While playing around on the web this weekend, I found the following link. I had known about FDR sending in the National Guard to physically carry Sewell Avery out of his office and, in fact, posted about it earlier this year. What I had not known is that two years earlier, FDR had seized Avery’s private yacht. I find this is outrageous. But I can’t find out much about it. If you click on the link to find out more, you get a dead link.
Question: does anyone know more about this? Specifically,
1. What action by Avery occurred before FDR did this?
2. How did FDR justify his action?
3. Did Avery sue to get his yacht back?
4. Did FDR pay something for the yacht or did he just take it?
As co-blogger Bryan Caplan says, please show your work.
READER COMMENTS
david
Dec 29 2014 at 2:55pm
The relevant 1942 executive order. The relevant 1936 legislation.
There was no obligation for the government to return the vessels (it could opt to keep them and pay only ‘just compensation’, although how this is to be determined is complicated, and both jurisprudence and legislation eventually granted the President’s emergency agencies a great deal of discretion to determine that amount). Many ships were not returned, but were instead sold.
I have no clue if Avery was paid, or how much. That seems like a task for someone patient enough to dig through the National Archives.
david
Dec 29 2014 at 3:15pm
In any case, I would find it pretty hard to believe that the 1942 EO was in response to Sewell Avery, specifically, rather than several hundred German submarines. Your cite itself doesn’t source its claim that these events were related, and failing to mention that Avery’s yacht was one of thousands of civilian ships requisitioned suggests some disingenuousness.
David R. Henderson
Dec 29 2014 at 3:28pm
@david,
Thanks. Interesting, though, how much a government official with discretion will push his discretion. A law and an executive order whose purpose was to provide ships in wartime is used to provide the president’s yacht.
Brent Royal-Gordon
Dec 29 2014 at 5:10pm
The Wayback Machine remembers that page.
(A lot of the text is the same as in the post that linked to it, though.)
David Boaz
Dec 29 2014 at 6:02pm
The New York Times does casually say it was seized “after” Avery’s refusal to play ball with a labor union. It doesn’t seem to occur to the Times reporter that that’s a striking exercise of power. But I can’t find any details.
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/15/nyregion/on-the-auction-block-the-yacht-of-camelot.html
MikeDC
Dec 29 2014 at 8:03pm
A law and an executive order whose purpose was to provide ships in wartime is used to provide the president’s yacht.
Based on the links I see, It does seem that the yacht was used for the purpose of naval training in WWII. Presumably Sewell was compensated, so after the point it became government property one could make the case it was reasonable to make it a presidential yacht or anything else.
ThomasH
Dec 29 2014 at 8:57pm
FDR could have allowed hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of European Jews immigrate to this country and you criticize him for seizing a yacht?
David R. Henderson
Dec 29 2014 at 11:13pm
@MikeDC,
Based on the links I see, It does seem that the yacht was used for the purpose of naval training in WWII.
Which links are you referring to?
@ThomasH,
FDR could have allowed hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of European Jews immigrate to this country and you criticize him for seizing a yacht?
Yes. I also criticize him for his evil restrictions on immigrations. There’s no mutual exclusivity here.
Ruy Diaz
Dec 30 2014 at 3:07pm
There is something poignantly petty about FDR’s actions here. Glad Mr. Henderson found the story.
MikeDC
Dec 30 2014 at 9:32pm
@ David R Henderson,
The Wayback link above says
https://web.archive.org/web/20090905172032/http://home.mchsi.com/~cbretvet/Yachts/Yachts3.html
It in no way makes things “ok”, of course. It’s actually a pretty typical example of the government going about efficiency. They seize the ship, probably mostly to prove that they can. They actually do try to train with it, but I can’t imagine a 94 foot luxury yacht was a very effective training platform for submariners, so then they used it to stuff secret service agents on it because they wouldn’t fit on FDR’s already outsized yacht.
Then, Ike, because he was less imperial than FDR, is perfectly willing to downsize to the 94′ luxury yacht, but he still spends a couple hundred thousand for, I guess, propriety’s sake on making the less expensive yacht fit for use.
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