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CLASSIC BOAT JUNE 2019
HAIDA
“M voyaged far and wide between Alaska and the Gulf of
Mexico throughout the 1930s. In October 1940, Haida
was bought by the US Navy and converted for military
service – including the addition of a 3.5in gun on the
foredeck – and renamed USS Argus.
For most of the war she acted as a patrol vessel in
the San Francisco area, although for a while she was
chartered to the US Coast and Geoditic Survey and
renamed USC&GS Pioneer. In 1944, she rescued 60
survivors from the liberty ship John A Johnson which
had been torpedoed by a Japanese submarine.
After she was decommissioned in 1946, she had a
variety of colourful owners including: Maurice Ada, an
Egyptian cotton magnate who kept her in his home
country until 1952 when his close friend King Farouk
was overthrown, and then in Cannes and Monaco; Larry
Green, an American importer of Renault cars; Thomas
“Loel” Guinness, a member of the brewing family, a
World War Two RAF fighter pilot and then an MP; the
film producer and music impresario Robert Stigwood;
oney, money, money!”
So sing the trio of characters played by the actors Meryl
Streep, Julie Walters and Christine Baranski in the 2008
film Mama Mia while, most significantly, they watch a
classic motor yacht at sea in the distance. Soon
afterwards they are seen enjoying life on board: Streep as
a figurehead at the bow, then taking the wheel while
wearing the elderly captain’s hat, sitting on jetskis on the
foredeck, dancing along the side decks, operating the
telegraph controls, being waited on and massaged on the
sun deck. The yacht in question was Haida G and a
decade later – rechristened Haida 1929, her original
name with the addition of the date – she emerged from
Pendennis Shipyard at the end of a mighty restoration.
Haida was built to a Cox & Stevens design by Kiel
shipbuilders Krupp Germaniawerft in 1929. Her first
owner was American Max Fleischmann whose family
company made its name and money from the
manufacture and revolutionary use of yeast in the baking
process. He kept her in Santa Barbara from where he
Top: the wheelhouse
Above: the saloon, with one of the three new fireplaces