Return of 'floating White House'

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THE US is to spend $2 million (£1.03 million) buying back the presidential yacht from a private owner, saving a national treasure from the potential indignity of becoming a floating casino.

The move has delighted those who view the USS Sequoia, which was once dubbed "the floating White House", as a piece of history worth saving.

"It’s a fantastic piece of Americana that deserves the highest level of preservation," said Kim Nielsen, the director of the US Navy Museum in Washington.

Built in 1925 and used by ten presidents since Herbert Hoover, the 104ft Sequoia has hosted hundreds of dignitaries from Winston Churchill, who complained during fishing trips with Franklin D Roosevelt that its deckchairs were too hard, to the Queen and Japan’s Emperor Hirohito.

Originally used in the 1920s to enforce prohibition, it became a Depression-era retreat for Hoover and went on to serve as a floating war-room from which Roosevelt planned the D-Day landings in 1944, along with the Supreme Allied Commander, Dwight D Eisenhower, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery and Churchill.

It was aboard the USS Sequoia that President Harry S Truman took the decision to drop the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, later hosting the world’s first nuclear control summit on board, and where Lyndon B Johnson planned strategy during the Vietnam War.

It was a place for celebration - in 1963, John F Kennedy used it for his final birthday party, cruising the Potomac River - and also a place for grim reflection as Richard Nixon took the decision to resign in 1974.

It has also undergone various changes over the years. Franklin D Roosevelt, who was crippled by polio, had a lift installed to save the crew having to carry him from deck to deck.

Johnson later had the lift ripped out and a bar installed in its place in the dining room, giving him somewhere to pour his favourite tipple, Scotch on the rocks. He also ordered the floor of the shower be lowered by 3in, in order to accommodate his gangly 6ft 3in frame.

Jimmy Carter was not such a fan of the Sequoia, auctioning it in 1977 for $270,000 (£139,175) saying that there was no place for such luxuries in his no-frills presidency.

Jimmy Silversmith, a Washington lawyer who now owns the yacht, hires it out for receptions and weddings at $10,000 (£5,154) a time, though he says that he is taking care to preserve its dignity, even turning down an approach from the lingerie company Victoria’s Secret to drape bikini-clad models around the boat for a photo-shoot.

However, he says far more than $2 million will be needed to buy the yacht outright.

The money was slipped into a $388 billion (£200 billion) spending bill approved by Congress, angering some politicians at a time when education budgets have been slashed, the national debt increased and the war bill is rising daily.

"When we’re sending American men and women to war in Iraq without the necessary body armour and equipment, why in the world are we spending money on a yacht?" demanded congressman James Oberstar.