Floating Paradise Found: MSY SEA CLOUD, Part One: SEA CLOUD Decked! (a top-to-bottom tour)

This feature tells the fascinating story of the world’s oldest and, to many, most beautiful cruise ship. Now 90 years old, she was built for cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post and her financier husband E.F. Hutton in 1931 as the HUSSAR V. HUSSAR V was the world’s largest private sailing yacht, a magnificent gold-trimmed black hulled four masted barque that also had diesel engines. After Post divorced Hutton in 1935, she renamed the yacht SEA CLOUD and in 1942, the ship was chartered to the U.S. Government to serve as the weather satellite ship IX99. In 1946, the ship was returned to her owners and eventually restored to her former glory. In 1955 SEA CLOUD was sold to Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo and renamed ANGELITA. Trujillo’s son Ramfis used the yacht as his bachelor pad to entertain various Hollywood starlets before his father was assassinated in 1961, when the yacht was renamed PATRIA. PATRIA was sold in 1964 to new owners who renamed her ANTARNA but due to various le