Following protests on Syros and Rhodes, a demonstration was also held in Agios Nikolaos, Crete, against the arrival of the Israeli cruise ship Crown Iris.
According to public broadcaster ERT, hundreds of citizens gathered by the lake in Agios Nikolaos, displaying protest banners and Palestinian flags.
Reportedly, there were brief scuffles with the police, who used tear gas and detained three people.
The cruise ship, carrying 1,500 Israeli tourists, docked at the port and passengers were transported by bus, crossing the lake’s bridge next to the demonstrators.
But there’s only one ship that was the presidential yacht for Franklin D. Roosevelt and owned by Elvis, then later impounded in one of the biggest drug busts in U.S. history, before sinking in 30 feet of water — and then improbably rising again as a National Historic Landmark.
It’s the USS Potomac, and it’s open for public tours in Oakland’s Jack London Square. Even locally, however, most people haven’t heard its story.
“She’s a relative secret, still,” says John Eichel, a volunteer docent for the nonprofit USS Potomac Association. “Many folks in Alameda, right across the water, don’t even know about it.”
On this particular day, Eichel is giving a tour to a small group who board the ship as the breeze kicks up and the temperature – hot and dry on land – drops several degrees. Pelicans soar drunkenly, and cormorants slip snakelike below the brackish estuary. There’s an inquisitive sea lion that sometimes visits, too, but he seems to be taking the day off.
Ivory-white and 165-feet long, the modified U.S. Coast Guard cutter casts a presidential aura despite a weld transecting its midriff like a nasty surgical scar, evidence of post-sinking renovations. In the 1940s and ’50s, she chugged around the Eastern seaboard and earned the nickname the “Floating White House.” Roosevelt did indeed use her for official purposes, like entertaining foreign heads of state such as King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, and conducting secret wartime meetings.
A guest stateroom aboard the USS Potomac is seen during a tour on May 21, 2025, in Oakland, Calif. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
Partially disabled from polio (or perhaps Guillain–Barré syndrome, according to modern theories), the president had a smokestack converted into a hand-powered, rope-and-pulley elevator and a settee where he could put his feet up to enjoy his famously weird martinis.
The front end of the boat is where Roosevelt conducted business, and the back was the presidential or “party end,” says Eichel. “So it’s business in the front, party in the back,” quips a visitor.
The top speed used to be 20 knots, but now it scoots around at 11 knots. “Unless we have Captain Richard. He likes to push things a bit,” jokes Eichel. The same visitor pipes up again: “Sounds like he belongs on the party side of the boat.”
The Potomac offers tours between one and three hours long as well as dockside tours for landlubbers, which is what we’re doing today. It’s hired out for charters, does special cruises on military dates like Veterans Day and VJ Day and hosts wine tastings and music by blues and cover bands.
A portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt is displayed aboard the USS Potomac during a tour on May 21, 2025, in Oakland, Calif. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
In November, the ship will host what Jennifer Pettley, executive director of the USS Potomac Association calls an “Elvis concert live on board.”
“We have an Elvis impersonator, one of the best in the Bay Area,” she says.
Right now, though, Eichel is pointing at a toilet. There were more than 50 crew members when FDR was in charge, including U.S. Navy and Secret Service personnel, and most had to share a single “head.” There were other inconveniences if you weren’t white. The sleeping bunks for Filipino crew members were located in the ship’s front, where waves hit hardest — one of the more outward signs of discrimination at the time.
Roosevelt hated flying and was a lifelong boat guy. He sailed the Hudson as a kid and went on to become assistant secretary of the Navy. He preferred his ships constructed of metal, like the Potomac, because he didn’t want to be trapped on a wooden one in a wheelchair while it was burning, according to Eichel.
Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lady Alice Clifford, wife of the governor of the Bahamas, are shown aboard Potomac, April 1, 1936. (AP Photo)
Steward Irineo Esperancilla, left, serves President Franklin D. Roosevelt a cigarette as the yacht Potomac leaves Miami, Nov. 29, 1937 for a week’s fishing trip in the Florida Keys. At rear the Robert H. Jackson, left, assistant Attorney General and Harry Hopkins, relief administrator. (AP Photo)
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Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lady Alice Clifford, wife of the governor of the Bahamas, are shown aboard Potomac, April 1, 1936. (AP Photo)
“I think he found his greatest moments of relaxation and peace when he was on this boat or another boat,” says Tom Dana, a volunteer docent.
Some say Roosevelt used the Potomac to get away from the pressures of office. Others say it was to get away from Henrietta Nesbitt, the housekeeper who supervised the kitchen at the White House. Nesbitt’s motto was “plain foods, plainly prepared,” and the cuisine was so repetitive guests knew what they’d eat by what day it was: Monday was tongue with broccoli, Tuesday boiled beef with mixed greens.
“And so it happened that the most powerful man in the free world often spent his dinners eating only what he could bear,” reads a sign onboard the ship, “then rummaging up egg sandwiches in a little kitchen next to the presidential study.”
Roosevelt used the party end of the ship for his “Children’s Hour,” named after a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem, which was a time of hobnobbing with his inner circle and guests, where talk of politics and business was forbidden. With a Naval aid holding his arm, he’d hold court while mixing cocktails whose recipes were seemingly beamed down from Mars.
The engine room aboard the USS Potomac is seen during a tour on May 21, 2025, in Oakland, Calif. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
“The martinis started out simple enough, usually as a 3:1 or sometimes 4:1 gin and dry vermouth,” according to a 2021 article from a National Archives technician. “Shaken over ice. Cocktail glass. Olive or lemon peel garnish. Then it gets complicated…. Perhaps he might add some fruit juices or liqueurs or substitute with an alternative liquor for gin when his home bar was limited. Sometimes an extra measure of gin to be on the safe side, as he could lose track of his measurements while deep in storytelling. You can see how quickly things could get out of control. According to his grandson Curtis, the martinis were said to be ‘truly awful.’”
The Potomac made endeavors as mundane as fishing trips in the Gulf of Mexico – FDR loved fishing and once sent an “extremely ugly” catch for inclusion in the Smithsonian – and as secretive as a clandestine meeting with Winston Churchill for World War II’s Atlantic Charter conference. But as the war ramped up and German U-boats patrolled the coast, she was confined to local waters and eventually sold to the state of Maryland and then private owners.
That’s when the story gets stranger.
Years of neglect left the Potomac sorely in need of TLC. It ended up docked in Long Beach, where it was supposedly used as a floating disco. “People were always interested in her, but nobody had the resources to upkeep her,” explains Eichel.
That was where the boat was docked when Elvis Presley set his sights on her in 1964. The King bought the yacht for $55,000 and offered to donate it to the March of Dimes — a tribute to FDR, who helped start the charity. But the gesture was rejected, as the condition of the Potomac at that point was so poor that it was considered to be more of a burden than a gift. His offer to the Florida Coast Guard Auxiliary also received the brush-off. Eventually, Elvis found a willing taker in St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, donating her after just a few months.
An original bell of the USS Potomac is displayed aboard the ship on May 21, 2025, in Oakland, Calif. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
“At the time, the British invasion was going on,” says Pettley. “They were looking for opportunities to keep Elvis’ name out there, and maybe that’s why they purchased the presidential yacht.”
The Potomac’s name surfaced next in 1980, when the feds announced the biggest contemporary drug bust in the history of the Western U.S. Both it and a converted minesweeper, of all things, were seized and towed away after drug runners’ ruse of displaying signs saying “Crippled Children Society of America” did not fool authorities.
“They recovered 20 tons of Colombian weed, with a $40 million street value,” says Eichel. “Most of the marijuana was on the converted minesweeper. The USS Potomac was just a cover.”
A miniature model of the USS Potomac is displayed inside the USS Potomac Visitor Center on May 21, 2025, in Oakland, Calif. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
It was the lowest point in the ship’s history. Well, not the literal lowest — that came when it sank post-seizure near Treasure Island. The theory was that an extremely low tide allowed a submerged piling to pierce the hull. The Potomac quietly decayed under the waves, its bottom becoming a skeletal frame, until the Port of Oakland bought her for $15,000 to refurbish into a tourist attraction in Jack London Square.
She was painstakingly restored according to the original plans, and this year is celebrating her 30th anniversary back on the right side of the water. Now the USS Potomac looks just like new, save for a couple of modern tweaks that might’ve surprised FDR.
“There’s this old-fashioned steering wheel, and sometimes cheeky passengers come up and ask the captain if they can steer the ship,” says Eichel. “He lets them. But what they don’t know is he’s actually controlling it with a little joystick elsewhere in the cabin.”
Details: The USS Potomac offers weekly cruises and dockside tours from 540 Water St., Oakland; for prices and times visit usspotomac.org
If you enjoy unusual cruises…
Want to take a voyage that’ll leave you with a good story? The USS Potomac isn’t the only unique ship in the Bay Area – consider taking one of these for a spin.
Naturalist Cindy Rice of Monterey, talks about the wildlife during a tour of the Elkhorn Slough on the Monterey Bay Eco Tours electric catamaran in Moss Landing, Calif., on Thursday, Aug. 3, 2023. Monterey Bay Eco Tours is a climate-conscious tour company that guides people through the Elkhorn Slough, an amazingly diverse stretch of water north of Monterey that’s full of Southern sea otters, harbor seals, sea lions and migratory birds. (Doug Duran/Bay Area News Group)
This family-owned operation sends a custom-made electric vessel into the Monterey Bay’s Elkhorn Slough, an ecological gem packed with sea otters, seals and sea birds. Jane Goodall reportedly patronized it twice in 2025 – does an endorsement get any better?
A husband and wife built this catamaran by hand, and now take it on cruises of the Bay. The sail lends an old-timey feel, and the dual hull makes for a supremely stable ride.
This major touring company departs from San Francisco and the Berkeley Marina and is known for its live events with rock stars and celebrity chefs, plus drag brunches.
Passengers aboard the Celebrity Cruises’ Constellation experienced a few hours of neither air conditioning nor electricity during a brief power outage.
A spokesperson for Royal Caribbean Group, the line’s parent company, confirmed the 2,170-passenger ship lost power for under three hours on Saturday, Aug. 2, as the team “addressed a technical issue” in an email to USA TODAY. The cruise line did not provide details on what sort of issue or repair was required.
It’s not uncommon for cruise ships to lose power, with most having emergency generators independent of the ship’s main source of power as a backup plan. Situated on the upper decks, they can provide power for emergency lighting, elevators, radios and fire detection systems, and even re-start engines if necessary, according to Royal Caribbean’s website.
The ship was sailing to Messina, Sicily from Kotor, Montenegro and was right off the coast of Italy when the incident occurred, leaving it to drift for a short period of time, according to CruiseMapper. Satellite tracking data at the time showed the ship’s speed briefly dropped down to as low as 1.1 mph, as reported by Cruise Hive.
The cruise line said the ship was close enough to the coast to still be within range of cell phone service.
“We’ve been communicating with our guests directly,” the spokesperson added.
Part of Celebrity’s more upscale Millennium class, the Constellation is currently sailing an 11-day, one-way cruise departing from Ravenna, Italy on July 28. It is scheduled to visit Naples and Livorno before ending in Civitavecchia-Rome on Aug. 8.
The disappearance of a recent college graduate from her cruise ship stateroom nearly 27 years ago continues to baffle investigators as a new documentary hopes to breathe fresh air into the search for a woman who seemingly vanished into thin air.
In March 1998, Amy Bradley embarked on a Royal Caribbean International cruise with her family for a seven-day trip to the tropics. The 23-year-old had recently graduated from college and was preparing to pursue a master’s degree in sports psychology.
Her story is now being revisited in the new three-part Netflix documentary series, titled “Amy Bradley Is Missing.”
On the evening before her disappearance, Bradley joined her brother Brad at the Rhapsody of the Seas nightclub, where the pair remained until the early morning hours of March 24. Bradley’s father, Ron, last recalled seeing his daughter asleep on the cabin’s balcony.
Bradley vanished about a half an hour later, as the ship was preparing to dock in Curaçao.
An extensive search for the recent college graduate ensued, but authorities were unable to locate Bradley. The vessel continued its scheduled stops and ultimately returned to Puerto Rico four days later.
Countless rumors swirled around what happened to Bradley, including theories that she had fallen overboard and drowned, or that she had intentionally jumped to take her own life.
Her parents, however, have never wavered from their belief that their daughter was kidnapped and could still be alive, according to the documentary.
As the investigation into Bradley’s death remained ongoing, Netherlands Antilles Coast Guard Lt. Sjoerd Soethout told reporters she could have fallen from the ship’s balcony, The Associated Press reported. At the time, an FBI spokesperson said authorities had “no evidence of foul play,” with the case ultimately running cold.
“There is decidedly little evidence of a fall or push, nor would there be,” Peter Valentin, chair of the Forensic Science Department at the University of New Haven and a former Connecticut State Police detective, told Fox News Digital. “There would be next to no evidence unless there would be a struggle prior to the push.”
One year after Bradley’s death, her parents filed two lawsuits against Royal Caribbean. The family claimed the cruise line acted negligently in the handling of their daughter’s disappearance, with Royal Caribbean releasing a statement at the time insisting they acted “appropriately and responsibly at all times.”
The lawsuits were subsequently dismissed in 2000.
Royal Caribbean did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
“The room was cleaned before the FBI agents had access,” Valentin said. “Whether they realized it or not, they de-emphasized the value of physical evidence in that room.”
Years later, Bradley’s family received a set of sexually explicit images of a woman from an adult website based in the Caribbean from an anonymous tipster, further solidifying her family’s fears surrounding her being forced into sex trafficking.
In the photos, the woman, identified as “Jas,” posed provocatively while deliberately covering any identifiable markings, such as Bradley’s tattoo of a Tasmanian Devil spinning a basketball.
Investigators were also informed of alleged sightings of Bradley.
Tourist Judy Maurer told the documentary that she witnessed a woman she believed to be Bradley while in a restroom in Barbados, before three men allegedly escorted the woman away. David Carmichael also told filmmakers he may have seen Bradley while visiting Curaçao, adding that she was “flanked by two people.” Another Curaçao sighting was reported by Navy veteran Bill Hefner, who believes he saw a distressed Bradley at a local bar.
However, Valentin is skeptical of the potential sightings.
“Eyewitnesses can become very convinced of what it is they say they saw, even though the forensic evidence makes it quite clear that they could not have seen what they said they saw,” Valentin told Fox News Digital.
The former investigator added that the reported eyewitness accounts of Bradley should be compared to look for similarities.
“Combine it with other forensic techniques and electronic evidence and it certainly suggests that investigative efforts should be focusing on a particular area,” Valentin said.
Additionally, investigators previously looked into Alastair “Yellow” Douglas, a member of the ship’s band who Bradley was seen dancing with hours before her disappearance.
Valentin points to roadblocks facing authorities regarding the lack of electronic evidence at the time of Bradley’s disappearance.
“Any connection between that musician and Bradley, however fleeting it might be, could be explored through the electronic evidence,” Valentin said. “So this really is a generational leap in terms of what we’re capable of doing now with electronic evidence.”
Throughout the years, Douglas has vehemently denied any involvement in Bradley’s disappearance.
While questions still swirl surrounding how Bradley vanished from her stateroom within such a short timeframe, Valentin highlights a potential point of interest in answering what happened to the young woman.
“I would have been very keen to know if she was missing a pair of shoes, or did she take her shoes with her?” Valentin asked. “If all the shoes are accounted for, that’s an interesting observation because that actually makes it a little less likely for some of the scenarios that were discussed about her leaving on her own accord.”
“This case is one that I think is probably going to hinge on somebody remembering that they know something,” Valentin said. “Because of this case reemerging in the public eye.”
Anyone who believes they have information pertaining to Bradley’s disappearance is asked to contact their local FBI office or the nearest American embassy or consulate.
“Amy Bradley Is Missing” is now streaming. Fox News Digital’s Stephanie Nolasco and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Julia Bonavita is a U.S. Writer for Fox News Digital and a Fox Flight Team drone pilot. You can follow her at @juliabonavita13 on all platforms and send story tips to julia.bonavita@fox.com.
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