Circle Line V

V has the most storied history of any vessel to ever carry the Circle Line name. She was launched in 1902 as Celt, a 186-foot private luxury steam yacht built in Wilmington, Delaware for a railroad executive.

In July 1917, the Navy acquired her for World War I service, outfitting her with depth charges and machine guns and renaming her USS Sachem. The following year, the Navy handed her over to Thomas Edison, who used her as a floating research vessel to test anti-submarine defenses around New York Harbor, then down to Key West and the Caribbean. Edison's time aboard is documented in his wife's letters, held on record at Rutgers University.

After the war, Sachem passed through a few private owners, eventually becoming a $2-a-head recreational fishing boat under Captain Jacob "Jake" Martin of Brooklyn. In July 1942, the Navy rented her a second time for World War II service, renaming her USS Phenakite. She trained sailors on sonar equipment by day and patrolled Key West by night, before finishing the war on patrol duty in Long Island Sound.

In the summer of 1945, several tourism cruise lines merged to form Circle Line Sightseeing Cruises. The new company purchased Sachem from Captain Martin to serve as its flagship, renaming her Sightseer. She eventually became known as Circle Line V, and received the paint scheme still faintly visible on her hull today.

By the early 1980s, after nearly eight decades of continuous service, she'd outgrown Circle Line's needs and was left at an abandoned pier in New Jersey. In 1986, Cincinnati resident Robert Miller bought her for $7,500 and spent ten days getting her seaworthy again. During the repairs, a Madonna representative asked to use the ship as a background element in one of the singer's music videos, and V ended up with a brief cameo in "Papa Don't Preach." That same year, on July 4, 1986, she was present at the Statue of Liberty's rededication ceremony, when President Reagan symbolically relit the torch. Not long after, Miller sailed her from New York through the Great Lakes, down the Mississippi, and onto the Ohio River, to a creek on his property in Northern Kentucky, her final voyage.

She remains there today, partially submerged and listing to one side, her Circle Line V lettering still visible on the hull.