The heiresses who shaped yachting history with Sea Cloud and Savarona

Imagine Bermuda in the early 1930s. The British colony, once agricultural, is morphing into a sought-after destination for wealthy visitors, many from the US. The first aeroplane from New York reaches the island in 1930, but the most reliable way to get there remains by sea. Horsedrawn carriages (very few cars yet) parade well-dressed passengers along Front Street after elegant wooden launches bring them ashore.

Among visitors in 1932 were two American heiresses, born during the Gilded Age. Marjorie Merriweather Post (the name she preferred over four others that came with four marriages) boarded the 109.5-metre Hussar in Bermuda for an 11,680-mile, 42-day cruise through the Caribbean and the Pacific. A few months later, Emily Roebling Cadwalader disembarked from the 136-metre Savarona after a Caribbean cruise, according to a New York newspaper.

By then, Bermuda and Palm Beach had become regular destinations for yacht owners. Marjorie, the builder of Mar-a-Lago, was dubbed the “Queen of Palm Beach”, while Emily Cadwalader left only discreet traces in society columns. The two women lived parallel lives for years, but did not appear to have been close acquaintances. Emily was eight years older and died relatively young in 1941.

Marjorie lived a glamorous life that inspired society columns and later, books and documentaries. The product of a Midwestern upbringing and an East Coast finishing school, she was beautiful, impeccably polished and exacting in all she undertook.

A prolific philanthropist, she also left behind enduring symbols of that era, from grand estates to jewellery collections and historic institutions. She was also a prolific letter and journal writer, and some of that correspondence survives today at the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan and at Hillwood, her Washington, D.C., estate turned museum.

Emily is harder to conjure. Only one widely available photograph survives: a dark-haired woman with sharp features, framed by a large black hat and a modest high- collared blouse. After marrying banker Richard McCall Cadwalader Jr in 1909, she lived a private life. Earlier society pages chronicled her golfing on Shelter Island, playing bridge, rescuing her father ’s horses from a burning stable, advocating for the blind and organising local charity events.

Later, however, as author Ross MacTaggart writes in Millionaires, Mansions, and Motor Yachts, she became “an irritatingly elusive figure”. The press was not especially fond of the Cadwaladers either; one 1933 Daily News article described them as “the snootiest family in Philadelphia”. The couple never had children.

Despite their differences, both women were endowed with immense fortunes and married well financially. Marjorie’s wealth originated with her father, Charles Post, a man with fragile health but a robust business sense, who started a cereal empire. He took Marjorie under his wing and by the time of his death – by suicide – left his only daughter a thriving company that she helped grow into the multifaceted General Foods Corporation.

To call Marjorie a “cereal heiress” is reductive. She took an active role in the company ’s success, understood the potential of frozen foods and spearheaded important acquisitions, according to her biographer, author Nancy Rubin, who spent five years researching her story. “She was extravagant but very intelligent,” says the author, who wrote the book in the early 1990s and met many of her friends.

Emily ’s grandfather, by contrast, was the brilliant German-born engineer John Roebling, the world’s largest wire-rope manufacturer and creator of the Brooklyn Bridge. Although Emily was named after her famous aunt, Emily Warren Roebling – who oversaw completion of the Bridge – she did not appear to have been groomed for business the way Marjorie was.

What the women shared was a fascination with yachts, the ultimate status symbol and vehicle for freedom during America’s golden age of yachting. Between the late 19th century and the Great Depression, industrial for tunes fuelled an extraordinary period of yacht building.

The American entrepreneurial class benefited from hands-off governance (protectionism, low taxes and rapid economic expansion as the US became the world’s lender post-First World War) and used their mounting fortunes to build their companies, estates and increasingly ambitious yachts.

There seemed to have been competition between the families of the time, with a race to build the most extraordinary yachts. “In New York Society, a bigger and faster yacht was a better yacht, but the best yacht of all was the most expensive,” MacTaggart writes in his introduction, crediting Lord Feversham, author of the 1970 book Great Yachts, for this observation.

Emily “effectively won the imagined grand prize after having commissioned the largest, most expensive private yacht then built: the $4 million [approximately £3 million] Savarona. By comparison, the luxurious Sea Cloud reportedly cost a mere $900,000.”

Marjorie had just completed a multi-year project creating Palm Beach’s Mar-a-Lago when she and her second husband, financier Edward Francis “E.F.” Hutton, commissioned Hussar – the vessel later known as Sea Cloud. He left her the yacht after their divorce, which a judge granted her after she supplied proof of his infidelity. At launch, the four-masted barque Hussar was the world’s largest private sailing yacht and a splendid sight.

Emily’s Savarona was equally impressive as the world’s largest motor yacht. The boat was 134 metres and 4,581 gross tonnes, and could accommodate 33 passengers, “far surpassing other large yachts”, as a New York Times article noted, including new yachts built for Vincent Astor and Willie K Vanderbilt. Nearly a century later, both yachts remarkably remain afloat.

Two factors likely contributed to the longevity of Savarona and Sea Cloud: the quality of their design and construction (they employed the era’s best architects and most capable shipyards), and their affiliation with two prominent American families.

The Huttons and the Cadwaladers turned to the best designers, New York-based Cox & Stevens and William Francis Gibbs. Both went to Germany to get their dream vessels built, not an uncommon occurrence, to the reputable Friedrich Krupp Germaniawerft in Kiel (dismantled after the Second World War) for Sea Cloud, and Blohm & Voss in Hamburg (now part of the Lürssen group) for Savarona.

From the beginning, Marjorie was deeply involved in Sea Cloud’s conception. According to Rubin’s American Empress: The Life and Times of Marjorie Merriweather Post, she felt an uncanny familiarity with the yacht the first time she boarded. “I went aboard and visited each room, knowing beforehand where everything would be,” she wrote in a scrapbook. “This is my child. I know her.”

While E.F. Hutton supervised the exterior and technical aspects, Marjorie immersed herself in designing the interior. She rented a warehouse in Brooklyn where she mapped out each deck at full scale, planning ever y detail from furniture placement to fireplaces and gold-plated bathroom fixtures.

Her suite featured Louis XVI-style furnishings, while guest rooms were designed with private baths and work ing fireplaces. She took the same care for every space. “In keeping with the Hussar’s elegant tone, each bedroom has its own private bath with gold fixtures and a working fireplace.”

In the book Sea Cloud, A Living Legend by Kurt Grobecker and Peter Neumann, the authors write, “Marjorie Merriweather Post’s name was first entered in the ship’s registry as the Sea Cloud’s owner 10 years after the Second World War. But from the very beginning she served as the guiding spirit and the dominating personality in the ship’s encapsulated, exclusive cosmos.

The yacht was central to family life. Marjorie and Hutton’s daughter, Nedenia – actress Dina Merrill – was only nine during the family’s first world cruise aboard Hussar. Photographs show mother and daughter posing with a sea turtle adopted in the Galápagos Islands. Dina later described the yacht as her second home. Marjorie hired tutors so her daughter could continue her education while traveling. Later, Neumann, who met Dina Merrill and spoke to her on many occasions, says she’d charter the yacht in later years.

The Cadwaladers were also serious yacht people; they commissioned six yachts in eight years. Richard Cadwalader belonged to the New York Yacht Club, and among the couple’s earlier yachts was the 32-metre Trumpy Sequoia, which later served as a presidential yacht. Yet the three increasingly ambitious yachts that followed were generally attributed to Emily rather than her husband, suggesting she was the driving force behind the family’s growing yachting ambitions.

A history published for Blohm & Voss offers insight into the creation of Savarona. Alongside Gibbs, the book credits Morgan Wells with the interior design but notes Emily’s direct involvement, saying she “rummaged” antique shops throughout Europe for furnishings, including a bed that once belonged to French queen Marie Antoinette.

The shipyard’s 1930 specifications included an extensive list of owner-supplied items. As in Sea Cloud, gold plating was de rigueur on faucets and fixtures, but the yacht also had a hospital and a staff of 95. However, Emily had to remain at the dock for the sea trials due to a superstition, “petticoat on board just causes trouble,” according to the Blohm & Voss book.

Despite being a worthy ship with the largest gyro stabiliser yet installed on a private boat (according to a 1938 American newspaper article), Savarona did not take the family on many voyages, and she never came to the US, where at the time a 30 per cent tax levy was applied on any foreign-built boat arriving on its shores.

The author noted in the Blohm & Voss history book that after a trip arranged for friends from Bermuda to South America, Savarona returned to Germany, where she remained.

In 1938, the Cadwaladers sold the yacht to Turkey, which gifted it to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey. Varying estimates suggested the vessel had cost between $2 and $4 million (the more likely) to build. Asked about the sale price and reasons for selling, Emily reportedly replied that it was “nobody’s business.”

The yacht had generated considerable publicity long before the sale, including from the American tax authorities. A 1938 Baltimore Evening Sun article noted that although Savarona had “seen little service”, she had attracted enormous attention since her 1931 Hamburg launch.

The government, it noted, had also pursued a tax case against the Cadwaladers involving the yacht. Emily had reportedly sold shares in the vessel to her attorney at heavily discounted prices and then claimed substantial capital losses.

Two years after the war began, Emily died relatively young on May 15, 1941. Her obituary is just a few lines, in keeping with her apparent dogged determination to remain a relatively unknown member of the American elite. Marjorie, meanwhile, had a lot of living left to do.

Restoration was extensive, and by 1947, Sea Cloud resumed cruising, returning to Bermuda that summer. In 1948, it hosted the Duke of Windsor (formerly King Edward VIII) on a voyage from Florida to Cuba. Also aboard was Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo, an encounter that likely led to a later chapter in the yacht’s storied life.

By the early 1950s, the enormous cost of maintaining Sea Cloud had become difficult for the elderly Marjorie to justify. In 1951, she laid up the yacht in Jacksonville, Florida. The last time she boarded it was reportedly in 1953.

According to one source, the sale listing attracted interest from Aristotle Onassis, who initially offered $1 million. The ultimate buyer, however, was Trujillo, who acquired the yacht in 1955 for $500,000 (according to some) and renamed it Angelita after his daughter. Author Neumann, however, suggests that no one knew the sales price and that Marjorie may have traded her beloved ship for the dictator ’s Vickers Viscount turboprop aeroplane.

By then, Marjorie herself had many other interests. She married for a fourth and final time, a marriage that also ended in divorce, and increasingly focused on her Washington estate, and her collections. Whether she missed Sea Cloud or simply accepted the end of an era, the story doesn’t say.

After a few years of high living at the hands of Trujillo’s son, who reportedly took Sea Cloud to California where he hosted lively parties, the yacht fell on hard times. It was in a sorry state when a group of German investors rescued her.

In 1978, five years after Marjorie’s death, Sea Cloud “sailed into the Elbe estuary”, as author Neumann described it, in front of “thousands of excited people” in Hamburg for a major refit that transformed her into a luxury cruise ship.

Today, both yachts continue to evolve. Sea Cloud Cruises, which has overseen the iconic yacht’s management and travels, has renewed its commitment to it and is managing a major refit at Palumbo Superyachts in Malta, which will reduce her capacity to 20 guests. Sea Cloud arrived in Malta last November and is currently in an enclosed shed for the next phase of important work.

“The refit aims to restore Sea Cloud to her original splendour, with deep respect for her origin and history, while integrating modern amenities and meeting the latest environmental standards,” owner representative Daniel Küpfer of Yanova says.

“Guest accommodation will be returned close to its original configuration. Crew areas will be rebuilt to modern standards. The superstructure will be restored to its original form, while new masts and rigging, built in accordance with the original plans, will reinstate her authentic silhouette.”

New Tier III MTU engines will give her clean power, and a new figurehead, an authentic copy of the original, will be the yacht’s new calling card. It will be Sea Cloud, but better.

Savarona, meanwhile, underwent a major refit at the Istanbul Shipyard Command that fixed issues such as cracks, removed asbestos from an earlier refit in the 1990s and overhauled her engines. Back in the water in 2024, she serves as a training vessel for Turkish Naval Academy cadets.

It is a fitting new chapter for two yachts that have long outlived the world that created them. Nearly a century after their launch, Savarona and Sea Cloud remain not only afloat but continually restored, repurposed and reimagined rather than discarded.

Few private yachts of any era have endured so completely – a testament not only to their extraordinary construction, but also to the vision and ambition of the two extraordinary women who first conceived them, Emily and Marjorie.

First published in the October 2026 issue of BOAT International. Get this magazine sent straight to your door, or subscribe and never miss an issue.