U.S.S. Sea Cloud
WPG-284
1942
(Albatros ALK-118)
- Class: Private yacht of 1931
- Displacement: 2,323 tons
- Dimensions: 316 x 49 x 28 ft.
- Machinery:14 knots
- Armament: 2-3"/50, 4-20mm A.A. guns
- Complement: racially integrated
- Builder: Friderich Krupp Germaniawerft, A. G. Kiel, 1931
- Chartered: 7 Jan 1942 to Coast Guard as U.S.C.G.C. Sea Cloud WPG-284
- Transferred: Apr 1943 to Navy as U.S.S. Sea Cloud IX-99
- Decomissioned: 4 Nov 1944 and returned to owner's agent.
- Service: Weather patrols in N. Atlantic, 1942-1944, operating out of Boston.
- Notes: Designed by Cox and Stephens for breakfast cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post (then married to E. F. Hutton) and launched as four-masted barque Hussar. The ship carried twelve guests with a compliment of 66 officers, crew, and staff. When Marjorie married Joseph E. Davies, U. S. ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1935, she renamed her yacht Sea Cloud and took her to Leningrad where Stalin and other Soviet officials were frequent guests aboard. In 1939 Davies was posted to Belgium and they shifted the yacht to Antwerp. From 1942 to 1944 the vessel was leased to the U.S. government for $1/year and used as a weather ship (the configuration shown here) in the Atlantic. Post sailed her again as a yacht from 1947 to 1955. Sold to Generalissimo Rafael Trujillo, president of the Dominican Republic, and renamed Angelita. Sold again and registered in Panama as Patria. In 1961 she became Antarna for Caribbean coastal service. Laid up and forgotten in Panama, she was eventually acquired by owners from Hamburg, and overhauled in 1978 with additional passenger accomodations. Renamed Sea Cloud she continues to sail, primarily in the West Indies during winter and the Mediterranean in summer, with occasional trips to the Pacific and Baltic.
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