One of the most pivotal (and spiciest) scenes in The Purple Menace and the Tobacco Prince takes place on the foredeck of the SS Galaxie, the yacht owned by the father of chemical heiress and Bizzy Holt devotee, Lucy Allard. The fictional boat is based on the yacht owned by R.R.M. “Ruly” Carpenter, father of Louisa d’Andelot Carpenter, Libby Holman’s real-life lover and Smith Reynolds’ chief rival for her affections.
The fictional yacht and the real one are identical save for the spelling of the name. Carpenter’s yacht was called the Galaxy while Allard’s is the Galaxie, a nod to the 1963½ Ford Galaxie that stars in my 2013 novel Scream If You Wanna Go Faster. The real Galaxy was 130 feet long, had a displacement of 320 tons, and was powered by a single 750-horsepower Winston Diesel engine that could propel it to a cruising speed of eleven knots (12.6 miles per hour, for you landlubbers like me). The ship was built in 1930 by the Pusey and Jones Corporation, shipbuilders from Wilmington, Delaware who, during World War I, had delivered 14 cargo vessels and two Lapwing-class minesweepers to the United States Navy.
Anchored at Port Washington on the north shore of Long Island, New York, the Galaxy played host to debauched weekend parties attended by a rotating roster of Broadway and literary intelligentsia that included Clifton Webb, Noël Coward, Tallulah Bankhead and her older sister Eugenia, poet Dorothy Parker and her future husband, screenwriter Alan Campbell. It was clear to their guests that Louisa and Libby were in love.
After the mysterious death of Libby’s husband, Louisa hid Libby from the police and press aboard the Galaxy on the Bohemia River in northern Delaware. Bill Broadwater, the Galaxy’s chief engineer, was entrusted with Libby’s concealment. Born and raised on the Elk River, Broadwater knew the creeks and tributaries of the Chesapeake like the back of his hand. Broadwater successfully kept Libby secreted away for three weeks as the combined forces of North Carolina, Delaware, Ohio, and Maryland state police searched fruitlessly. Libby and Louisa sailed and fished, picnicked and sunbathed until finally, learning that a bond hearing had been arranged for her, Libby returned to North Carolina and surrendered to local authorities.
The yacht was purchased by the US Navy in 1941 and was allocated to the 1st Naval District at East Boston to conduct "experimental underwater sound work” (it’s unclear if it was involved with the Philadelphia Experiment…). The USS Galaxy was decommissioned in 1946 and spent the next decade or so doing yacht things for various owners, last documented as being operated under the British flag in 1962. Its final fate is unknown. Likewise, no written record exists of anything happening aboard the real Galaxy like what happens on the Galaxie in Chapter 6 of The Purple Menace and the Tobacco Prince. But no records exist to disprove it, either…
-WEB3
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