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‘Amazing Grace’ is home

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Annelore Harrell

It was Nov. 12, 2023, and MV Grace was going home to Palmetto Bluff.

The motor yacht was originally built in 1913 by the New York Yacht, Launch and Engine Co. of Morris Heights, N.Y., for millionaire lawyer Joseph B. Cousins, Esq., of the Manhasset Bay Yacht Club, to be used as his personal commuter boat between Long Island and the city.

Grace had just completed a thorough refreshment, Spa Time, barnacles gone, brass bright, squeaky clean and ready for service.

Sispud II, her original designation, was 60 feet long, built of hand-hewn wood, longleaf yellow pine planking below the water line, cedar used for above planking, and a steam-bent white-oak frame, originally powered with a 4-cylinder 50-horsepower gasoline marine engine.

With a shallow draft, easy to navigate, MV Grace is perfect for our estuarine system of creeks and rivers, but she began her nautical career elsewhere.

It was the 1900s, days of bobbed hair and rolled stockings, bootleg whiskey, and champagne tastes.

Anyone who was anyone had a yacht.

Or knew someone who did.

The Sispud II, a popular boat, with classic lines, easy to handle, became the Aquila, then the Zapala, passing through the hands of multiple owners.

In 1902, New York investment banker Robert Thornton Wilson II purchased approximately 20,000 acres in the Lowcountry from John Holbrook Estill. He called it Palmetto Bluff and built a four-story, 72-room mansion designed for entertaining his and wife Marion’s large circle of family and friends who spent winter months away from northern climes.

Owner of the prestigious Saratoga Racetrack, Wilson’s first love was the breeding of racehorses, and he indulged at Palmetto Bluff.

Wilson’s siblings were Marshall Orme, married to Carolyn Astor; Mary, who married real-estate magnate Ogden Goelet; and Grace, who was married to railroad and shipping tycoon Cornelius ‘Neily’ Vanderbilt III.

In fact, all of his siblings were married to people of prominence and were known collectively as The Marrying Wilsons.

Neily was the yachtsman in the family.

Boats were in his blood, professionally and personally. Commodore of the New York Yacht Club, he was a member of the syndicate that built the yacht Reliance, the largest racing yacht in history, with a crew of 70 that won the America’s Cup in 1903.

R.T. didn’t need his own yacht. Neily had it covered.

From the Wilson’s front stoop at Palmetto Bluff, you could see straight down to Hilton Head Island where the May River took a right turn and met Calibogue Sound, the Intra-coastal Waterway, and the Atlantic Ocean.

And yachts of the fabulous few could easily glide up the May River to the Wilson’s dock.

Yachts like the 104-foot Sequoia II, which during FDR’s presidency was known as the Floating White House, where Stalin and Churchill met. It was built in 1925 and owned by Emily Roebling Cadwalader, granddaughter of civil engineer John Augustus Roebling, designer of the Brooklyn Bridge. Ms. Emily often sailed south to Palm Beach and Miami. Not too much of a stretch to imagine that she swerved off course to visit Palmetto Bluff.

In 1938, John A’s great-grandson, Robert C., bought Modena Plantation on Skidaway Island a few nautical miles down from Bluffton, raced cars, collected Patek Philippe watches, and raised prized Aberdeen Angus.

After the Wilson mansion tragically burned to the ground on March 26, 1926, R. T. sold Palmetto Bluff to J.E. Varn for a timber, turpentine, and cattle business.

Leaving no heirs, Wilson died three years later at the age of 63.

Today, only broken pillars and ghosts whispering in the oaks remain as remembrances of the mansion’s extravagant past.

During these times, Sispud II went on from owner to owner, sometimes cherished, sometimes neglected, always gutsy, a survivor.

For a while, James Adams used her as living quarters while tugs pulled the James Adams Floating Theater barge around coastal towns in the South, putting on theatrical productions. Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Edna Ferber used her experiences on her as the basis for her novel "Show Boat."

In the middle of a mysterious fire, murder and mayhem, the barge burned and sank at Thunderbolt, Georgia, bringing Sispud II to her next owner, Jay Paul Jeter, DDS.

Once again, she continued on, finding new owners who maintained her in Bristol fashion until the late '70s, when she was abandoned in the dry dock of a backwoods boat yard.

By 1990, she was acquired by Earl McMillen and taken to Fairhaven, Massachusetts, to be restored.

The Crescent Community of Palmetto Bluff bought her in 2003.

Remembering R.T. Wilson’ sister, Neily Vanderbilt’s wife, they named her Grace.

For a number of years, Grace cruised up, down, and around the May River, watched the sun set and the moon rise. She hosted birthday, anniversary, and wedding parties, saw dolphins play, welcomed girls’ night outs for the maritime sisterhood, and invited Palmetto Bluff guests to come aboard, sip a light libation, drift into the quietness, the serenity of estuary life.

As with all things mechanical, after so many nautical miles, the Grace needed spiffing up, and once again, went away for necessary repairs.

It took awhile.

But today, she was back.

Son Andrew and I stood on Myrtle Island overlooking the Bay of Bluffton, watching from my brother Martin’s dock.

The day was damp and grey. No sun. The wind blew wicked cold out of the north, skimming over the outgoing tide.

I was thankful for my long johns, Nils overcoat and a crazy warm cap with ear flaps and a pompom.

Across the way, blue lights from the Coast Guard, SCDNR, Beaufort County Sheriff's Office and Bluffton Police Department escort boats blinked as they led our honored guest and her entourage of 30 boats from the Oyster Factory landing, and the Calhoun Street dock to begin the journey past Heyward Cove, Martin’s Place, Kirk’s Bluff, following the deep-water channel of the River May.

Captains McCune and Thomson welcomed Andrew and me aboard outside Hilton Head’s O-Vey, and with our destination only a soupcon away and the bitter-cold wind at our back, we joined the flotilla, and headed for Palmetto Bluff’s dock.

My nose and toes were totally froze.

The Grace was secured and the festivities underway before we managed to join fellow celebrants.

There were crowds of people on the bluff and on the dock, red, white, and blue bunting everywhere, speeches by dignitaries, many verses of "Amazing Grace" sung, toasts made.

All was well.

Grace was home.

Annelore Harrell lives in Bluffton and can be reached at anneloreh@aol.com.

https://www.blufftontoday.com/story/news/columns/2023/11/22/annelore-harrell-th…