Ukraine war grinds on, the Kremlin has created increasingly complex fabrications online to discredit Ukraine’s leader and undercut aid. Some have a Hollywood-style plot twist.

Credit... Devin Oktar Yalkin for The New York Times

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By Steven Lee Myers

• Published March 18, 2024 Updated March 19, 2024, 4:31 p.m. ET

A young man calling himself Mohamed al-Alawi appeared in a YouTube video in August. He described himself as an investigative journalist in Egypt with a big scoop: The mother-in-law of Ukraine’s president had purchased a villa near Angelina Jolie’s in El Gouna, a resort town on the Red Sea.

The story, it turned out, was not true. Ukraine denied it, and the owner of the villa refuted it. Also disconnected from reality: Alawi’s claim to being a journalist.

Still, his story caromed through social media and news outlets from Egypt to Nigeria and ultimately to Russia — which, according to researchers, is where the story all began.

The story seemed to fade, but not for long. Four months later, two new videos appeared on YouTube. They said Mohamed al-Alawi had been beaten to death in Hurghada, a town about 20 miles south of El Gouna. The suspected killers, according to the videos: Ukraine’s secret service agents.

These claims were no more factual than the first, but they gave new life to the old lie. Another round of posts and news reports ultimately reached millions of internet users around the world, elevating the narrative so much that it was even echoed by members of the U.S. Congress while debating continued military assistance to Ukraine.

Ever since its forces invaded two years ago , Russia has unleashed a torrent of disinformation to try to discredit Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, and undermine the country’s support in the West.

This saga, though, introduced a new gambit: a protracted and elaborately constructed narrative built online around a fictitious character and embellished with seemingly realistic detail and a plot twist worthy of Netflix.

“They never brought back a character before,” said Darren Linvill, a professor and director of the Media Forensics Hub at Clemson University, who has extensively studied Russian disinformation.

The campaign shows how deftly Russia’s information warriors have shifted to new tactics and targets as the war in Ukraine has dragged on, just as Russian forces on the ground in Ukraine have adjusted tactics after devastating battlefield losses.

Groups with ties to the Kremlin continue to float new narratives when old ones fail to stick or grow stale, using fake or altered videos or recordings and finding or creating new outlets to spread disinformation, including ones purporting to be American news sites .

A video appeared on TikTok last month claiming to show a Ukrainian doctor working for Pfizer accusing the company of conducting unlawful tests on children. On the social network X, a man claiming to be an associate producer for Paramount Pictures spun a tale about a Hollywood biopic on Mr. Zelensky’s life.

The tale attributed to Mohamed al-Alawi is not even the only baseless allegation that Mr. Zelensky had secretly purchased properties abroad using Western financial assistance. Other versions — each seemingly tailored for a specific geographic audience — have detailed a mansion in Vero Beach, Fla., and a retreat in Germany once used by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda.

The Russians have “demonstrated adaptability through the war on Ukraine,” Microsoft wrote in a recent report that disclosed Russia’s fraudulent use of recorded messages by famous actors and celebrities on the Cameo app to try to smear Mr. Zelensky as a drug addict.

Even when debunked, fabrications like these have proved exceedingly difficult to extinguish entirely.

YouTube took down the initial video of the character Mohamed al-Alawi, linking it to two other accounts that had previously violated the company’s policies. The accusation still circulates, however, especially on platforms, like X and Telegram, that experts say do little to block accounts generating inauthentic or automated activity. Some of the posts about the video appear to have used text or audio created with artificial intelligence tools; many are amplified by networks of bots intended to create the impression that the content is popular.

What links the narratives to Russia is not only the content disparaging Ukraine but also the networks that circulate them. They include news outlets and social media accounts that private and government researchers have linked to previous Kremlin campaigns.

“They’re trolling for a susceptible (and seemingly abundant) slice of citizens who amplify their garbage enough to muddy the waters of our discourse, and from there our policies,” said Rita Katz, the director of the SITE Intelligence Group, an American company that tracks extremist activity online and investigated the false claims about the villa.

The Making of a Fake Journalist

The video first appeared on Aug. 20 on a newly created YouTube account that had no previous activity and almost no followers, according to the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, a global nonprofit research organization in London, which traced the video’s spread.

The man appeared in a poorly lit room reading from his computer screen, which was reflected in his thick glasses. He appeared to be a real person, but it has not been possible to verify his actual identity. No one by the name of Mohamed al-Alawi appears to have produced any previous articles or videos, as would be expected of a journalist. According to ActiveFence, an internet security company, the character has no educational or work history, and no network of friends or social connections online.

The video, though, showed what purported to be photographs of a purchase contract and of the villa itself, creating a veneer of authenticity for credulous viewers. The property is, in fact, part of a resort owned by Orascom Development, whose website highlights El Gouna’s “year-round sunshine, shimmering lagoons, sandy beaches and azure waters.”

An article about the video’s claim appeared two days later as a paid advertisement, or branded content, on Punch, a news outlet in Nigeria, as well as three other Nigerian websites that aggregate news and entertainment content.

The article had the byline of Arthur Nkono, who according to internet searches does not appear to have written any other articles. The article quoted a political scientist, Abdrulrahman Alabassy, who likewise appears not to exist except in accounts linking the villa to the corrupt use of Western financial aid to Ukraine. (Punch, which later removed the post, did not respond to requests for comment.)

A day later, the claim made its first appearance on X in a post by Sonja van den Ende, an activist in the Netherlands, whose articles have previously appeared on propaganda outlets linked to the Russian government, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. (She also served as an election observer in an occupied territory of Ukraine during Russian parliamentary elections in September.)

Within days, reports about the villa appeared on X in French and Romanian, and in English on three different Reddit forums.

According to Roberta Duffield, director of intelligence for Blackbird.AI, an internet security company, nearly 29 percent of the accounts amplifying the reports appeared to be inauthentic bots, an unusually high number that would normally indicate a coordinated campaign.

Eight days after the video appeared, Russia state television networks like Channel One, Rossiya 24 and RT (in Arabic and German) reported it as a major revelation uncovered by a renowned Egyptian investigative journalist.

The story seemed to stall there. Naguib Sawiris, the scion of the Egyptian family that owned the development, curtly denied the sale in a reply on X.

And no more was heard from or about the character called Mohamed al-Alawi — until late December.

That was when two new videos emerged on a YouTube channel called “Egypt News,” claiming that he was dead.

The channel had been created the day before. One video showed a man identified as Alawi’s brother, Ahmed, answering questions from another man.

The police, he said, told him that they suspected his brother had been beaten to death by “Ukrainian special forces who acted on behalf of President Zelensky or another high-ranking official.”

He spoke with his hand cupped over his face to obscure his identity. The other video showed what was said to be the site of an attack, though the images were indistinct. “I can’t tell you anything else,” he said in the video, which YouTube later removed. “I’m afraid for my family.”

The video also tried to explain away some of the obvious holes in the initial story, including why there was no evidence online of Alawi’s previous work. “It was his first big assignment,” the man said.

The new episode spread as the first video had. A day later, an article about the death appeared on an obscure website created last year called El Mostaqbal, a name similar to but unrelated to the actual news organization in Lebanon.

“A reporter who announced that Zelensky’s mother-in-law brought a luxury villa has died under mysterious circumstances,” the headline read. Other reports that followed dropped any uncertainty and began referring to his “murder.”

In fact, Egypt’s Ministry of the Interior said there were no reports or evidence that anyone resembling the man in the video had been “subjected to harm.” The statement went on to note that the property itself had not been sold.

Still, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, posts about the supposed killing were viewed a million times on X on Dec. 25.

It also appeared on the website of the Middle East Monitor, or MEMO, operated by a well-known nonprofit organization in London and financed by the government of Qatar. A journalist who once reported from Moscow for The Telegraph of London, Ben Aris, cited it at length on the platform, though, when challenged, he said he had just made note of the rumor. “I don’t have time to check all this stuff myself,” he wrote.

It appeared in English on a site, Clear Story News, that Mr. Linvill of Clemson’s Media Forensics Hub had previously linked to Russia’s disinformation efforts. (The site lists no contact information)

Mr. Linvill described the process as a form of “narrative laundering” — moving false claims from unknown or not credible sources to ones that, to the unwitting at least, seem more legitimate.

More Elaborate Narratives

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue studied three other complex narratives about Ukraine, as well.

One featured a French journalist who claimed that the son of George Soros — a regular target of Russian and far-right political attacks — had secretly acquired land for a toxic waste dump in Ukraine. An unnamed doctor in Africa said in another that an American medical charity, the Global Surgical and Medical Support Group, was harvesting the organs of wounded Ukrainian soldiers for transplants for NATO officers.

Then there was the case of a man calling himself Shahzad Nasir, whose profile on X identifies him as a journalist with Emirates 24/7, an English-language news outlet in Dubai, though he has no apparent bylines on the site.

In November, he claimed that cronies of Mr. Zelensky bought two yachts — Lucky Me and My Legacy — for $75 million. His evidence, like Mohamed al-Alawi’s, includes photographs of the vessels and purported purchase agreements.

In fact, as the BBC documented in December, the yachts had not been purchased and remained for sale. Despite numerous efforts by fact checkers to dispel it as rumor, the claim circulated extensively.

Last month, the character Nasir reappeared in another video. This time he had a new version of the tale, claiming that the purchases had been scuttled after he exposed the secret deal.

The ramifications of these campaigns are difficult to measure precisely. There are signs, though, that they resonate even when proved false.

Senator J.D. Vance, a Republican of Ohio and an outspoken critic of Ukraine aid, seemed to embrace the claim in December during an interview on “War Room,” the podcast hosted by Stephen K. Bannon, the onetime adviser to former President Donald J. Trump.

“There are people who would cut Social Security — throw our grandparents into poverty — why?” Mr. Vance said. “So that one of Zelensky’s ministers can buy a bigger yacht?”

That prompted a public rebuke this month from a Republican colleague, Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who ridiculed those who repeat unproven allegations.

“They’ve heard somebody say that if we pass this bill, that we’re all going to go ride to Kyiv with buckets full of money and let oligarchs buy yachts!” he said of critics of the assistance to Ukraine, in what he later called a reference to Mr. Vance’s comments. “I wonder how the spouses of the estimated 25,000 soldiers in Ukraine who have died feel about that? I mean, really, guys?”

Karoun Demirjian contributed reporting.

An earlier version of this article misstated, in one reference, the name of a group at Clemson University that studies disinformation. It is the Media Forensics Hub, not the Digital Media Hub.

How we handle corrections

Steven Lee Myers covers misinformation for The Times. He has worked in Washington, Moscow, Baghdad and Beijing, where he contributed to the articles that won the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2021. He is also the author of “The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin.” More about Steven Lee Myers

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A day after securing a new term in a rubber-stamp presidential election, President Vladimir Putin of Russia said he would not back down in Russia’s war against Ukraine .

With additional American aid still in doubt, Lloyd Austin, the U.S. defense secretary, called for “creative, adaptable and sustainable ways” to continue arming Ukraine  and praised European allies who were trying to bolster Kyiv’s military.

Ukraine fired a volley of exploding drones  at Moscow and other targets on the final day of Russia’s presidential vote, the local authorities said, continuing a flurry of attacks timed for the election .

Elaborate Tales: As the Ukraine war grinds on, the Kremlin has created increasingly complex fabrications online  to discredit Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, and undermine the country’s support in the West.

Targeting Russia’s Oil Industry: With its army short of ammunition and troops to break the deadlock on the battlefield, Kyiv has increasingly taken the fight beyond the Ukrainian border, attacking oil infrastructure deep in Russian territory .

Electronic Warfare: Drones have become a critical weapon for both Russia and Ukraine. But Moscow’s capability to overpower Ukrainian signals  by broadcasting on the same frequencies at higher power is putting Kyiv at a disadvantage.

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