01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, April 10, 2005

BY MICHAEL SCHUMAN
Special to The Journal

Franklin Roosevelt's favorite spot on his presidential yacht was the open fantail. And why not? We sat there and felt our hair bathed by the ocean air as we listened to seagulls singing their seaside songs.

FDR's yacht, the Potomac, is docked today at the famed Jack London Square in Oakland, Calif. Known in its time as the Floating White House, the yacht -- and if you want to show your maritime knowledge don't call it a boat or a ship -- today joins the homes in Hyde Park, N.Y., Warm Springs, Ga., and Campobello, New Brunswick (see page 3) as tangible vestiges of the president who died 60 years ago Tuesday (April 12, 1945).

The fantail, also known as the afterdeck area, was the closest thing the craft has to a lounge and was the spot where FDR liked to read, fish, work on his stamp collection and toss back his daily diet of martinis. It is also where he entertained staff members, including Louis Howe and Harry Hopkins, and VIPs such as England's King George VI and royalty from Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands. Oh, and FDR's famous Scotty, Fala? He, too, was often found relaxing on the fantail.

Roosevelt always sailed with a crew of 42 Navy enlisted personnel, 12 stewards and three officers. In 1995 a former Potomac crewmember in his 70s recalled standing guard while the polio-stricken president sat in his wheelchair on the fantail. He remembered that guards were armed with .45 pistols and Thompson submachine guns and were ordered to warn vessels approaching closer than 100 yards. If a ship continued toward the Potomac, the guards were instructed to fire a warning shot. If the vessel still did not retreat, guards were told to shoot to kill.

FDR, president from 1933 to 1945, often sailed the reconfigured Coast Guard cutter as a simple escape from muggy Washington summers. To a president who once served as assistant secretary of the Navy, it didn't get any better than spending a leisurely day on the open Atlantic.

However, Roosevelt did work on board, too. He held informal strategy sessions at sea, gave one of his fireside (waterside?) chats from the radio room, and embarked on a clandestine voyage in August 1941 which has since become legendary.

That month, with war devastating Europe and Far Eastern Asia, the president publicly announced he was taking his 165-foot-long yacht for a leisurely fishing escape in the waters off Cape Cod. But while en route to the Cape, he was secretly transferred from the Potomac to a heavy cruiser, the Augusta, while a crew member stayed aboard the yacht and posed as the president. The real Franklin Roosevelt then sailed to the waters off Newfoundland, where he and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill secretly met.

There, the two world leaders crafted the Atlantic Charter, spelling out the principles of the two nations' allied partnership during World War II and the possible founding of the United Nations after the war.

The cozy radio room where Roosevelt gave his broadcast on March 29, 1941, looks much as it did 64 years ago, dominated by a bulky, black typewriter. It is often used today by ham operators making contact with other historic vessels.

The crews' quarters, like those of any Navy personnel, were cramped: vertical rows of three cots jammed into two compartments near the bow. The three officers had tight but private staterooms with little more than a bunk and a dresser.

But the president's bedroom was hardly plush. No gold-plated fixtures adorn the presidential wash basin. A basic bed topped with a bedspread decorated with Scotty patterns occupies the cabin. Former crew members recall that the president had his polio-ravaged legs massaged while lying on the bed. Accoutrements include a standard Navy-issue dresser constructed of metal painted to look like wood. There are a couple of wicker chairs, a wooden desk holding a framed picture of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and a little wicker bed like the one in which Fala slept.

That photo is about all crew and guests ever saw of the president's wife. She did spend her 57th birthday among family and friends on board in 1941, and she joined the president in welcoming the king and queen of England on a cruise along the Virginia shore, but she never spent a night here. As is widely known by now, the Roosevelts did not have a close marriage. And the memory of a childhood incident in which Eleanor nearly drowned aboard the Britanic, a passenger ship en route to Europe, left her with an aversion to sailing.

Like FDR's homes, the Potomac was specially equipped to accommodate his wheelchair. In order to provide secure and easy access for Roosevelt to move between the yacht's main and lower decks, a hand-operated, counterweighted elevator on pulleys was installed in a false smokestack. Using the strong upper body muscles he developed through years of physical therapy, FDR could move up and down by yanking on the pulley ropes. It was not unusual for guests aboard the Potomac to be stunned by the sight of the president rolling out of the upper deck smokestack in his wheelchair. But little else on the yacht had to be altered because FDR's son James was usually on board, too, and helped his father maneuver around it.

The Potomac's interior décor is also heavier on comfort than style. Practical wooden chairs are tucked into the saloon, or dining room, table, with a pair of lazy wicker armchairs looking on. The atmosphere is evocative of Roosevelt's rustic cottage retreat in Warm Springs, Ga., rather than the patrician Hyde Park, N.Y., mansion where he grew up.

Few of the items on board are original, but historical photographs, original plans and the memories of family and crew were used to recreate the yacht's Roosevelt-era appearance. The Potomac, however, came very close to sailing into history and never returning. Like the nation itself in the 1930s, the Potomac was once shrouded in despair and neglect. Roosevelt supporters can easily draw an analogy with his rescue of the country and the city of Oakland's rescue of his beloved yacht.

After FDR's death in April 1945, the Floating White House languished for decades. At first, the state of Maryland used it as a research vessel. But then it passed through a succession of owners, none of whom really seemed to want it because of excessive operating and restoration costs.

In 1964, Elvis Presley bought the yacht and donated it to Danny Thomas's St. Jude's Hospital in Memphis. Because of its age and difficulty to maintain, the hospital did not want it either, and it was auctioned off to raise funds. To save money, just one side of the yacht was painted -- the side facing the camera -- in a photo session with Elvis.

The Potomac's story gets even more bizarre. A southern California business group bought it with the goal of turning it into a floating disco. The nadir of its existence came in 1980, when the once-proud vessel was seized in San Francisco Bay, where it was being used as a front for a drug-smuggling operation.

Because of a pierced hull, the Potomac sank to the bottom of the bay, where it lay for about two weeks before being refloated by the Navy. Finally, it was put on the auction block. The Port of Oakland bought the yacht for $15,000. The port was the only bidder.

After a major lobbying effort by the president's son James Roosevelt, then-President Ronald Reagan earmarked $2.5 million to restore his predecessor's Floating White House. Another $2.5 million in private donations, plus the combined efforts of volunteers, organized labor and maritime corporations, led to the opening of the yacht as a floating national historic landmark in 1995.

If you go

The Potomac is open for guided tours mid-January through mid-December. Hours: Friday and Sunday 12-3:30, Wednesday 10:30-3:30. The last tour ticket is sold 45 minutes before closing. Cost: $7 adults, $3 age 60 and older, free 12 and younger. Tickets are sold in the visitor center at Clay and Water streets in Jack London Square.

Allow a little more than an hour, roughly 15 minutes for an introductory videotape and 45 minutes for the tour.

Cruises aboard the Potomac last roughly two hours, cover much of San Francisco Bay, and are generally offered the first and third Thursdays and second and fourth Saturdays of each month from April through October, with exceptions. Cost: $40 adults, $35 ages 60 and older, $20 ages 6-12.

For more information: Potomac Association, 540 Water Street, P.O. Box 2064, Oakland, CA 94606; 24-hour information line 510-627-1502 (510-627-1215 to speak with a human), or visit info [at] usspotomac.org www.usspotomac.org

General Oakland information: Oakland Convention and Visitors Bureau, 463 11th Street, Oakland, CA 94607, (510) 839-9000, FAX (510) 839-5924; www.oaklandcvb.com