Scrap Yard Awaits Truman’s Rusty Yacht

The Williamsburg, once Harry S. Truman’s official presidential yacht, is rotting near a sewage plant on the Potomac River outside Washington and faces demolition.

The vandalized, 243-foot-long hulk is covered with broken glass and empty beer bottles, the Kansas City Star reported.

“It’s nothing but a rusting hulk,” said Richard Lynn, a Kansas City, Kan., riverboat operator who researched the possibilities of restoring the craft.

If no one takes the former beauty of black steel, teak trim and mirror-polished brass, it faces demolition in July, 1992.

Through the years, the Williamsburg has had a variety of owners. It had a brief stint as a floating restaurant in New Jersey in 1969, and before that the National Science Foundation in Norfolk, Va., used it as a laboratory, the newspaper said.

The ship became available about two weeks ago to anyone who could prove to the District of Columbia that it would be restored, said Kim Nielsen, chief of photography for the Smithsonian Institution’s Freer and Sackler museums.

“People have no conscience about destroying things of historic value,” Nielsen said.

Nielsen is trying to find a future for the yacht, and he envisions the Midwest as its brightest hope. Independence, Mo., to be more specific--Truman’s home.

But the idea of moving the Williamsburg to the Midwest is hopeless, local leaders and entrepreneurs say.

“It’s one of those cases where the powers that be have turned their backs on it,” Lynn said.

Nielsen estimated that even though the ship would be donated, the restoration would cost about $7 million--more if the ship is to ever sail again.

Dan McGraw of Independence looked into bringing the yacht to Independence about four years ago. When he finally tracked it down, it was privately owned and scheduled to again become a floating restaurant in New Jersey. The city of Independence dropped its queries.

Then Nielsen called McGraw two weeks ago to say the ship was available.

But now, McGraw said, “I don’t think the city’s going to get involved in it. I don’t know what the city of Independence would do with it.”