Presidential Papers, Doc#140 Confidential To Charles Erwin Wilson, 8 April 1953. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower
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Doc #141

Document #140; April 8, 1953
To Charles Erwin Wilson
Series: EM, AWF, Administration Series ; Category: Confidential
The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, Volume XIV - The Presidency: The Middle Way
Part I: Charting a New Course; January 1953 to April 1953
Chapter 2: "A number of misunderstandings": Party and International Struggles

 

Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense: Please notify the Navy Department that I desire to make no further use of the Presidential yacht after the end of this fiscal year.1 Unless there is some other and definitely necessary purpose to which the Navy should put this ship, I should like that she be retired from service for the next four years and the maximum savings realized as a result.

I understand that the resulting reduction in her personnel will not be so great as the present size of her complement because some of her crew also perform other necessary functions in the government.2 Nevertheless, I am sure that Secretary Anderson will reflect the largest possible savings in the 1954 budget.3

With respect to her activities for the remainder of the fiscal year, I should like to make only one trip in her--which will be to go to Williamsburg about the 15th of May, returning here about the 18th. After that she will be at the disposal of the Navy to begin whatever work will be necessary in retiring her from service.4

I intend to make some announcement of this plan within a matter of a few days.5

1 Eisenhower thus reversed his original decision to use the U.S.S. Williamsburg for secret government meetings (New York Times, Mar. 12, 1953).

2 The 243-foot yacht, acquired by the Navy in 1941, required a crew of 150 men and cost six hundred thousand dollars a year to operate. It was currently undergoing a sixty thousand dollar overhaul in Norfolk, Virginia.

3 Robert B. Anderson was Secretary of the Navy.

4 Eisenhower would cruise to Yorktown, Virginia, on May 15 to participate in inauguration ceremonies for the new president of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg and to receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree. He would also attend an observance of the 177th anniversary of the Virginia Resolution, prelude to the July 4, 1776, Declaration of Independence. For the next two days the Williamsburg would take the President and his party to Norfolk, Virginia, and to Annapolis, Maryland, before returning to Washington, D.C. See the Chronology for details of Eisenhower's final cruise on the Chesapeake Bay aboard the presidential yacht.

5 On April 18 the White House would announce Eisenhower's decision to retire the yacht from presidential service. According to Press Secretary Hagerty, the Williamsburg, which had been used by President Truman for short cruises and vacation trips, was viewed by the Administration as a "symbol of needless luxury." Hagerty said that the yacht would be made available to the American Red Cross for entertaining wounded service men on daylight cruises on the Potomac until June 30 (New York Times, Apr. 19, 1953). On June 25 Eisenhower would visit with veterans on the occasion of the Williamsburg's last cruise before deactivation (Public Papers of the Presidents: Eisenhower, 1953, pp. 453-54). The Navy would take the Williamsburg out of service and decomission the ship in a brief ceremony at the U.S. Naval Gun Factory in Washington, D.C., on June 30, 1953.

Bibliographic reference to this document:
Eisenhower, Dwight D. Confidential To Charles Erwin Wilson, 8 April 1953. In The Papers of Dwight David Eisenhower, ed. L. Galambos and D. van Ee, doc. 140. World Wide Web facsimile by The Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Commission of the print edition; Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996, http://www.eisenhowermemorial.org/presidential-papers/first-term/documents/140.cfm

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