In the Bay Area, nice ships are a dime a dozen.
But there’s only one ship that was the presidential yacht for Franklin D. Roosevelt and owned by Elvis, then later impounded in one of the biggest drug busts in U.S. history, before sinking in 30 feet of water — and then improbably rising again as a National Historic Landmark.
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It’s the USS Potomac, and it’s open for public tours in Oakland’s Jack London Square. Even locally, however, most people haven’t heard its story.
“She’s a relative secret, still,” says John Eichel, a volunteer docent for the nonprofit USS Potomac Association. “Many folks in Alameda, right across the water, don’t even know about it.”
On this particular day, Eichel is giving a tour to a small group who board the ship as the breeze kicks up and the temperature – hot and dry on land – drops several degrees. Pelicans soar drunkenly, and cormorants slip snakelike below the brackish estuary. There’s an inquisitive sea lion that sometimes visits, too, but he seems to be taking the day off.
Ivory-white and 165-feet long, the modified U.S. Coast Guard cutter casts a presidential aura despite a weld transecting its midriff like a nasty surgical scar, evidence of post-sinking renovations. In the 1940s and ’50s, she chugged around the Eastern seaboard and earned the nickname the “Floating White House.” Roosevelt did indeed use her for official purposes, like entertaining foreign heads of state such as King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, and conducting secret wartime meetings.
A guest stateroom aboard the USS Potomac is seen during a tour on May 21, 2025, in Oakland, Calif. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
Partially disabled from polio (or perhaps Guillain–Barré syndrome, according to modern theories), the president had a smokestack converted into a hand-powered, rope-and-pulley elevator and a settee where he could put his feet up to enjoy his famously weird martinis.
The front end of the boat is where Roosevelt conducted business, and the back was the presidential or “party end,” says Eichel. “So it’s business in the front, party in the back,” quips a visitor.
The top speed used to be 20 knots, but now it scoots around at 11 knots. “Unless we have Captain Richard. He likes to push things a bit,” jokes Eichel. The same visitor pipes up again: “Sounds like he belongs on the party side of the boat.”
The Potomac offers tours between one and three hours long as well as dockside tours for landlubbers, which is what we’re doing today. It’s hired out for charters, does special cruises on military dates like Veterans Day and VJ Day and hosts wine tastings and music by blues and cover bands.
A portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt is displayed aboard the USS Potomac during a tour on May 21, 2025, in Oakland, Calif. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
In November, the ship will host what Jennifer Pettley, executive director of the USS Potomac Association calls an “Elvis concert live on board.”
“We have an Elvis impersonator, one of the best in the Bay Area,” she says.
Right now, though, Eichel is pointing at a toilet. There were more than 50 crew members when FDR was in charge, including U.S. Navy and Secret Service personnel, and most had to share a single “head.” There were other inconveniences if you weren’t white. The sleeping bunks for Filipino crew members were located in the ship’s front, where waves hit hardest — one of the more outward signs of discrimination at the time.
Roosevelt hated flying and was a lifelong boat guy. He sailed the Hudson as a kid and went on to become assistant secretary of the Navy. He preferred his ships constructed of metal, like the Potomac, because he didn’t want to be trapped on a wooden one in a wheelchair while it was burning, according to Eichel.
The bathroom of the President’s Stateroom aboard the USS Potomac is seen during a tour on May 21, 2025, in Oakland, Calif. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
“I think he found his greatest moments of relaxation and peace when he was on this boat or another boat,” says Tom Dana, a volunteer docent.
Some say Roosevelt used the Potomac to get away from the pressures of office. Others say it was to get away from Henrietta Nesbitt, the housekeeper who supervised the kitchen at the White House. Nesbitt’s motto was “plain foods, plainly prepared,” and the cuisine was so repetitive guests knew what they’d eat by what day it was: Monday was tongue with broccoli, Tuesday boiled beef with mixed greens.
“And so it happened that the most powerful man in the free world often spent his dinners eating only what he could bear,” reads a sign onboard the ship, “then rummaging up egg sandwiches in a little kitchen next to the presidential study.”
Roosevelt used the party end of the ship for his “Children’s Hour,” named after a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem, which was a time of hobnobbing with his inner circle and guests, where talk of politics and business was forbidden. With a Naval aid holding his arm, he’d hold court while mixing cocktails whose recipes were seemingly beamed down from Mars.
The engine room aboard the USS Potomac is seen during a tour on May 21, 2025, in Oakland, Calif. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
“The martinis started out simple enough, usually as a 3:1 or sometimes 4:1 gin and dry vermouth,” according to a 2021 article from a National Archives technician. “Shaken over ice. Cocktail glass. Olive or lemon peel garnish. Then it gets complicated…. Perhaps he might add some fruit juices or liqueurs or substitute with an alternative liquor for gin when his home bar was limited. Sometimes an extra measure of gin to be on the safe side, as he could lose track of his measurements while deep in storytelling. You can see how quickly things could get out of control. According to his grandson Curtis, the martinis were said to be ‘truly awful.’”
The Potomac made endeavors as mundane as fishing trips in the Gulf of Mexico – FDR loved fishing and once sent an “extremely ugly” catch for inclusion in the Smithsonian – and as secretive as a clandestine meeting with Winston Churchill for World War II’s Atlantic Charter conference. But as the war ramped up and German U-boats patrolled the coast, she was confined to local waters and eventually sold to the state of Maryland and then private owners.
That’s when the story gets stranger.
Years of neglect left the Potomac sorely in need of TLC. It ended up docked in Long Beach, where it was supposedly used as a floating disco. “People were always interested in her, but nobody had the resources to upkeep her,” explains Eichel.
That was where the boat was docked when Elvis Presley set his sights on her in 1964. The King bought the yacht for $55,000 and offered to donate it to the March of Dimes — a tribute to FDR, who helped start the charity. But the gesture was rejected, as the condition of the Potomac at that point was so poor that it was considered to be more of a burden than a gift. His offer to the Florida Coast Guard Auxiliary also received the brush-off. Eventually, Elvis found a willing taker in St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, donating her after just a few months.
An original bell of the USS Potomac is displayed aboard the ship on May 21, 2025, in Oakland, Calif. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
“At the time, the British invasion was going on,” says Pettley. “They were looking for opportunities to keep Elvis’ name out there, and maybe that’s why they purchased the presidential yacht.”
The Potomac’s name surfaced next in 1980, when the feds announced the biggest contemporary drug bust in the history of the Western U.S. Both it and a converted minesweeper, of all things, were seized and towed away after drug runners’ ruse of displaying signs saying “Crippled Children Society of America” did not fool authorities.
“They recovered 20 tons of Colombian weed, with a $40 million street value,” says Eichel. “Most of the marijuana was on the converted minesweeper. The USS Potomac was just a cover.”
A miniature model of the USS Potomac is displayed inside the USS Potomac Visitor Center on May 21, 2025, in Oakland, Calif. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
It was the lowest point in the ship’s history. Well, not the literal lowest — that came when it sank post-seizure near Treasure Island. The theory was that an extremely low tide allowed a submerged piling to pierce the hull. The Potomac quietly decayed under the waves, its bottom becoming a skeletal frame, until the Port of Oakland bought her for $15,000 to refurbish into a tourist attraction in Jack London Square.
She was painstakingly restored according to the original plans, and this year is celebrating her 30th anniversary back on the right side of the water. Now the USS Potomac looks just like new, save for a couple of modern tweaks that might’ve surprised FDR.
“There’s this old-fashioned steering wheel, and sometimes cheeky passengers come up and ask the captain if they can steer the ship,” says Eichel. “He lets them. But what they don’t know is he’s actually controlling it with a little joystick elsewhere in the cabin.”
Details: The USS Potomac offers weekly cruises and dockside tours from 540 Water St., Oakland; for prices and times visit usspotomac.org
If you enjoy unusual cruises…
Want to take a voyage that’ll leave you with a good story? The USS Potomac isn’t the only unique ship in the Bay Area – consider taking one of these for a spin.
Naturalist Cindy Rice of Monterey, talks about the wildlife during a tour of the Elkhorn Slough on the Monterey Bay Eco Tours electric catamaran in Moss Landing, Calif., on Thursday, Aug. 3, 2023. Monterey Bay Eco Tours is a climate-conscious tour company that guides people through the Elkhorn Slough, an amazingly diverse stretch of water north of Monterey that’s full of Southern sea otters, harbor seals, sea lions and migratory birds. (Doug Duran/Bay Area News Group)
Monterey Bay Eco Tours: montereybayecotours.com
This family-owned operation sends a custom-made electric vessel into the Monterey Bay’s Elkhorn Slough, an ecological gem packed with sea otters, seals and sea birds. Jane Goodall reportedly patronized it twice in 2025 – does an endorsement get any better?
Adventure Cat: www.adventurecat.com
A husband and wife built this catamaran by hand, and now take it on cruises of the Bay. The sail lends an old-timey feel, and the dual hull makes for a supremely stable ride.
City Cruises: www.cityexperiences.com
This major touring company departs from San Francisco and the Berkeley Marina and is known for its live events with rock stars and celebrity chefs, plus drag brunches.