TR's Great White Fleet

[peterhof]

Great White Fleet

To the familiar strains of "The Girl I left Behind Me," the procession of battlewagons passed before the President at 400-yard intervals with their crews smartly manning the rails. This newly designated battle fleet was made up of ships commissioned since the end of the Spanish-American War. They were USS Kearsarge (BB-5), USS Kentucky (BB-6), USS Illinois (BB-7), USS Alabama (BB-8), USS Maine (BB-10), USS Missouri (BB-11), USS Ohio (BB-12), USS Virginia (BB-13), USS Georgia (BB-15), USS New Jersey (BB-16), USS Rhode Island (BB-17), USS Connecticut (BB-18), USS Louisiana (BB-19), USS Vermont (BB-20), USS Kansas (BB-21) and USS Minnesota (BB-22).

The four squadrons of warships, dubbed the "Great White Fleet," were manned by 14,000 sailors and marines under the command of Rear Adm. Robley "Fighting Bob" Evans. All were embarking upon a naval deployment the scale of which had never been attempted by any nation before - the first 'round-the-world cruise by a fleet of steam-powered, steel battleships. The 43,000 mile, 14-month circumnavigation would include 20 port calls on six continents; it is widely considered one of the greatest peacetime achievements of the US Navy.

The idea of sending the new battle fleet around the world was the brainchild of the energetic "Teddy" Roosevelt, former colonel of the Rough Riders and one-time assistant secretary of the Navy. Assuming the presidency after the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901, Roosevelt brought to the White House a deep conviction that only through a strong navy could a nation project its power and prestige abroad.

Teddy Roosevelt sounds kinda like Wilhelm II. Question, did anyone in London have a problem with the new "naval preponderance" in Washington D.C.? Or was it just Berlin?

[ChristopherPerrien]

The Great White Fleet was the signal that the US had eclisped the British Empire as the worlds leading/most advanced Naval power. However it meant only a loss of prestige to Great Britain. It meant nothing to the German Empire , as it was a continental power relying on its army. Wilhelm II being a total British Naval power anglophile never recognized the USN as being a threat to Germany because he could only see English Sea power and nothing else.

But all this is beside the point. The Great White Fleet was never built or meant to mean a thing to the "Old World" of Europe. The Great White Fleet was built and sailed around the world to threaten Japan. As it showed the USA would not be the pushover the Russian Fleet of 1905 was if Japan's territorial interests affected American trade interests in China and the Far-East. Note: American trade "interests" in China actually predate even the founding of the USA itself.

The Great White Fleet proved that the USN could show up on the other side of the world on Japan's doorstep in fighting trim and beat the Japanese Fleet. Roosevelt and the interests he represented knew this and the Japanese Empire knew this. The "White" in the "Great WHite Fleet" while being a tropical paint for warmer climates, was not what "white' meant in the context of the name. It meant that the fleet of a nation of 'White" people could show up and beat the "yellow-Oriental" people of Japan. Amazingly "racist",in what is now politically correct terms, but back then it was fully understood by the Japanese Empire as such and a renewed threat, reminder, and challenge, as the Perry Expedition of 1853 had been about 50 long years before the Japanese started upon their Empire building in China.

The Great WHite Fleet can be considered as a public harbinger and omen of the coming war over China between the American Empire and the Imperial Japanese Empire, now known as WWII. FDR merely followed Uncle Teddy's footsteps

[favedave]

Peterhof! Glad to see you're back and posting. It's been a while.

The Great White Fleet was certainly a stroke of genius on TR's part to keep the Japanese Empire from gobbling up too much territory too fast in the Western Pacific. It cost no lives and firmly established America's chosen place in the new world order of the 20th Century. It also delayed the collision with Japan for nearly four decades.

[peterhof]

Okay, but there was not a peep from Britain even while she was muttering darkly about the Germans building a fleet and had earlier sent the Danish fleet to the bottom.

[pugsville]

The US fleet do not represent a threat to Britain, The German fleet was incapable as being anything else, being a short range fleet the only thing it could do is control the North Sea. The German fleet was specifically built so it's only real use would be against Britain.

[peterhof]

Yes, but Lloyd George emphatically rejected Point 11 [of Wilson's Fourteen Points] dealing with ‘Freedom of the Seas’ and stated that “Great Britain would spend her last guinea to keep her navy superior to that of the United States or any other Power, and that no Cabinet Official could continue in the Government in England who took a different position.” (This of course was the attitude that triggered the War of 1812 and almost caused Wilson to follow in Madison’s footsteps and side with Britain’s enemies. He [George] was unmoved by House’s warning that “We do not intend to have our commerce regulated by Great Britain whenever she is at war.”

[pugsville]

But the British did concede they they would not get into a naval construction race with the USA, the Washington treaty was basically driven the British losing the dominance of the Royal Navy. So Lloyd George was wrong, the British did take a different position. The Americans did in the end only protest about the British Blockade, while there were tensions there was never ever any prospect of the USA siding with the Central Powers.

[ChristopherPerrien]

As Pugsville noted , LLoyd George's comments were just bluster. Not knocking Lloyd George , he was just doing what politicians, particularly diplomats do all the time.

British had already spent their last guinea before WWI even started in their naval building race with Germany. And afterwards they were far in debt to the US(still paying it off today), with a huge and ever more daily growing obsolescent fleet to maintain. Which was why they so readily accepted the Washington Treaty of 1922. And again, the Washington Naval Treaty represented no threat at all to the British Empire, however it did represent another implied "threat" to Japan, which they had to accept given their smaller industrial base. The USA knew this during the negotiations, given we were "reading their mail" the whole time.

[OpanaPointer]

Trivia: One of the ships that sailed for a time with the Great White Fleet was at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7th, 1941. USS Baltimore was anchored just north of Ford Island, near USS Solace.

[pugsville]

No the British had not spent their last guinea. They could have spent more on Naval construction substantially before the war. The US loans only started AFTER the US entered the war. Overall Britain loaned more many than they borrowed, their debt to the US after ww1 was basically other peoples debt Russia, Italy, France. They are not still paying WW1 debts. Britain defaulted on it's ww1 in 1932 (IIRC) There was a fair bit of wrangling and the US were pretty hartd to deal with so the Brits defaulted, and paid off the US lend lease from ww2 in 2006.