Teddy Roosevelt's Great White Fleet Review

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(More customer reviews)James Reckner, a professor of history at Texas Tech University and a former officer in the United States Navy, examines the around-the-world cruise of the U.S. Navy's Atlantic Battleship Fleet in. Using government documents, newspapers, unpublished manuscripts, and a wide variety of secondary sources, Reckner argues that the logistical and diplomatic accomplishments of the Great White Fleet's cruise, which sailed the world from December 1907 to February 1909, remained a decisive factor in testing the capabilities of the U.S. Navy. The author suggests that historians have mistakenly emphasized the fleet's effect on diplomacy without considering the technical aspect of the fleet's voyage. Reckner asserts that the need to test the fleet proved the overriding consideration behind the Navy Department's decision to conduct the cruise. He highlights the significance of the cruise by repeatedly pointing out the number of obstacles facing early twentieth-century vessels, specifically that battleships of the period were far less reliable than modern warships. Reckner argues the Great White Fleet proved an influential cause behind the U.S. Navy's re-examination of its organization and battleship design during the world's unprecedented naval expansion prior to World War I. Reckner examines the state of naval affairs at the turn of the century and how it influenced a change in American naval policy during the Roosevelt administration. He traces the fleet's voyage of sixteen battleships and over 14,000 men as they departed from Hampton Roads, Virginia and sailed down the coast of South America, up the West Coast, only to pause for several weeks in San Francisco Harbor. While at California, naval officials reorganized the fleet and the ships got underway to cross the Pacific. After sailing to Hawaii, the fleet headed south to New Zealand and then Australia, Manila, Yokohama, Ceylon, Suez, various ports in the Mediterranean, before finally returning home to Virginia. Reckner reveals that the fleet's voyage of over 45,000 nautical miles produced a great deal of publicity for the United States Navy, ultimately boosting the prestige of American naval power abroad. However, he underscores the fact that the fleet had other national and international purposes as well. First, the U.S. Navy had to train the crews and determine the fleet's coal and provisions requirements. Reckner argues that the voyage confirmed various aspects of the Naval War College's new "War Plan Orange," the recently developed war plan against Japan. Second, the cruise launched a critical reexamination of the navy's administrative structure and the design for new ships. It ultimately led the U.S. Navy toward modernization, greater efficiency, and professionalism. Despite the effects of Roosevelt's Great White Fleet on naval matters, Reckner argues, the ultimate result of the fleet's voyage was its effect on foreign policy. The author points out that the traditional interpretation of the Great White Fleet as an example of Roosevelt's active foreign policy is erroneous. "This is a misconception," Reckner writes, "albeit one encouraged by Roosevelt himself" (p. 157). The author demonstrates that the voyage served as a good measure of the abilities of his battleship fleet in preparation for war. Accordingly, Reckner's study reinforces the connection between a strong military and an effective foreign policy. The author suggests that Roosevelt's "Big Stick" diplomacy, which served as a pillar to his corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, depended on the effectiveness of a strong naval presence so that the president's declaration that the impotence or chronic instability of neighboring countries might force the U.S. to intervene in its neighbors' affairs to forestall foreign intervention would be taken seriously. The strength of Reckner's study, however, lies with his treatment of the fleet's voyage. Reckner points out how the fleet was received in South America, the Pacific, and Europe. At every port of call, the author maintains, the ships, officers, and men of the Great White Fleet received friendly receptions in a carnival-like atmosphere which everyone used as an excuse for public holidays and festivities. Teddy Roosevelt's Great White Fleet is intended for the student of history with a significant knowledge of naval affairs and the political and diplomatic situation in the U.S. at the turn of the century. Reckner's work serves as a good supplementary source for the origins and the various trials surrounding the U.S. Navy's move toward establishing a modern naval force.

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Drawing on previously untapped sources, naval historian James Reckner provides a complete picture of the fleet that thrust the United States into the ranks of great world naval powers. His fresh interpretations of the fleet's historic 1907-09 world cruise, which won him the 1989 Roosevelt Naval History Prize, allow today's readers to fully appreciate the significance of the famous fleet that set sail during Teddy Roosevelt's second term as president. Reckner recreates the colorful pageantry of the event--sixteen U.S. battleships on a fourteen-month voyage around the world--that drew thousands of sightseers at every port of call, but his main emphasis is on the cruise's long-range impact on the Navy. He shows how the cruise revealed the fleet's shortcomings and forced the naval establishment to acknowledge the faults and make concessions that eventually led to permanent benefits.--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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