In 1907 Theodore Roosevelt faced a serious problem of presidential leadership. Two years earlier he had declared a battleship moratorium, but now needed a way to pressure Congress to resume his former naval buildup at an accelerated pace. He had considerable success during his first four years in office in achieving his diplomatic and military objectives, so much so that he reassured Congress in 1905 that once ten first-class battleships and auxiliary vessels already approved were completed, no further naval expansion would be necessary. Soon after making his announcement, however, changing world conditions unsettled the delicate international balance of power he had worked so hard to maintain.
Growing tensions with Japan over immigration led to riots on both sides of the Pacific and talk of a possible war that threatened the Philippines and U.S. interests in China. In late 1906, HMS Dreadnought was commissioned. She outclassed the most modern U.S. warships and gave Germany the opportunity to match the British in number of all-big-gun battleships, relegating America to third place among the world's navies. That, coupled with the failure the following year to impose global naval arms restrictions at the Second Hague Conference, convinced the President that the U.S. Fleet would soon lack the firepower needed to back his "Big Stick" diplomacy. To rectify this, Roosevelt asked Congress to appropriate funds for a staggering four vessels of the most modern—i.e. dreadnought—design.1
Roosevelt knew he would have a difficult fight to secure the battleships he believed were necessary for the United States to remain competitive as a major world power. The country was in the middle of a recession, and key legislators had become hostile to the Navy's needs. He was confident, however, that he possessed the knowledge and skills to bolster public opinion to support his request. To overcome congressional opposition to his naval building program, Roosevelt preached the Navy message in speeches and articles and through creative media events that included commemorations, world's fairs, and international battleship parades.
The Jamestown Exposition and the world voyage of the Great White Fleet are but two examples of Theodore Roosevelt's shrewd use of naval publicity as he attempted to secure funding for battleship construction and cultivate a national will supportive of the Navy's crucial role in America's newly expanded international responsibilities. He played a leading role in designating the 1907 Jamestown Tercentennial Exposition at Hampton Roads as an "international, naval, marine, and military celebration," and while its state and local investors considered the fair an economic failure, the President's personal involvement ensured that it was a "naval success."2 More important, Roosevelt refashioned a proposed Pacific Ocean fleet exercise into a global maritime pageant that elevated its officers, Sailors, and even the battleships themselves into national heroes.3
Pageants, Parades, and Fairs
Roosevelt brought to the presidency a sophisticated understanding of how political leaders shape public opinion. He, like many others among the educated elite, was heavily influenced by the writings of the French political psychologist Gustave Le Bon and American sociologist Edward Ross to use "emotional appeals and heroic imagery" as well as other means of social control to manage the national will.4 To establish his credentials as a heroic leader, the future president incorporated the grand showmanship techniques of P. T. Barnum and William "Buffalo Bill" Cody and effectively crafted his public image through daily press releases and a close personal relationship with newspaper reporters.
The President also participated in ceremonial events designed to impress the public and to identify his policies with traditional American values. Roosevelt was undoubtedly encouraged in this path by the near mass hysteria following the Spanish-American War that surrounded the Navy's first modern celebrities: Admiral George Dewey and Lieutenant Richard Pearson Hobson. The discovery of John Paul Jones' body in a Parisian cemetery, however, gave President Roosevelt a unique opportunity to promote the Navy by capitalizing on national longings for the heroic in a grand reinterment ceremony at the Naval Academy in 1906.5
Along with ceremonies, dedications, tributes, and other formal occasions associated with the presidency, Roosevelt took advantage of naval pageants and world's fairs—two forms of turn-of-the-century conspicuous nationalism and popular entertainment—in his public-relations campaign for the Navy. Before World War I, Great Britain and Germany held extravagant, annual naval pageants—reviews, rendezvous, or parades—inviting select nations and foreign journalists. Naval powers participated in such events to offer diplomatic friendship, show respect at important milestones in a nation's history, but especially as a forum for a type of naval press conference. The hosting and invited nations paraded their latest capital-ship acquisitions to demonstrate their maritime muscle as well as to build political support for the navy among their own citizens.
American participation at international pageants required a supply of showcase vessels capable of traveling great distances and arriving in time and in respectable condition for the festivities. Roosevelt first sent a U.S. detachment to Europe in 1903, but only a handful of cruisers, rather than the customary battleships, were assigned to parade in the harbors of France, Germany, and England.
Hosting a naval pageant eliminated the debilitating effect of long-distance travel. In 1893 the United States held its first international parade in connection with the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The second U.S. pageant was staged in 1902 and featured German battleships. The 1906 Oyster Bay Naval Review displayed only the U.S. Fleet but was clearly orchestrated by Roosevelt for publicity. During the review, he entertained key congressmen and two of his favorite reporters on board the presidential yacht in order, as he put it, to give them "a personal feeling for the navy—to get them under the naval spell."6 All three events attracted large crowds and were effective in popularizing the Navy. They encouraged organizers of the upcoming Jamestown Exposition to suggest their own international naval pageant as they lobbied politicians and private investors for the capital necessary to get their world's fair off the ground.
The Navy on Display at Jamestown
World's fairs proliferated during the late-19th and early 20th centuries and performed a variety of functions, including showcasing the nation's military resources. Congress allocated millions of dollars in subsidies, as it first did for the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876, to create exhibits that collectively educated the public on how the federal government functioned during wartime and displayed U.S. military and naval resources.7 In an age before radio and television, the Army and Navy advertised their needs by fashioning attractive displays and by the two service academies joining numerous military colleges, militias, and veterans groups in camping on the fairgrounds and marching in regularly scheduled parades. By 1907 the Navy had participated in nearly 15 world's fairs.
The 1907 Jamestown Exposition—commemorating the 300th anniversary of the first permanent English settlement in the New World—surpassed all earlier Navy public-relations endeavors. In large measure that was because of Roosevelt's personal efforts to popularize the service by creating a naval and military extravaganza and a fitting send-off for the worldwide tour of the Great White Fleet. While the fair was a financial failure, Roosevelt ensured the exposition's naval success by designating it a six-month "international naval, marine, and military celebration," by making personal appearances at the fair, and by ordering the Atlantic Fleet to spend as much time as possible there at anchor off Sewell's Point in Hampton Roads.8
On 26 April 1907, the opening day's military pageant took more than an hour to pass the President's grandstand. The crowd witnessed an historic event, to the dismay of a number of critics, as armed foreign forces marched on American soil for the first time during a period of peace. But more impressive was the evening's illuminated battleship parade that included 27 warships from 13 foreign nations. America's fleet of 16 battleships, 5 cruisers, and 6 destroyers, however, were the stars of the show. An even grander demonstration took place on 10 June. Roosevelt returned to the exposition in the yacht Mayflower to the thundering sound of an 1,806-gun salute before presiding over another military parade followed by a rousing all-American naval review.9
While a number of observers complained about the diversion of the exposition to the service of militarism, criticism died down rather quickly as most newspaper editors defended and praised the Navy's presence.10 After the fair closed in late November, the Atlantic Fleet steamed north for maneuvers and to ready itself for its upcoming "practice cruise" to the Pacific. Rear Admiral Robley Evans returned to Hampton Roads with the nation's battleships in early December as excitement built and speculation grew over whether or not Roosevelt would send the Great White Fleet around the world.
Why the Global Tour?
The fleet's popularity during the exposition undoubtedly helped solidify Roosevelt's thoughts on the further use of the fleet as a public-relations tool, for at some point during the fair he decided to send the 16 battleships on their historic global tour. His reasons for doing so were complex, and because he gave different reasons for his decision at different times, historians have struggled to identify his primary motivation. The Navy had discussed the need for a practice cruise to the Pacific with Roosevelt as early as 1905. It sought to further develop skills required for a large-scale sea battle and investigate coaling and docking/repair capabilities along the transpacific route to the Philippines, where the service planned to concentrate its ships in the event of war with Japan. While Japanese-American tensions over immigration had eased in 1907, the President viewed the cruise as an effective way to demonstrate to Japan during a time of peace that the United States could move its fleet to the Pacific with or without the Panama Canal, which was then under construction. While the first and most difficult leg of the voyage—Hampton Roads to Magdalena Bay, along Mexico's Baja, California, coast—can be viewed in these military/diplomatic terms, the rest of the fleet's itinerary largely served the president's domestic and international publicity needs as he sought a means to strengthen the nation's defenses by promoting the Navy's prestige and capabilities.11
Roosevelt claimed in his autobiography that his primary reason for sending the fleet on its world tour was to "impress the American people" and "stimulate popular interest and belief in the Navy."12 Whether or not publicity was his chief motivation, there is no doubt that the President had public relations in mind as he made plans for the voyage. He hoped, as he told Lawrence Abbott, the editor of The Outlook, to build public support for a strong Navy by "arrest[ing] the attention and arous[ing] the enthusiasm of the country in a dramatic fashion."13 To further enhance the Navy's image Roosevelt had the ships scrubbed and painted. He raised pay, lessened punishments, and concentrated recruiting efforts away from seaports and into the West and Midwest to attract more virtuous Sailors. He also prevented officers from disparaging the voyage by threatening to court-martial anyone who spoke ill of the venture or criticized the design of America's battleships.14
Easing the Public In
The President masterfully directed public opinion about the Great White Fleet by releasing information to the press through a series of statements and trial balloons that minimized criticism and built a consensus for the world voyage. Congressmen, as well as the public, first learned of the cruise's possibility when Roosevelt leaked news on 1 July 1907 to trusted reporters. The following day, his executive secretary, William Loeb, and Assistant Secretary of the Navy Truman H. Newberry both denied the possibility. Two days later, however, Loeb claimed a long cruise was in the planning stage "possibly to the Pacific" and ""possibly for next winter.""15
In typical Rooseveltian fashion, the President first desensitized the public to the idea of the Pacific voyage by allowing newspaper editorials to battle out its pros and cons before he made an official announcement. After he did so on Independence Day, speculation began on the fleet's return route. Would the president dare a global voyage, leaving the nation without a viable naval defense? Roosevelt held off announcing that the battleships would return via the Suez Canal until they had arrived safely in California the following spring. With popular support for a world cruise building and no international hostilities on the horizon, the President finally felt comfortable openly declaring the fleet's full itinerary. His decision not to consult naval committees in the House of Representatives and the Senate regarding the voyage beforehand, however, angered Congress, increasing the impression that he had usurped the power and privileges of the legislature.
Believing that public opinion could override congressional opposition to the Great White Fleet and his battleship construction plans, Roosevelt took steps to ensure positive press coverage of the voyage. "The cruise around the world will be a striking thing," he wrote Newberry on 10 August 1907. "The people I hope will be interested in it and in no way can their interest be better stimulated with better results to the Navy, than by writing it up."16
Roosevelt ensured that the fleet would be properly written up by selecting and monitoring who did the writing. Because commanders did not want their decks cluttered with reporters, he first favored the idea of only having one journalist representing all newspapers accompany the fleet. The decision caused such an uproar in the press that the President decided to open up passage to a number of carefully selected "Navy friendly" newspapermen who agreed to have each of their wires checked by a censor. Some complained that they had become mere publicity agents of the Navy and others smuggled out uncensored news, but most followed the President's guidelines. Roosevelt's favorite reporter was Franklin Matthews of the New York Sun. Matthews was quick to gloss over any mishaps and described Sailors as manly and virtuous and the voyage in a heroic narrative to the 30 million readers of his nationally syndicated column.17
Not a Perfect Spin
The 16 battleships and auxiliaries of the Great White Fleet created a world sensation by successfully circumnavigating the globe in 14 months while being greeted by elaborate and enthusiastic celebrations in 20 different ports along its 46,000-mile route. The audacity of the voyage caught the world's imagination, and nations hosting the fleet often used the opportunity to strengthen diplomatic ties with the United States and for their individual naval publicity needs.
America's battleships did not, however, accomplish this extraordinary feat without some mishaps and unpleasantries along the way. For the most part, Roosevelt was able to keep quiet the fact that many of the commanders, all near retirement age, were ill (this included Admiral Evans, who had to leave the voyage early) or that the Navy had removed a handful of officers for drunkenness and other offenses. Not all of the young idealistic Midwesterners who had volunteered for the cruise to see the world stayed enamored with the Navy. Long working hours under intolerable and often dangerous conditions led to desertions, especially when the fleet reached Australia and New Zealand, where nearly 300 jumped ship.
While foreign nations did welcome the fleet with open arms, they were not overly impressed with the quality of the American vessels. By the time the U.S. predreadnoughts arrived in the Mediterranean, they suffered from use, abuse, and fouled bottoms and were no longer in naval-pageant shape. They reached home in time for Roosevelt to preside over the fleet's grand finale a few days before he left office. The ships arrived well trained in fleet tactics, but not as Roosevelt claimed in his welcoming address, "in better shape" than when they departed.18
Roosevelt accurately reported to President-elect William Howard Taft, however, that he had succeeded in uniting the American people in support of the Great White Fleet. While some newspapers had voiced misgivings at the beginning of the voyage, by the time the fleet arrived back home headlines, such as "Navy Mad Throngs at Hampton Roads" and "Brilliant End of World Cruise," reflected the public's widespread support.19 The irony is that, despite the unbridled enthusiasm for all things naval that greeted the Great White Fleet in February of 1909, Roosevelt left office with a less than satisfactory naval record.
Rejection but Success
In one of the bitterest naval debates in American history, Congress only authorized two of Roosevelt's four battleships. The President claimed that had been his goal all along, but he was clearly disappointed. During the second half of his presidency he had enacted a number of bureaucratic reforms in the Navy, but the fight for his four dreadnoughts had delayed action on restructuring the service's antiquated bureaus until it was too late for a major overhaul of the system. As president, Roosevelt greatly increased the size of the fleet, but left the Navy top-heavy with battleships, without enough support vessels for efficient operations, and—handicapped by the lack of an identifiable enemy—without any clear direction in naval policy. Finally, his constant interference in the daily activities at the Navy Department had caused considerable bureaucratic turmoil, especially because of his favoritism toward junior officers.
Roosevelt, however, was overwhelmingly successful in increasing the popularity of the Navy through his expert use of naval publicity, as revealed by the controversial extravaganza at the 1907 Jamestown Exposition and the celebrated worldwide voyage of the Great White Fleet. While these spectaculars failed to overturn congressional opposition, they kept positive images of the Navy on the front pages of the nation's newspapers week after week and served Roosevelt's larger goals: delivering his sea power message directly to the American people and demonstrating America's power and determination to the world.
1. George T. Davis, A Navy Second to None: The Development of Modern American Naval Policy (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1940); Gordon Carpenter O'Gara, Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of the Modern Navy (New York: Greenwood Press, 1969), pp. 9-10; Harold and Margaret Sprout, The Rise of American Naval Power, 1776-1918 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1944), pp. 261-2.
2. The Official Blue Book of the Jamestown Ter-Centennial Exposition (Norfolk, VA: The Colonial Publishing Company, 1907), p. 75.
3. LeRoy G. Dorsey, ""Sailing into the 'Wondrous Now': The Myth of the American Navy's World Cruise,"" Quarterly Journal of Speech 83 (1997): pp. 447-465.
4. Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc.,1896, 2002); Jaap van Ginneken, Crowds, Psychology, & Politics, 1871-1899 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
5. Charles W. Stewart., ed., John Paul Jones: Commemoration at Annapolis, April 24, 1906 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO), 1907).
6. Theodore Roosevelt to Elihu Root, 4 September 1906, in Elting E. Morison, Ed., The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, Vol. 5 (Harvard University Press, 1954), p. 394. For more on naval parades see Jan Rüger, The Great Naval Game: Britain and Germany in the Age of Empire (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
7. James D. McCabe, The Illustrated History of the Centennial Exhibition (Philadelphia: The National Publishing Company, 1876, 1975), p. 71.
8. Final Report of the Jamestown Ter-Centennial Commission, (Washington, DC: GPO, 1909), p. 10.
9. The Official Blue Book of the Jamestown Ter-Centennial Exposition (Norfolk, VA: The Colonial Publishing Company, 1907), pp. 175, 190-3.
10. Amy Waters Yarsinske, Jamestown Exposition: American Imperialism on Parade, Volume II (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 1999), p. 9.
11. James R. Reckner, Teddy Roosevelt's Great White Fleet (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1988), pp. 12-13. Roosevelt hoped the absence of the fleet would help secure appropriations for construction on the Panama Canal which had to be renewed every two years. Lisle A. Rose, Power at Sea: The Age of Navalism, 1890-1918 (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2007), p. 141; Lynwood Earl Oyos, ""The Influence of Theodore Roosevelt upon the Growth of American Sea Power,"" (M.A. thesis, Jamestown College, Jamestown, ND, 1950), p. 134.
12. Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography (New York: Macmillan, 1913).
13. Robert C. Hilderbrand, Power and the People: Executive Management of Public Opinion in Foreign Affairs, 1897-1921 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1981), p. 69.
14. Robert A. Hart, The Great White Fleet: Its Voyage Around the World, 1907-1909 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1965), pp. 29-30, 41.
15. Hilderbrand, Power and the People, pp. 69-70.
16. Ibid.
17. Theodore Roosevelt to Truman Handy Newberry, August 17, 1907, in Elting Morison, The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, Vol. 5 (Harvard University Press, 1954), p. 759; Franklin Matthews, With the Battle Fleet (New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1909); Hart, The Great White Fleet, pp. 41-2; 64-5, 100.
18. Roosevelt, An Autobiography.
19. Dorsey, Leroy G. Dorsey, ""Sailing into the 'Wondrous Now': The Myth of the American Navy's World Cruise,"" Quarterly Journal of Speech 83 (1997): pp. 456-7.