Returning to the Cape, the Potomac became a stage for theatrics. From its deck, "FDR" waved to crowds on shore. But this "president" was a Secret Service agent dressed as Roosevelt.

Don't ask how the presidential yacht came to anchor at Galilee. No document explains it. But Secret Service records, and a log kept by one of Roosevelt's own top aides, confirm the story.

The Rhode Island tie-in comes from Robert Swanson, a New York lawyer who maintains a Web site on the Augusta because his father once served aboard it.

Swanson, 53, says Rhode Islanders should know that their little fishing port is a footnote to one of history's noted moments -- the three-day "Atlantic Conference" between Roosevelt and Churchill that began on Aug. 9, 1941, partly on the Augusta and partly on Churchill's vessel, H.M.S. Prince of Wales.

Roosevelt never mentions the Galilee stop in his own typewritten reminiscence. But Robert Clark, archivist at the FDR Library, in Hyde Park, N.Y., says there's no doubt about it.

He dug out a log of the "fishing vacation," prepared by Capt. John R. Beardall, a naval aide to FDR.

The entry for Aug. 3 reads:

"President Roosevelt departs Washington, D.C., by train for submarine base, New London, Connecticut, where he arrives later the same day, boarding presidential yacht Potomac that evening. Accompanied by auxiliary Calypso, Potomac sails for Point Judith, R.I., where the ship anchors for the night."

The Secret Service record puts a more precise spin on things, noting that the Potomac, with FDR aboard, left New London at 7:36 p.m. and anchored at Point Judith at 11:47 p.m.

You won't find many locals who ever heard the story -- but Joe Laurie, a 79-year-old retired auto mechanic, knows all about it.

A lifelong resident of Point Judith, Laurie was working on a Coast Guard officer's 1939 Ford one day, "when he tells me, 'We had a little excitement the other night. We had some potentates come in.' "

"It was all hush-hush," said Laurie. "They wanted no fanfare." According to Laurie's customer -- a Coast Guard captain -- Roosevelt took the time to come ashore overnight and inspect concrete artillery bunkers that still exist in the area.

According to the Secret Service, the Potomac left Galilee at 6:40 the next morning -- Monday -- cruised off Cape Cod, and dropped anchor in Buzzards Bay at 7:30 that night. Earlier in the day, Roosevelt made sure that people on shore could see him, fishing and ostensibly intending to hang around.

But here's where the real intrigue began:

Massing off Martha's Vineyard that night were seven U.S. warships -- all with their lights darkened. At 11 o'clock, the 165-foot Potomac slipped into the area, and at dawn, the president boarded the Augusta.

When the yacht returned to Buzzards Bay, sans president, it was as if nothing had changed. "FDR" and his party could still be seen waving to crowds onshore -- except that the figures were costumed stand-ins; Roosevelt was 250 miles out at sea, steaming toward Newfoundland.

Most of his department heads knew nothing of what was going on -- Roosevelt had left strict orders, in a memo he dictated Aug. 2 to aide Stephen Early, that "the president expects to be embarked on the U.S.S. Potomac cruising in New England waters," and was to be communicated with only on an "absolute-must" basis.

Roosevelt was also careful to keep the press at bay, pleading inability to squeeze them aboard Potomac's little escort vessel, Calypso.

Speculation was rife, though, that something was up.

As early as Monday, with the president having already slipped out of Rhode Island without their knowledge, Journal editors ran a United Press dispatch speculating that Roosevelt and Churchill "have conferred or are about to confer at some secret North Atlantic rendezvous."

Such reports persisted, said the dispatch, "in the face of a laconic statement issued today by the Navy Department stating that the presidential vacation yacht Potomac spent the day cruising slowly along the northeast Atlantic Coast with party fishing from stern."

As it turned out, the rumors were well-founded. Days later, with their meetings concluded, the president and the prime minister jointly released a statement confirming that they met at sea with high-ranking military officers of both governments and examined what needed to be done to blunt the threat posed by "the Hitlerite Government of Germany and other Governments associated therewith."

And they released a set of common principles, called the "Atlantic Charter," that repudiated territorial aggression and supported the right of self-determination.

Churchill went on the radio, and -- in his inimitable style -- characterized his confab with Roosevelt as "a meeting which marks forever in the pages of history the taking up by the English-speaking nations amid all this peril, tumult and confusion, of the guidance of fortunes of the broad toiling masses in all the continents, and our loyal effort ... to lead them forward out of the miseries into which they have been plunged, back to the broad high road of freedom and justice."

There's a certain irony in discovering after all these years that FDR's journey involved Galilee.

History tells us that one of the last naval battles of World War II's European theater took place not in Europe but off Point Judith. On May 6, 1945, our forces destroyed a marauding German sub that had sunk a coal boat off the point, killing 12 of its crew.

Those bodies were brought to Galilee, and there are people still alive who remember witnessing the scene as the war was winding down.

Now we know that years before, the port played another role -- small and unremarked upon -- when World War II was still a cloud bank on the national horizon.

As for Joe Laurie, he would soon grasp the true implications of Roosevelt's "vacation" to New England. Laurie was drafted in 1942, became an equipment sergeant with the 406th Fighter-Bomber Group, and won six combat citations.

Robert Swanson's Web site on the ship Augusta is at http://www.internet-esq.com/ussaugusta/atlantic/index.htm.