| IMO | 8843446 |
|---|---|
| Gross tonnage | 2,523 GT |
| Length | 110.0 m |
| Beam | 14.9 m |
| Passenger capacity (double) | 64 |
| Passenger capacity (max) | 69 |
| Service speed | 10.0 knots |
| Builder | Friedrich Krupp Germaniawerft |
| Yard | Kiel |
| Launched | 1931 |
| Maiden voyage | 1931 |
| Operator | Sea Cloud Cruises |
| Status | Active |
| All names | Sea Cloud; Hussar II; USCGC WPG-284; IX-99; Angelita; Patria; Antarna; Sea Cloud of Cayman |
Overview
Sea Cloud is the oldest and, by tonnage, the smallest ship in this batch — and the one with the most lives. Built at Kiel in 1931 as the private sailing yacht Hussar V (recorded as Hussar II in her dataset name list; see §4) for Marjorie Merriweather Post and Edward F. Hutton, she was at launch the largest private yacht in the world. She became, by turns, a diplomatic residence in Leningrad, a United States Coast Guard and Navy weather ship — and, under Lt Carlton Skinner, the US military's first racially integrated warship since the Civil War in her article's account — a Dominican presidential yacht, a near-derelict in Panama, and, from 1979, a sailing cruise ship for Hamburg's Sea Cloud Cruises, the role in which her 64 passengers still sail in the suites Post designed.
A four-masted barque of 110 m with a gilded eagle figurehead, she is not a replica or a nostalgic imitation: she is a working 1931 windjammer whose cabins include Post's own suite, with its marble fireplace and bathroom. Her significance needs no inflation, and this guide follows her article and published histories closely where her long chain of names and owners invites error.
Key specifications
The dataset records 2,523 GT (a register figure for a sailing yacht hull), 110.0 m by 14.9 m, a maximum capacity of 64 — her cruise-ship passenger capacity — a speed of 10.0 kn under power, Friedrich Krupp Germaniawerft at Kiel as builder, and launch in 1931. Her article gives a displacement of 3,077 tons, four masts, a draught of about 5.8 m, diesel-electric propulsion on two shafts, a speed under power of up to 14 kn in its characteristics table, and a civilian crew of 61 in her modern configuration (her wartime complement was about 195 naval personnel, including 21 officers). The dataset's 10.0 kn should be read as a working cruise figure rather than a maximum.
Under sail she is a proper barque: square-rigged on the fore, main and mizzen in the classic arrangement for her type as described in sailing-ship accounts, with auxiliary diesel-electric power for calms, harbours and schedules. The combination — real sail as the primary identity, engines as the practical servant — is the technical essence of the ship both as yacht and as cruise vessel.
Design and construction
She was built by Friedrich Krupp Germaniawerft in Kiel to designs by Cox & Stevens of New York in one detailed yacht history, for E. F. Hutton and Marjorie Merriweather Post. Post's role in the design was not ceremonial: her article records that she took a course in marine engineering, personally designed the interiors and features, and had full-size interior mock-ups built in a New York warehouse to settle them before installation. Contemporary yacht histories add the details that still define her — antique furniture chosen piece by piece, marble bathrooms, gold-plated swan-neck taps in the owner's suite.
At her launch in April 1931 in those accounts (the dataset records the year only), she was the largest private sailing yacht in the world, a superlative she carried into service in November 1931, when Post and Hutton received her at Bermuda on 30 November on her maiden voyage from the yard. She replaced Post's earlier Hussar IV — which is directly relevant to the numbering question in the next section.
Naming, launch and maiden voyage
Her name history is the most contested small point in this batch. Her article's lead, and yacht histories, name her at launch Hussar V — the fifth of Post's Hussar sequence, replacing Hussar IV. Her dataset name list records "Hussar II," and at least one auction-house account also uses Hussar II for the 1931 ship. The Hussar V form is followed in this guide's narrative, the dataset form is preserved in the spec box above, and the conflict is logged in the batch notes for resolution against a primary register source.
Sea Cloud — the name she has carried longest — came in 1935, after Post's divorce from Hutton and marriage to Joseph E. Davies; under Davies she lay at Leningrad while he served as US ambassador to the Soviet Union. Her maiden voyage as a yacht was the November 1931 delivery passage to Bermuda. Her maiden voyage as a cruise ship came nearly half a century later, in 1979, after the restoration described below.
Career by operator
| Period | Name | Owner / operator and notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1931–1935 | Hussar V | Private yacht of Post and Hutton |
| 1935–1942 | Sea Cloud | Post / Davies; at Leningrad during Davies's ambassadorship |
| 1942–1944 | USCGC WIX-284 / WPG-284, then IX-99 | US Coast Guard, then US Navy; weather ship (hull numbers as in her article and dataset) |
| 1944–1955 | Sea Cloud | Returned to Post after the war |
| 1955–1961 (approx.) | Angelita | Presidential yacht of Rafael Trujillo, Dominican Republic |
| 1961– | Patria, then Antarna / Sea Cloud of Cayman | Successive private owners after Trujillo's fall; deterioration in Panama in published histories |
| 1979–present | Sea Cloud | Sea Cloud Cruises, Hamburg; sailing cruise ship |
The wartime chapter is the historically important one. Offered to the US government, she was taken up as a weather ship — her masts and rig removed in naval service in Frommer's and yacht-history accounts — first for the Coast Guard, then the Navy. Under Lt Carlton Skinner, who had witnessed a Black sailor denied advancement, she sailed with an integrated crew of some 80 Black sailors including four officers, in the account of the book-length study of the ship; the experiment's success became a precedent cited in the desegregation of the US armed forces. After the war she was returned to Post, passed on Trujillo's acquisition to the Dominican Republic as Angelita (named for his daughter), was renamed Patria after his assassination, and fell into disputed ownership and decay in Panama under the later names in her chain — Antarna in the dataset (rendered Ancarna in one yacht history ) and Sea Cloud of Cayman.
Onboard character
Her character is not themed; it is original. The owner's suite is Post's own cabin, kept in the Louis XIV style she chose, with marble fireplace and bathroom and chandeliers in the published descriptions; other original suites retain their period panelling, brass and mahogany. The main restaurant occupies the space she designed as the yacht's social centre. Sixty-four passengers, a crew of about the same number, sails set by hand in the traditional manner in Sea Cloud Cruises' presentation — the ship sells the absence of everything a modern cruise ship advertises.
That authenticity is precisely why her refits have been exercises in restraint and structure rather than redesign, and why she is routinely placed in the highest category of sailing cruise ships. The gold taps and marble are not decoration applied to a cruise ship; they are the surviving fabric of the largest private yacht of 1931.
Major refits and incidents
The rescue refit is the famous one. A group of German businesspeople, led in accounts by the economist and seaman Hartmut Paschburg and Hamburg investors, acquired the deteriorated ship at the end of the 1970s, brought her back to Germany, and put her through an eight-month overhaul — at HDW in Kiel in Boat International's account — restoring her rig, grandeur and name as a cruise ship; she entered cruise service in 1979. Further sensitive modernisation at Bremerhaven around her 80th year is described in cruise-press accounts. In November 2025 she arrived in Malta for a multi-million-euro top-to-bottom rebuild, announced by the owner's representative in Boat International — the latest evidence that her operators continue to invest in a 95-year-old hull.
Her naval armament — 3-inch and 20 mm guns, depth-charge equipment — belongs to the career section as a temporary wartime fit, removed after 1945. No wreck, fire or collision casualty is recorded for her in the sources used; her nearest approach to loss was commercial and physical neglect in Panama, reversed by the 1978–79 purchase.
Sister ships and class
She has no sister. She is a one-off yacht, and her dataset row records no class. Her fleetmates are conceptual descendants only: Sea Cloud II (2001) and Sea Cloud Spirit (2021), larger modern sailing cruise ships built for the same Hamburg company in conscious imitation of her formula — steel windjammers with hand-set sails and yacht-scale passenger numbers. Neither shares her hull, her date or her history. Among true contemporaries, the great 1930s private sailing yachts are mostly gone; Sea Cloud's survival in commercial service is exceptional.
Fate and where she is now
Sea Cloud is active — in service as the flagship and founding ship of Sea Cloud Cruises, per the dataset — subject to the Malta rebuild reported from November 2025. She has never been laid up for scrap, never been a static museum, and never lost her ability to sail; every owner since 1979 has kept her in the trade for which she was rescued. For a ship launched in 1931 as a billionaire's yacht, nationalised in effect for war, and left to rot in Panama in middle age, a working life approaching a century, still under her 1935 name, is the most improbable fate in this directory.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cruise_ships, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Cloud, https://www.boatinternational.com/yachts/news/historic-krupp-germaniawerft-sailing-yacht-sea-cloud-rebuild