Franklin Roosevelt’s favorite spot on his presidential yacht was the open fantail section. And why not? We sat there and felt our hair bathed by the ocean air as we listened to seagulls singing their seaside songs. FDR’s yacht, the USS Potomac, is docked today at famed Jack London Square in Oakland, Calif. Known in its time as the Floating White House, the yacht — don’t call it a boat or a ship — today joins homes in Hyde Park, N.Y.; Warm Springs, Ga.; and Campobello, New Brunswick, as tangible vestiges of the president most historians consider the greatest of the 20th century.

The fantail, also known as the afterdeck, was the closest the boat had to a lounge and was the spot where FDR liked to read, fish, work on his stamp collection and toss back his daily duet of martinis. It was also where he entertained staff members, including Louis Howe and Harry Hopkins, and VIPs such as England’s King George VI and royalty from Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands. Oh, and Fala, FDR’s famous Scottish terrier? He, too, often relaxed on the fantail.

Roosevelt always sailed with a crew of 42 Navy enlisted personnel, 12 stewards and three officers. In 1995 a former Potomac crew member, then in his 70s, recalled standing guard while the polio-stricken president sat in his wheelchair on the fantail. He remembered that guards were armed with .45-caliber pistols and Thompson submachine guns and were ordered to warn vessels approaching closer than 100 yards. If a ship continued toward the Potomac, the guards were instructed to fire a warning shot. If the vessel did not retreat, guards were told to shoot to kill.

FDR, president from 1933 until his death in April 1945, often sailed the refigured Coast Guard cutter as a simple escape from muggy Washington summers. To a president who once served as assistant secretary of the Navy, it didn’t get any better than a leisurely day on the open Atlantic. Roosevelt did work aboard the yacht, too. He held informal strategy sessions at sea, gave one of his patented fireside (waterside?) chats from the radio room and embarked on a clandestine voyage in August 1941.

That month, with war devastating Europe and Far Eastern Asia, the president publicly announced he was taking his 165-foot yacht for a leisurely fishing escape off Cape Cod. But while en route he was secretly transferred from the Potomac to a heavy cruiser, the USS Augusta, while a crew member stayed aboard the yacht and posed as the president. The real Roosevelt then sailed to a site off Newfoundland, where he and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill secretly met. The world leaders proceeded to craft the Atlantic Charter, spelling out the principles of the nations’ partnership during World War II and the founding of the United Nations after the war.

The cozy radio room where Roosevelt gave his March 29, 1941, broadcast looks much as it did 71 years ago, dominated by a bulky, black typewriter. It is often used today by ham operators making contact with other historic vessels. The crews’ quarters were cramped with vertical rows of three cots jammed into two compartments near the bow. The three officers had tight, but private, staterooms with little more than a bunk and a dresser.

The president’s bedroom was hardly plush. A basic bed topped with a bedspread decorated with Scottie patterns still occupies the cabin. Accoutrements include a standard Navy-issue dresser constructed of metal painted to look like wood. There are a couple of wicker chairs, a wooden desk holding a framed picture of first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and a little wicker bed like the one in which Fala slept.

That photo is about all crew and guests ever saw of the president’s wife. She did spend her 57th birthday among family and friends on board in 1941, and she joined the president in welcoming the king and queen of England on a cruise along the Virginia shore, but she never spent a night here. The memory of a childhood incident in which she nearly drowned aboard a ship en route to Europe left her with an aversion to sailing.

Like FDR’s homes, the Potomac was equipped to accommodate his wheelchair. To provide secure and easy access between the yacht’s main and lower decks, a hand-operated, counterweighted elevator mounted on pulleys was installed in a false smokestack. Using the strong upper-body muscle he developed through years of physical therapy, FDR could move up and down by yanking on the pulley ropes. It was not unusual for guests aboard the Potomac to be stunned by the sight of the president rolling out of the upper deck smokestack in his wheelchair. But little else had to be altered, as FDR’s son James was usually on board, too, and helped his father maneuver around.

The Potomac’s decor leans toward comfort over style. Practical wooden chairs are tucked into the saloon (dining room) table, with a pair of lazy wicker armchairs nearby. The atmosphere is evocative of Roosevelt’s rustic cottage retreat in Warm Springs rather than the patrician Hyde Park mansion where he grew up.

Few items on board are original, but photographs, original plans and the memories of family and crew members were used to re-create the yacht’s appearance.

The Potomac, however, came close to sailing into history and never returning. Like the nation itself in the 1930s, the Potomac was shrouded in despair and neglect. After FDR’s death in April 1945, the Floating White House languished for decades. At first the state of Maryland used it as a research vessel. Then it passed through a succession of owners, none of whom really seemed to want it due to excessive operating and restorative costs. In 1964 Elvis Presley bought the yacht and donated it to Danny Thomas’s St. Jude’s Hospital in Memphis. But because of the Potomac’s age and difficulty to maintain, the hospital auctioned it to raise funds.

The Potomac’s story got even more bizarre.

A group of Southern California business people bought it with the fruitless goal of turning it into a disco. The nadir came in 1980 when the once-proud vessel was seized as a front for a drug-smuggling operation. Due to a pierced hull, the Potomac ultimately sank to the bottom of the bay, where it lay for about two weeks before being refloated by the Navy.

Finally, it was put on the auction block. The Port of Oakland purchased the yacht for $15,000. It was the only bidder.

After lobbying by presidential son James Roosevelt, President Ronald Reagan earmarked $2.5 million to restore the Potomac. Another $2.5 million in private donations, plus the combined efforts of volunteers, organized labor and maritime corporations led to the opening of the yacht as a floating nation- al historic landmark in 1995.