The seven lives of the SEA CLOUD

The luxury family yacht

Money was not an issue when Wall Street broker Edward Francis Hutton commissioned the “Hussar” in 1931. Concerning the interior of what at the time was the largest private sailing yacht in the world, he gave free reign to his wife, the glamorous Marjorie Merriweather Post. When the wealthy couple divorced in 1935, Marjorie Hutton kept the family yacht and christened it SEA CLOUD. At the end of the same year, Marjorie married her old friend Joseph E. Davies. From then on, the attractive socialite moved into the world of politics and diplomacy. When Davies became the American ambassador to the USSR, the SEA CLOUD accompanied her – as a floating diplomatic palace where notable Soviets and European nobility came and went.

The war, crises, and turbulent years

When the United States entered the war in 1941, Marjorie and Joe Davies committed the SEA CLOUD to the Coast Guard. With its masts demounted and now painted gray, the former luxury yacht cruised between the Azores and Greenland as a seaborne weather station. In 1955 Rafael Trujillo, the dictator of the Dominican Republic, bought the tall ship and renamed it “Angelita”. On board, his son Ramfis hosted glamorous parties with Hollywood stars – until Trujillo was shot in 1961 and the ship was renamed “Patria”. Five years later, Operation Sea Cruises Inc. bought the windjammer and converted it into a luxury cruise ship, the “Atarna”. But once again, it ran into difficulties; first with the American authorities, who impounded the “Atarna”. Later, with a young woman called Stephanie Gallagher who wanted to start an “Oceanic School”, and “hijacked” the yacht – but was finally forced to hand it over in Panama.