SS President Coolidge motors ranged from a tenth horsepower to the 13,250 horsepower main motors. The ship had refrigerated cargo space. "President Coolidge" was initially designed for 350 first class, 150 "special" or intermediate class passengers with space for 1,260 passengers of all classes and a crew of 300. The ship was launched on 21 February 1931 after Mrs. Calvin C. Coolidge broke a bottle of water that came from a brook on the Coolidge farm in Vermont on the bow. "President Hoover" and "President Coolidge" ran between San Francisco and Manila via Kobe and Shanghai, and some round the World voyages that
The Man Who Knew Coolidge digressions how he came to know the then-President of the United States, Calvin Coolidge. He describes a visit to the White House, undertaken to look in on "Cal". Early in the narrative, Schmaltz's character acknowledges what will be a key characteristic of the remaining five sections of the novel when he states: "I'm afraid I'm getting a little off the subject of Coolidge, and if there's anything I hate it's a fellow that if he starts to talk about a subject he can't stick to it" (p. 17). Schmaltz recounts his youth in Fall River, Massachusetts, where his father, according