Mystic Seaport To

Exhibit FDR’s Boat

STONINGTON (AP) — Before he was president, Franklin D. Roosevelt served as assistant secretary of the Navy. That is when he passed on his love of boating to his children with the help of Vireo, a 24-foot sloop.

The sailboat that Roosevelt used to teach his children how to sail will go on display next month at Mystic Seaport as part of an exhibit titled “Your Grandfather’s Boat.”

“I thought it was time to put the Vireo on display because it has such a wonderful story,” said James F. English, Jr, the seaport’s interim director. “Thousands of schoolchildren go through here each year. The boat seems to me to be a way to connect the story we tell of America and the sea with the broader history they are learning in school.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted a boat he could use with his five children at their summer home on Campobello Island, New Brunswick. He bought the boat in 1920 from a broker in Boston for $700.

On August 10, 1921, Roosevelt took his wife, Eleanor, and sons James and Elliott for an afternoon sail. Roosevelt was feverish and tired when he went to bed that night. The next morning he was able to get up briefly but it was the last time he would walk on his own, as he had been stricken by polio.

“For me it’s not so much that he was a president and owned the boat, but the fact that he came down with polio the day after he was sailing on it,” said Dana Hewson, the Seaport’s vice president for watercraft preservation and programs. “That was the last day of his active life. Then his whole world changed.”

The boat has been in storage since 1970.