The iron-hulled, single-screw steam yacht Utowana was completed in 1883 at Chester, Pennsylvania, by the Delaware River Iron Ship Building and Engine Works for Washington Everett Connor.

Employed in setting up radio compass stations along the Maine coast, she was also used as a boarding boat, meeting vessels arriving off the port of Boston.

USS Adelante was decommissioned in August 1919 and sold in March 1920, subsequently operating as a commercial tow boat under the names John Gully and Salvager.

[4][5] The maximum and cruising speed was 12 knots (14 mph; 22 km/h) with a rated endurance of 1,850 nautical miles (2,130 mi; 3,430 km) driven by two boilers and a single vertical compound engine of 420 ihp.

Among the friends and distinguished guests Benedict hosted were Edwin Booth, Thomas Bailey Aldrich and Lawrence Barrett, who conceived The Players club while being entertained on the Oneida in 1887.

[1][12] Grover Cleveland was a close friend and was a frequent visitor aboard Oneida having spent considerable time in Long Island Sound or off Cape Cod fishing.

[13] The Oneida served as an impromptu hospital on 1 July 1893, when doctors performed a secret operation on Benedict's close friend, President Grover Cleveland.

On 30 June Keen and four assisting doctors made their way to the yacht by boat from separate points with Cleveland and Bryant boarding in the evening for the night aboard before sailing the next morning.

With calm weather the surgery was done shortly after noon as the ship transited Long Island Sound with the removal of the tumor, five teeth, as well as much of the upper left palate and jawbone.

The surgery remained secret even after Cleveland's death in 1908, though journalist Elisha Jay Edwards published the story and his reputation suffered in the subsequent successful denials.

Only in 1917, when surgeon Keen published in The Saturday Evening Post and expressed regrets as to how Edwards had suffered accusations of making up the story, did the truth become public.

Such a system had originally been installed during the war to detect enemy submarines operating off the coast, to "home in" on their radio transmissions and to determine their direction and distance.

As Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels reported in 1919, "The system of radio compasses on shore ... proved such a useful aid to navigation that during the past year additional stations have been constructed.

[1] After shifting her berth to the opposite side of Boston harbor the next morning, Adelante got underway and met the troop transport Mount Vernon as the "boarding boat" for the customs officers.

The party then inspected the station at Damariscove Island the following day (9 May) before Adelante set course for Boston to take on construction supplies and stores (including lumber).