USS Sequoia – The Floating White House

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The 2020 Race for the White House came and went on Nov. 3. But did you know there was a yacht known as “The Floating White House?” USS Sequoia was a presidential yacht and served eight presidents between 1931 and 1977. The 95-year-old, 104-foot yacht was a significant part of U.S. history.

A 2019 article about the restoration of USS Sequoia stated the yacht, which was indeed known as the Floating White House, was where several key events occurred during its 40-plus-year run as a place for U.S. presidents.

The eight presidents who had USS Sequoia at his disposal were: Herbert Hoover; Franklin Delano Roosevelt; Harry Truman; Dwight Eisenhower; John F. Kennedy; Lyndon B. Johnson; Richard Nixon; Gerald Ford; and, Jimmy Carter.

What happened aboard USS Sequoia, you might be asking? We’ll never know everything that happened aboard, but MegaYacht News stated the yacht helped Kennedy celebrate his 46th – and last – birthday. USS Sequoia was also the site where Nixon made his decision to resign in 1974, according to MegaYacht News.

Carter reportedly sold the yacht, ending Sequoia’s long run as a presidential annex. MegaYacht News said Carter made the decision to sell the yacht, because it was “unbecoming for the President to have such a luxury during tough economic times.”

An oral interview with Carter, published by the JFK Library, indicated the 39th President took some heat for selling the yacht.

“People thought I was not being reverent enough to the office I was holding, that I was too much of a peanut farmer, not enough of an aristocrat, or something like that,” Carter said in the published oral interview.

USS Sequoia became a National Historic Landmark in 1987 and is now owned by Equator Capital Group.

The yacht was built in 1925 in New Jersey.