Once the pride of the Gold Coast commuter boats that whisked financiers from their Long Island homes to their Wall Street offices in the 1930s, Aphrodite, one of the most easily recognized boats on the water, is now the pride of Watch Hill, Rhode Island, having been totally restored back to her former glory.
Even in its original incarnation, Aphrodite was never just another pretty commuter boat. It was commissioned by John Hay “Jock” Whitney in 1937 from the Purdy Boat Company in Port Washington, on the north shore of Long Island. Whitney lived in Manhasset, across the bay from Port Washington, and took his 72-foot commuter boat from his waterfront mansion there to his Wall Street office during the spring and summer. The problem was that Whitney’s brother-in-law, Charles Payson, had a faster commuter boat, and was passing Whitney on Long Island Sound.
Purdy built Aphrodite to go fast, with twin 1,500-hp Packard airplane engines. They pushed the 74-foot boat to a top speed of 38 knots, faster than Payson’s boat and any other commuter boat on the Sound, although it did burn 300 gallons of aviation fuel an hour. It also was arguably the prettiest commuter boat on the water, with its signature torpedo stern, long, low, black profile and gleaming mahogany.
During the Second World War, Whitney gave the boat to the Navy, which used it to carry dignitaries (including President Roosevelt) up and down the East Coast. After the war, when Whitney was the publisher of The New York Herald Tribune, he sent Aphrodite every morning from his then summer home on Fishers Island to New London to pick up the morning papers. He also entertained on the boat, with a guest list running from Fred Astaire and Spencer Tracy to Shirley Temple. But in the ‘60s Whitney donated the boat to charity, and it eventually went through several owners and various states of disrepair.
In 2003, Chuck Royce, of Royce Mutual Funds, found Aphrodite languishing in Florida and brought it up to the Brooklin Boatyard in Maine for a total, two-year restoration. The boat now is moored in Watch Hill, near the Ocean House hotel and resort there, which Royce also restored.
For more: http://www.theday.com/video/20170723/aphrodite-icon-on-watch-hill-waterfront
