FDR’s Yacht Is Getting Shipshape : Tourism: Restoration funds are running short, but there are efforts to make the Potomac part of a historic park in Oakland. The city hopes that it will lure visitors.

In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt plucked from obscurity a 165-foot Coast Guard cutter and ordered it refitted with a dining salon, staterooms and a hand-operated elevator to accommodate the wheelchair he used after being crippled by polio.

For the next decade, until his death, the austere, gleaming-white yacht, rechristened the Potomac, served as a “floating White House,” where Roosevelt entertained kings, queens and political leaders and spent countless weekends fishing from the teak-covered deck, a haven from the troubles of Depression and war.

These days, the ship is in the final stages of a long, against-the-odds face lift at the Port of Oakland after years of bouncing from one owner to another, including Elvis Presley, before literally sinking into ignominy after being seized by U.S. Customs in a drug bust.

If all goes as planned, Rep. Ronald V. Dellums, an Oakland Democrat, will introduce a bill in Congress later this month to establish the USS Potomac National Historical Park. The Potomac itself would be a floating museum of the Roosevelt era, ferrying schoolchildren on San Francisco Bay and the Delta.

The designation would make the restored ship and a planned visitor center eligible for an estimated $1 million in annual federal funds.

Problem is, the costly restoration effort, always a hand-to-mouth affair, is in some danger of running aground even as workers install the woodwork and light fixtures in the staterooms, salon and fantail.

To date, at least $3.5 million raised from government and private sources has been spent to refurbish the ship, not counting thousands of dollars’ worth of donated equipment and building materials. And the furnishings have yet to be bought.

“We’re almost out of money,” Dan Holdgate, project manager for the rebuilding, said on a recent tour of the ship. “The Potomac probably will be running by mid-September, but we might not have the money to buy life rafts and vests.”

Fund-raising efforts continue, and officials expect the restoration to be completed. But they note that a key to the ship’s future will be qualifying for government funds.

Given the vessel’s tumultuous past, it comes as no surprise to many associated with the restoration that the Potomac still faces rough sailing.

Originally called the Electra, the ship was built by the Manitowoc Ship Building Co. in Manitowoc, Wis., in 1934. Its first duty was to chase rumrunners, who were still around in the early days after Prohibition was repealed in 1933.

At the time, Roosevelt was using the yacht Sequoia, an ornate vessel not particularly to his liking. Aides feared that it would be difficult to evacuate the crippled leader should the wooden vessel catch fire.

Roosevelt, an avid sailor and former assistant secretary of the Navy, picked the Electra for conversion into a presidential yacht at a cost of $60,000.

Among other changes, a hand-powered elevator was installed in the after stack to enable the President to ride to and from the boat deck. A large, leather-covered settee was built into the fantail; photographs of the time show Roosevelt, with his trademark cigarette holder, enjoying cocktails with guests there. Wicker chairs and tables and--when Roosevelt’s military advisers deemed necessary--bulletproof glass completed the outdoor furnishings.

Below decks, stainless steel bathtubs were added in the President’s and guest quarters. Leather furniture, wood paneling and brass fixtures were installed throughout.

In one interior room containing radio equipment, Roosevelt conducted at least one of his famous “Fireside Chats.”

“It looked like a boat that could be used for a number of purposes, but when you used it for a yacht, you weren’t ashamed of it,” FDR’s oldest son, James, recalled in an interview at his Corona del Mar home. Visitors, he said, often were astonished that the ship was quite plain.

Log entries show that it was used for travels from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Key West. Roosevelt often used it for fishing jaunts on the Chesapeake Bay. In 1939, England’s King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (now the Queen Mum) joined the President and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt on a journey down the Potomac River to Williamsburg, Va.

The Potomac was part of a notable ruse in 1941. FDR left Maine aboard the yacht but secretly met a cruiser that carried him to a rendezvous with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill off Newfoundland, where the two leaders signed the Atlantic Charter, creating the wartime alliance. Aboard the Potomac, crew members stood in for the President, fishing from the deck in boat cloak and snap-brim hat. The secret rendezvous went off without a hitch.

After the war, President Harry S. Truman replaced the Potomac with a larger vessel, the Williamsburg. The Potomac was mustered out of the Navy, decommissioned by the Coast Guard and sold to the state of Maryland.

Maryland sold the ship in 1960 to a company that used it to ferry passengers and freight between Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. In the next few years, it changed hands many times. In 1964, Presley bought it for $55,000. He later donated it to Danny Thomas’ pet project, St. Jude’s Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., which planned to convert it to a restaurant to raise money. The cost proved too great, and St. Jude’s auctioned it off.

Next, a Southern California group pulled off the damaged teak upper deck and poured concrete, planning to turn the ship into a floating disco palace. That didn’t work either.

By this time, the vessel was looking shabby. An effort to convert it into a tourist attraction at San Pedro’s Ports O’ Call went nowhere. The ship was towed to Stockton and then to San Francisco’s Pier 26.

On Sept. 11, 1980, U.S. Customs seized the Potomac and a companion vessel, the Valkyure, which had 21 tons of marijuana on board. Although no drugs were found aboard the Potomac, it was a case of guilt by association. The yacht was apparently being used as a command post for drug smugglers purporting to be a charity for crippled children.

The Navy towed the bedraggled vessel to the Treasure Island naval installation in San Francisco Bay. In 1981, the rusted hull was pierced by pilings, and the Potomac sank in 35 feet of water.

A Navy salvage crew spent 12 days lifting her from the muddy bottom of the bay. That April, the Port of Oakland, the sole bidder, bought the rusted, derelict heap for $15,000 at auction. It hauled it to dry-dock and provided $400,000 in seed money to help establish the Assn. for the Preservation of the Presidential Yacht Potomac, a mostly volunteer organization charged with overseeing the project. Congress authorized $2.5 million for restoration work.

All seemed fine until workers struck the shipyard that won the contract. Eventually, workers at the Colberg yard in Stockton spent months welding on a new hull and replacing the pilot cabin.

The restoration is now in the final stages back at the Oakland waterfront, workers hoping to have the vessel shipshape for a recommissioning. Historic photos are guiding them as they attempt to duplicate furniture and match the ship’s appearance, inside and out.

In addition to putting in 8 to 10 hours a day, project manager Holdgate spends an estimated 25 hours a week in his home garage finishing wood for cabinets and trim--”to save money,” he said.

Creation of the ship as a national landmark and park would be a boon for Oakland, which has struggled to make Jack London Waterfront a tourist attraction.

The idea is to have a land-based FDR interpretive center at an already completed Roosevelt Pier, built with a $446,000 grant from the state.

The Potomac also stands a good chance in October of being named a national historic landmark by the National Park System Advisory Board.

“It would be the only memorial (to FDR) on the West Coast and would be differentiated from the others on the East Coast, which are immovable,” said James Roosevelt, 82, a close adviser to his father who often sailed aboard the Potomac.

James P. Delgado, chief maritime historian for the National Park Service in Washington and head of the National Maritime Initiative, a program supporting preservation of historic vessels, hailed the effort. Aboard the Potomac, he said, “there very much is a sense of FDR.”