Mayflower is Our Second White House
For about 25 years, the U.S. had an official presidential yacht. In 1925, New York Times Magazine wrote about it.
In an article with no byline, the publication wrote about how the Mayflower yacht marked a change in presidential expectations by the public:
Up to the first [Theodore] Roosevelt administration, the notion prevailed in this land of the free that one of the chief duties of a president was to set an example of ascetic living before his democratic people. Indulgence by the executive in strawberries in February was scandalous. Self-denial was good for a second term.
But then that went away.
Theodore Roosevelt changed that somewhat, so far as it concerned him and his successors in the White House – when, by permission of Congress in 1902, he took over the Mayflower… Hadn’t times changed since the Puritan days of that other Mayflower, and wasn’t the leader of the richest and happiest people on earth entitled to a little luxury now and then?
That continued up through and including the publication of that 1925 article.
Mr. Coolidge is our latest, and he is the seagoingest [sic] one of all the Mayflower’s five distinguished supercargos. [That is, the five Presidents Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, Harding, and Coolidge.]
It was not to last. Coolidge’s successor Herbert Hoover got rid of the yacht during the Great Depression, mostly to burnish his public image as a man of the people during difficult economic times. (It didn’t work, as he lost his 1932 reelection bid.)
The yacht was repurposed as a U.S. navy ship during World War II, then bought by the Israeli Navy in 1950, before ultimately being dismantled in 1955.
Now in 2025, we have a president in Donald Trump who’s wealthy enough to afford his own yachts in his personal capacity, not merely a “presidential yacht.”
Mayflower is Our Second White House: Presidential Yacht Takes on a New Importance in Mr. Coolidge’s Administration – Now at Marblehead
Published: Sunday, July 12, 1925