Aboard: MAURETANIA

This is not a ‘kiss and tell’ boat, as we are committed to protecting the privacy of our clients,” says Jack Boyt with a sly grin on his face as he delivers his punchline. “However, I will tell you this. There were at least three murders aboard MAURETANIA one year…on location shoots for the TV series NCIS, Criminal Minds, and Without a Trace.” The yacht has also hosted Melrose Place, 90210, Comedy Central, and others. Film credits include Beggarman, Thief (1979 with Glenn Ford, Jean Simmons, and Lynn Redgrave), and Action Jackson (1988 with Carl Weathers, Vanity, and Sharon Stone).

Boyt and his wife, Ann, have been MAURETANIA’s owners for the past 43 years, and the team that has made her a darling of the California film industry both on and off the silver screen. Even before the yacht began seducing Hollywood she led a charmed life. MAURETANIA is one of renowned designer-builder John Trumpy’s glamorous motor yachts (such as the longtime U.S. presidential yacht SEQUOIA), which The New York Times called “the Rolls Royce of American motor yachts.”

Trumpy, a Norwegian immigrant, called these designs “houseboats” because you can walk the length of the main deck without going up or down a step. But the “houseboat” moniker is typical Trumpy under­statement. At 80' LOA and 18' beam, MAURETANIA is palatial. Trumpy designed the yacht and many of her sisters in the 1930s with the plumb bow, foredeck canopy, and fully varnished house typical of those times, and with shallow draft—4' 6" in MAURETANIA’s case—so their wealthy owners could navigate the Intracoastal Waterway in leisurely style from their summer homes on Long Island Sound to their winter compounds at Palm Beach, Florida.

Trumpy built the yacht at the Mathis-Trumpy yard at Gloucester, New Jersey, in 1947 with white-oak framing, longleaf-pine planking, and teak decking. She was the yard’s contract No. 329, built for Col. Frederick Pope, a senior official in President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration. Pope reportedly named the vessel after his wife, Marilyn (actually Mary Stockton McLaughlin). The name was changed several times, and in 1979 a new owner wanted an elegant name for the elegant yacht and changed it to MAURETANIA.

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