Presidents, presidential yachts, Lewes and raccoons

The historic photo in the Tuesday edition of the Cape Gazette this week featured a photo of President Warren G. Harding during a 1923 visit to Milford. The photo and information provided with it were sent by Sussex County Administrator Todd Lawson. Lawson’s information noted that after Harding left Milford, he proceeded to Lewes to board the presidential yacht. 
 
After a long day touring the entire length of Delaware, starting up north by motorcade, Harding was initiated that evening into Milford’s Evergreen Forest of the Tall Cedars of Lebanon - a Freemasons organization. According to a 2001 article in the Lewes Historical Society Journal written by Herb Archdeacon and Barbara Vaughan, Harding’s initiation took him until 11:15 p.m. That was long after his 9 p.m. scheduled arrival in Lewes, where he was to meet the Presidential Yacht USS Mayflower anchored in Breakwater Harbor. 
 
According to Archdeacon and Vaughan, Harding’s itinerary between Milford and Lewes also included stops in Georgetown, Harbeson and Cool Spring. That’s why it took the motorcade nearly three hours to make its to Lewes where, speaking to a loyal and patient crowd, he made his final remarks of the Delaware tour at 2 a.m. 
 
Harding was then ferried to the USS Mayflower for an eventual cruise down the coast of the Delmarva Peninsula to the Chesapeake Bay and on up the Potomac River and back to Washington, D.C. 
 
According to an article by Lawrence L. Knutsen called The Floating White House, published by the White House Historical Association, the USS Mayflower could not have helped but draw attention as she lay at anchor in Breakwater Harbor. The author notes that the vessel of 273 feet in length carried a crew of 166 men and eight officers. 
 
Less than two months later, with his administration mired in charges of corruption and scandal, Harding died of uncertain causes in San Francisco. The 29th president of the United States served barely two years in office. 
 
Coincidentally, in the same week that the Cape Gazette mentioned Harding and the presidential yacht in its Tuesday historic photo feature, Delaware Chancery Court Vice Chancellor Sam Glasscock issued a ruling about another presidential yacht that had once been in Lewes, the Sequoia. 
 
Without getting into the arcane legal details of a long and tedious ownership battle, suffice it to say that Glasscock ruled that a lending company deserved to take over ownership of the vessel that had been pledged as collateral for a multimillion-dollar loan that had not been repaid. 
 
The Trumpy-designed Presidential Yacht Sequoia, which once hosted presidents and their guests from Franklin D. Roosevelt through Jimmy Carter, was sold by Carter in 1977 as part of ending what he called the “imperial presidency.” 
 
The vessel made a stop in Lewes in 2001 when it was hosted by the Delaware River and Bay Authority. Authority officials had done extensive business involving ferry boat maintenance with the Norfolk boatyard that had possession of the Sequoia at the time. At her stop in Lewes, the vessel’s brightwork, silver and brass shone with loving care as part of a floating museum. 
 
The intervening years, however, have taken their toll. Old wooden vessels are costly to maintain. They deteriorate quickly when shrinking budgets lead to neglect. In his ruling this week, Glasscock describes the current state of the once proud yacht that hosted some of the world’s great leaders: 
 
“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.” 
 
Nature always has its say.