Sea Cloud

1 · POSITION

Sea Cloud is a four-masted barque whose year of construction her operator gives as 1931. She was built at the Germania shipyard in Kiel to plans by the American design office Gibbs and Cox, and launched in the last week of April 1931. She measures 109.50 metres overall, with a beam of 14.94 metres and a draught of 5.13 metres. Twenty-nine sails carry 3,000 square metres of canvas, and the main mast stands 56 metres above the waterline. [1, 2, 4]

2 · TWO CABINS THAT ARE STILL THE ORIGINAL ROOMS

The ship takes a maximum of sixty-four guests in thirty-two outside cabins, ten of them in the luxury area, with a crew of about sixty. Owners’ Suite 1, Marjorie Merriweather Post’s, runs to about 38 square metres with a 9 square metre bathroom in white Carrara marble; Owners’ Suite 2, Edward F. Hutton’s, to about 34 square metres, his bath in red Carrara. Her original gilded mirror remains in the No. 1 suite. [1, 4]

3 · WHO ORDERED HER AND WHO FURNISHED HER

The operator’s history says Hutton had the yacht built; Hillwood says Post and Hutton ordered it together and named it Hussar V. Both place the furnishing with Post, who assembled the interior in a Brooklyn warehouse over nearly two years and filled the cabins with French antiques. Her bedroom held a white Carrara fireplace, gold-plated swan fixtures and a floor-to-ceiling gilded mirror; Hutton’s was panelled in dark wood under coffered ceilings. [2, 3, 4]

4 · SEVEN LIVES, AND A WEATHER STATION

Post married Joseph E. Davies on 15 December 1935; when he went to Moscow the yacht served as a floating residence until she left the USSR in June 1938. The Coast Guard took her on a one-dollar charter, ran her as IX-99 off the Azores and south of Greenland with 173 crew aboard, and returned her at the end of 1944. Later owners renamed her Angelita, Patria and Antarna. Hamburg merchants bought her in 1978 and restored the name. [2]

5 · ⚑ CANDOUR

⚑ The register says she was built for Marjorie Merriweather Post. Her operator credits the commission to Hutton and the interior to Post; Hillwood credits the order to both and dates it to 1930, against the operator’s 1931. The operator christens her HUSSAR, the museum and the trade report Hussar V. The register calls her still sailing: a February 2025 report said she would leave service that October for restoration at about half her capacity, while the operator’s site still lists her. [1–4]