ABSTRACT
Roosevelt dispatched the ‘Great White Fleet’ on an around-the-world cruise in 1907. In addition to colliers and some smaller vessels, the fleet consisted of the sixteen battleships USS Connecticut, USS Georgia, USS Illinois, USS Kansas, USS Kearsarge, USS Kentucky, USS Louisiana, USS Minnesota, USS Missouri, USS Nebraska, USS New Jersey, USS Ohio, USS Rhode Island, USS Vermont, USS Virginia and USS Wisconsin. The westerly circumnavigation of that fleet did much to elevate the United States as a global power. He also strongly supported the building of the Panama Canal, which became an important enabling factor in the rising US maritime power of his time. He also argued that Great Britain after WW1 should have the most powerful navy in the world. Roosevelt became President while serving as Vice President under William McKinley, who was assassinated in September 1901, only months after being elected to a second presidential term. In 1904 Roosevelt ran for president and was elected in his own right. He was also a naval historian of repute (he contributed the chapter on the War of 1812 in CLOWES’S The Royal Navy).
