USS Sylph (PY-5)

USS Sylph (front center) at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, circa late 1905
History
United States
Name:	USS Sylph
Builder:	Delaware River Iron Shipbuilding and Engine Works
Yard number:	295
Completed:	1898
Acquired:	June 1898
Commissioned:	18 Aug 1898
Decommissioned:	27 Apr 1929
Fate:	Sold privately, fate unknown
General characteristics
Type:	Steam yacht
Displacement:	152 tons
Length:	123 ft 8 in
Beam:	20 ft
Draft:	7 ft 6 in
Speed:	15 knots

USS Sylph (PY-5) was a steam yacht that served as a presidential yacht from the late 19th century through to the early 1920s. A converted yacht, she was purchased in June 1898 from her builder, the Delaware River Iron Shipbuilding and Engine Works, of Chester, Pennsylvania, and commissioned on 18 August 1898 at the Norfolk Navy Yard. She was the third U.S. Navy ship to bear the name.

Soon after commissioning, Sylph was assigned to the Washington Navy Yard, where she served as a yacht for the President and other high officials. President McKinley was the first President to use her. In 1902, she began alternating with first Dolphin then Mayflower as the President's yacht, and she also served the Secretary and Assistant Secretary of the Navy in the same manner. President Theodore Roosevelt frequently cruised in Sylph to his summer place at Oyster Bay, New York, and President William Howard Taft used her for excursions off the New England coast during the summers of his term.

More often, Sylph cruised up and down the Potomac River, near Washington, D.C.. She went on sightseeing excursions in Chesapeake Bay and to George Washington's home at Mount Vernon, Virginia, on the Potomac just below Washington. Among her famous passengers, the yacht numbered the King of Belgium and the Crown Prince of Sweden.