HONEY FITZ motor yacht

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aukepalmhof
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Joined: Thu Apr 02, 2009 1:28 am

HONEY FITZ motor yacht

Post by aukepalmhof » Wed Jul 15, 2020 9:07 pm

The wooden hulled HONEY FITZ:….. Length: 92' 3" Beam: 16' 6", Draft: 4' 10", Cruising Speed: 12 knots
Weight: 88 tons, Built: 1931 by Defoe Boat Works in Bay City, Michigan .Owners: Sewell L Avery, chairman of Montgomery Ward.
Launched as the LENORE, named after the second daughter of the owner, who died at the age of 4 year.
Engine make and power ?

SEWELL L. AVERY
A financier best known for his controversial career as Board Chair and sometime president of Montgomery Ward from November 1931 to May 1955, Sewell Avery was a great lover of the sea and boating was one of his favorite hobbies. He commissioned the original building of the boat by Defoe Boat Works, naming the yacht after his daughter, LENORE. He cruised the boat on Lake Michigan in the waters near his private estate in the Les Cheneaux Islands.

Credited with pulling Montgomery Ward out of an enormous depression years' slump, Avery began clashing with the government as early as 1935, over Roosevelt's New Deal NRA wage and price provisions. Serious disagreements continued for years, including seizures of Ward plants; probably the most famous of these (in 1944) was Avery's refusal to leave the Ward building so that he had to be physically carried out (he was 70 years old at the time) by two Army soldiers. Avery's biggest outrage, however, came when the government expropriated his boat, ostensibly for use as a wartime vessel; but most people, including Avery, looked on the seizure as one more attempt by Roosevelt to "get at" the impenetrable Avery.

1942 The yacht was taken by the U.S. Government in World War II for a training ship for submarine crews in Portsmouth, New Hampshire then used for coastal picket duty by the Coast Guard, renamed LENORE II and in 1956 it was assigned as a Presidential Yacht.
It was called the BARBARA ANNE by President Eisenhower after his granddaughter.
The HONEY FITZ on 07 March 1961 by President Kennedy in honor of his maternal grandfather John Francis Fitzgerald,
President Johnson did not rename the yacht, she was renamed TRICIA by President Nixon after his daughter.

During World War II she was re-engined by two 500hp Winton diesels.
June 1971 as the hull was trued, HONEY FITZ’s received four 300-hp Detroit Diesel 6-71s.This interesting setup—four diesels turning two screws with two engines per side mounted back-to-back—had replaced twin 500-hp Winton diesels during a repower in the war years.

The boat also received a new sanitation system, bilge pipework, and a fire-suppression system, plus new handrails and exterior planking on the main deck. Her foredeck and foredeck beams were replaced, and her shaft logs were rebuilt. Although much of the vessel’s structure was replaced, her interior and galley remain very much the same as when Kennedy used her for meetings and getaways.
June 1945 was refited to serve as tender to successive presidential yachts, the 165-foot USS POTOMAC and the 245-foot USS WILLIAMSBURG.

December 1971 President Nixon auctioned off the yacht, she was bought by Joe Keating, who renamed her PRESIDENT.
She was restored and refitted as it was during President Kennedy’s term, thereafter used for charters in and around New York.
She was again sold during the Kennedy Memorabilia Auctions for US$ 5,942,500, to unknown buyers. She was again renamed in HONEY FITZ.

1998 Sold to William Kallop a New York business man, who kept her on dry land at the Offshore Specialties Fabricators yard in Houma, I.A. where her interior was stripped bare and furniture removed.
April 2002 the yacht was moved to P&H Construction yard in Mobile, AL, where she will be restored.

2020 She is restored and used as a motoryacht.

Source various internet sites under which: http://www.powerandmotoryacht.com/refit ... honey-fitz

http://www.usspotomac.org/education/doc ... ts_000.pdf


Tuvalu 2010 $1.30 sg?, scott?
Attachments
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