A masterpiece of shipbuilding
becomes a floating palace.
Today's SEA CLOUD was built in 1931 at the Krupp family shipyard in Kiel according to plans of the renowned American contractors Gibbs & Cox.
After her launch in the last week of April, the largest private sailing yacht of that day was christened the HUSSAR. As the largest sailing yacht ever built, the four-masted barque was commissioned by one of Wall Street's wealthiest businessmen, E. F. Hutton. His wife, Marjorie Merriweather Post, heiress to a huge fortune and herself a successful businesswoman, designed the luxury yacht, with its then black hull, completely according to her liking. She dedicated at least two years almost exclusively to this task.
She rented a large warehouse in Brooklyn, drafted a full-scale diagram of the ship's interior and arranged carefully-chosen antiques as they should later be displayed in her own and the six other luxury cabins. It is no wonder that the décor was later exactly as she had imagined - and fascinates guests even today with its personalized style. The HUSSAR was built for one purpose: to take the Huttons in their customary luxury to all those places they felt their presence was desirable, whether for representative or business reasons or simply the pleasure of travel and adventure. The HUSSAR spent at least nine months of the year at sea - and the Huttons set course for such exotic destinations as the Galapagos Islands, Hawaii and the Mediterranean.
However, the sweet life beneath white sails was soon overshadowed: Marjorie Merriweather Post and Ed Hutton's marriage fell into crisis - and in August 1935, the pair divorced.