Currents: The Potomac Blog
FDR’s Run for a Third Term as Planned on the USS Potomac
George Washington set the precedent, reinforced by Thomas Jefferson, of a two-term limit for United States presidents. It was challenged 141 years later by Franklin D. Roosevelt. He had won two terms by landslides in 1932 and 1936. No president...
Potomac’s Filipino Mess Crew
The Spanish-American conflict was a “splendid little war[1]” that marked America’s entry as an imperial power into world affairs. Coincidentally that same splendid little war was the origin of the USS Potomac’s all-Filipino mess crew and...
Short Term Skipper President Harry S. Truman
Vice President Harry Truman liked to spend afternoons with a bourbon and branch at House Speaker Sam Rayburn’s “Board of Education” hideaway. When he arrived on April 12, 1945, Rayburn told Truman to call Steve Early in the White House...
USS Potomac’s Role in President Roosevelt’s Tehran Conference
Recent release of the bestselling book, “The Nazi Conspiracy, the Secret Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin & Churchill,” reminds us of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1943 North Africa/Middle East trip including the first meeting with Winston...
Harry Hopkins Onboard with FDR
Personal Advisor to FDR for the Great Depression and World War II (1912 Class President Grinnell College) Next after FDR and his “little dog Fala,” the USS Potomac passenger with the most nautical miles was likely Harry L. Hopkins, the president’s valued...
From a “Rum Chaser” to a “Drug Runner”
For fourteen years between1920 and late 1933, the United States was “dry.” The 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, “Volstead Act,” prohibited alcoholic sales, manufacture, and consumption throughout the United States. Still...