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Sea Cloud is a sailing cruise ship of the Sea Cloud Cruises line.
Initially built as a private yacht, it subsequently served as a weather ship for the United States Coast
Guard and United States Navy during World War II. The ship served as the first racially integrated warship in the United States Armed
Forces since the American Civil War. Following the war, Sea Cloudwas returned to private ownership, serving as a yacht for
numerous people, including as presidential yacht of the Dominican Republic. The ship currently sails in Europe and the Caribbean as
part of a fleet of sail cruise ships operated by Sea Cloud Cruises GmbH of Hamburg, Germany, often under contract to the National Geographic
Society. The Sea Cloud is currently the world's oldest ocean going passenger ship.
Sea
Cloud was built in Kiel, Germany, as a barque for Marjorie Merriweather
Post and her second husband Edward F. Hutton of Wall
Street's E. F. Hutton & Co. She was launched in 1931 as Hussar V; at the time of her construction, she was the largest
private yacht in the world. In 1935, the United States Ambassador
to the Soviet Union, Joseph E. Davies, married Marjorie Merriweather Post. Mr. and
Mrs. Davies renamed the ship Sea
Cloud. Although Mrs. Davies owned
the ship, she allowed Mr. Davies to claim ownership of the vessel. As a man
with political influence, Davies entertained many high-profile people on the
ship, including Queen Elisabeth of
Belgium. The ship even served as an informal embassy, as Soviet and
United States officials stayed and met on the vessel.
Mrs. Davies had first offered the ship to
the U.S. Department
of the Navy in 1941, but the Navy turned her down.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt objected
to the ship entering service, remarking that she was too beautiful to be
sacrificed. However, on January 7, 1942, the Navy reassessed their position,
chartering the ship for $1 per year. The Navy sent Sea Cloud from Georgetown, South Carolina,
to the United States Coast Guard Yard in Curtis Bay, Maryland, to
be refitted as a "weather observation station vessel", and had its
four masts removed and hull painted battleship gray. Sea
Cloud was commissioned as a United States Coast Guard
Cutter on April 4, 1942, and assigned to the Eastern Sea Frontier, with
a permanent home port in Boston.
During 1942, Sea Cloud mostly served as a weather ship at Weather Patrol Station Number Two
(position 52°0′N 42°30′W). On June 6,
1942, the ship rescued eight survivors from the schooner Maria
da Gloria. On August 3, 1942 and August 4, 1942, Sea Cloud served at Weather
Patrol Station Number One while USS Manhasset was converted to a weather ship.
In 1943, the Navy asked for control of Sea Cloud and Nourmahal, another former yacht
converted into a weather ship. On April 9, 1943, the United States Navy commissioned Sea Cloud as USS Sea Cloud (IX-99), though she
maintained a Coast Guard crew. She was assigned to Task Force 24.
Relieving USCGC Conifer in February 1944, Sea Cloud patrolled a 100-square-mile
(260 km2) area near
the New Englandcoast, generating weather reports for the First Naval District.
On February 27, 1944, Sea Cloud traveled
to be refurbished at Atlantic Yard in East Boston, afterwards taking over a new one-hundred square
mile area at Weather Station Number One.
On April 5, 1944, Sea Cloud received radar
indication of a small target at position 39°27′N 62°30′W, bearing 350°
at 3,000 yards (2,700 m). General quarters were sounded and battle stations manned,
but contact was lost ten minutes later. The target was identified as a submarine, but after Sea Cloud carried out standard anti-submarine drills with
no evidence of damage being inflicted, she returned to port.
After minor repairs, Sea Cloud was rebased to Argentia, Newfoundland,
where she was assigned to Weather Station Number Three. While patrolling the
area on June 11, 1944, the crew spotted a Navy Grumman TBF Avenger,
exchanging recognition signals. Sea Cloud received orders to
report to the escort carrier Croatan and
join the five other escort ships under her command. The envoy searched for a
raft reported in the area, but returned with no sightings. After this
event, Sea Cloud was
once again reassigned to Weather Station Number Four. After a search for a
downed aircraft, she returned to port in Boston. Sea Cloud was decommissioned on November 4, 1944, at
the Bethlehem Steel Atlantic
Yard and returned to Davies, along with $175,000 for conversion to pre-war
appearance.
For her wartime service, Sea Cloud was awarded the American Campaign Medal and
the World War Two Victory Medal.
In late 1944, Lieutenant Carlton Skinner took command of the ship, after
previously serving as executive officer in
November 1944. At that time, black seamen were only permitted to serve as ship
stewards. After witnessing a black man save the crew of Northland yet
still be denied promotion because of the rule, Skinner proposed an experiment.
Skinner submitted his plan to the U.S. Secretary of the Navy and
was allowed to sail his first weather patrol with a fully integrated crew. Within
a few months, fifty black sailors, including two officers, were stationed
aboard Sea Cloud. Skinner
requested that the experiment not be publicized and the ship not be treated
differently from other ships in the task force. Skinner showed that his
integrated crew could work just as efficiently as a segregated crew, if not
more so, when his crew passed two fleet inspections with no deficiencies.
Under Skinner's command when the ship was
integrated, American painter Jacob Lawrence served on the Sea Cloud. He was able to paint and sketch while in the Coast
Guard, notably his War
Series.
Following its return, Sea Cloud received a
reassembled rigging in 1947, and a new set of twenty-nine sails in
1949. The vessel was painted white, and a gold eagle painted on the bow. The
ship's reconstruction took nearly four years. Marjorie Merriweather Post
retained ownership of Sea Cloud in
the aftermath of her divorce from Mr. Davies, since she had originally brought
the ship into the marriage. After evaluating the cost of running a year-round
crew of seventy-two, Marjorie Merriweather Post decided to sell the ship.
In the beginning Sea Cloud featured royal-sails over single topgallant- and
double top-sails on the fore and mizzen masts. The main mast was equipped with
a royal-sail over double topgallant- and double top-sails. Today the first
three masts are rigged with double top-sails, single topgallants, royals and a
main skysail.
Rafael Trujillo, ruler of the Dominican Republic, purchased Sea Cloud in 1955, trading a secondhand Vickers Viscount for it. He
renamed the ship Angelita after his
daughter Angelita Trujillo. The yacht served as a houseboat and government office.
Following Trujillo's assassination on May 30, 1961, his family attempted to
smuggle themselves and Trujillo's body to the Canary Islands aboard Angelita, but were forced back by the Dominican Republic's new
government.
Five years after Trujillo's
death, the ship, now named Patria, was sold to
Operation Sea Cruises, Inc. in 1966. Company president John Blue registered her
in Panama and sent her to Naples, Italy, to recondition and outfit her for charters. Sold to Antarna
Inc., Miami, in 1969 the ship was renamed Antarna. Blue brought the vessel to the United States, but port
authorities docked the boat after a dispute in Colón, Panama. Charles and Stephanie Gallagher paid the fees to get the
ship free and set her to sea, even though Blue still held the ship's papers.
The two dreamed of making the ship an "oceanic school" where students
would supplement their traditional learning with at-sea education. Blue
eventually retrieved his ship after a confrontation in Panama.
After the ship stayed in
port for eight years, Hartmut Paschburg and a group of Hamburg associates purchased her, once again naming her Sea Cloud. Paschburg and thirty-eight other men sailed the ship to
Europe, arriving in the Port of Hamburg on November 15, 1978. Sea Cloud spent eight months undergoing repairs in the now-named Howaldtswerke-Deutsche
Werft shipyard, the very yard she was built in. She was
redesigned with a sixty-four passenger capacity for a crew of sixty. The ship set sail on her first cruise in 1979, and
has since been described by the Berlitz Complete Guide to Cruising & Cruise Ships as "the
most romantic sailing ship afloat". In
2011, the Sea Cloud underwent
extensive renovations at the MWB-Werft, Bremerhaven. She is still operating
as a cruise ship.
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