Distant Stations

During most of the nineteenth century, the United States maintained naval squadrons on several remote stations. Those distant squadrons of an earlier day have current interest, for their direct descendants today are patrolling some of those same waters—the present Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean and the Seventh Fleet in the Far East. Our naval history has surprisingly little to say of the way of life that for generations characterized that major naval activity. “Showing the flag” from port to port in different parts of the world was the normal peacetime occupation of those remote cruisers, but in case of hostilities they were on the spot as a nucleus, ready to take over the shooting. Our Asiatic Squadron was on hand to win the battle of Manila Bay, just as its successor, the Seventh Fleet, has been sustaining the naval end of the Korean fighting.

As a matter of operational policy, a nation has had three alternative peacetime uses for its warships. They might be scattered around the world on distant stations; they might be kept massed in home waters; or they might be laid up “in ordinary,” as “mothballing” was called in the earlier days. Each plan had its advantages and disadvantages, strategic and economic. Generally a nation hit upon some combination of those three possibilities. Britain consistently kept all three going at the same time, with part of its navy scattered on distant stations, part in home waters, and the rest in “ordinary.” The United States, on the other hand, passed through three successive stages. During the nineteenth century it dispersed its vessels through remote seas. Then, for several decades, it concentrated them in home waters. Finally, since World War II, it has returned in part to the earlier system of foreign stations, combined with extensive “mothballing.”

The distant stations served two primary purposes. One was to support American overseas interests, commercial, diplomatic, or military. The other was to give experience to the officers and men. Those two motives crop out in orders and statements all the way down through the years. In 1801, for instance, when the policy was first taking form, President Jefferson wrote to the Bashaw of Tripoli: “We have found it expedient to detach a squadron of observation into the Mediterranean sea, to superintend the safety of our commerce there, and to exercise the seamen in nautical duties.” And in 1946, when the United States decided to keep naval forces in the Mediterranean once more, Secretary Forrestal caused a public statement of the reasons for that step to be made. He summarized this in his diary as follows: “Units of the American Fleet have been in the Mediterranean and will continue to be there in the future to (1) support American forces in Europe; (2) carry out American policy and diplomacy, and (3) for purposes of experience, morale and education of personnel of the Fleet.”

In this field, as in so much else, the infant American Navy was able to profit by the well-established precedents of Britain’s Royal Navy. Around 1650, when Cromwell was in power and Admiral Blake was sweeping the seas, England had become convinced of the desirability of maintaining a permanent force in the Mediterranean. A half century later, with the capture of Gibraltar and Minorca as bases for such a force, the Mediterranean Station became one of the major elements of the Royal Navy. During most of the next two centuries, it was not a mere flag-showing squadron but a full-dress fleet. Meanwhile a modest start had been made with the “America and West Indies Station,” which, incidentally, would conduct the operations against the Americans in the American Revolution and War of 1812. An East Indies Station also came into being, with later an even stronger force in Chinese waters. Lesser squadrons covered the Cape of Good Hope, the South Atlantic, the Pacific and Australia, while the most unhealthy station of the whole lot was set up on the Guinea Coast of Africa to chase slavers. Admiral Sir John Fisher, who would eventually drastically curtail the lesser stations, once exclaimed, “We have dissipated our naval forces all over the globe. Because in the days of Noah we did the police duties of the world at sea, we continue to do them still and have vessels scattered over the face of the earth according as they settled down after the deluge!” With all that dispersion of far-flung warships, however, England saw to it that a powerful force was kept in home waters to beat off any effort at invasion or to catch in the flank any enemy effort to get out into the Atlantic.

The American efforts, of course, were until very recent times on a far more modest scale. The year 1815 is sometimes given as the beginning of our distant stations, but the policy was definitely decided upon in 1801. Benjamin Stoddert, the first and one of the three preeminent Secretaries of the Navy, deserves much credit for making it possible. By the election of 1800, the anti-Navy Jefferson replaced the pro-Navy John Adams in the White House. Particularly dangerous was the fact that in naval matters Jefferson was strongly influenced by Albert Gallatin, who would be his Secretary of the Treasury. Gallatin was especially concerned about the cost of operating warships in peacetime—it was estimated at that time that a year’s operation cost half as much as the ship herself, so Gallatin favored laying them all up. The quasi-war with France was just coming to an end and it looked as though the active days of the infant Navy were about over. On his last day in office, March 3, 1801, Adams signed the Peace Establishment Act, prepared by the Federalists to prevent the Jeffersonians from doing an even more drastic job of reducing the Navy. One of its most distinctive provisions, which has generally escaped attention, read: “six of the frigates to be retained shall be kept in constant service in time of peace . . . the residue of the frigates to be retained shall be laid up in convenient ports.” That provision for “constant service” came almost verbatim from Secretary Stoddert’s statesmanlike recommendations, designed to prevent complete laying-up of the Navy. It was the first important step toward the station policy.

Ten days later, the Barbary pirates played into the Navy’s hands. A letter from the consul at Tripoli stated that the Bashaw, jealous of what we were giving Algiers as tribute, might declare war unless he got more generous terms. The infant Navy owed much to those rascals, operating the most persistent and profitable racket in history. They had been responsible for the initial legislation to build the first frigates in 1794; now in 1801 and again in 1815 they would cushion the Navy from the full effects of a postwar slump.

That news went far toward crystallizing the policy of permanent station keeping. Jefferson was reported to have made up his mind by March 20th. Stoddert, who consented to stay on for a month while Jefferson continued his vain search for a successor, probably had much to do with the decision. Various official letters that spring indicate that the new policy visualized a permanent peacetime practice instead of merely the first act in the Barbary Wars, since it was not certain that the Tripolitan threat would materialize. General Samuel Smith, who was informally administering the Department while remaining in Congress, wrote in April: “The intention is to divide the Peace Establishment into 2 squadrons the second to relieve the present squadron & thus alternately to keep a force of that kind in the Mediterranean.” Later, writing to Commodore Dale, commanding the squadron, Smith discussed the steps to be taken in case of war and then proceeded to outline, as an alternative, a general pattern which the Mediterranean Squadron would follow for years: “Should you find the conduct of the Bey of Tripoli such as you may confide in—-you will then coast with your squadron the Egyptian & Syrian shores as far as Smyrna & return by the mouth of the Adriatic—pay the Bey of Tripoli another visit—finding him tranquil, proceed to Tunis & again show your ships, & thence coast the Italian shore to Leghorn—where you may stay some days —and then proceed along the Genoese to Toulon—which port it will be instructive to your young men to visit.”

Permanent patrolling by a Mediterranean squadron, therefore, was definitely contemplated during the critical early months of 1801. For the time being, however, Dale’s expedition became submerged in the Barbary Wars which lasted until the Tripolitan treaty of June 3, 1805. Then Gallatin seized his opportunity to go after the “unemployed” Navy. He had the “constant service” clause repealed by Congress and had many of the ships laid up. The flag, however, continued to be shown in the Mediterranean. Jefferson had written in 1805, “If peace was made, we would still, and shall ever, be obliged to keep a frigate in the Mediterranean to over-awe rupture, or we must abandon that market.” A small force was retained in that sea, and as late as June, 1807, Captain James Barron sailed in the Chesapeake to take over the command. The sorry encounter with the Leopard ended that.

Three weeks later, the Secretary called home the remaining ships because of the threatening attitude of England. For nearly eight years there were to be almost no American warships in the Mediterranean. The “flag showing” policy was not dead, however, but was simply tabled as unfinished business because of the critical situation with the British nearer home.

The moment the War of 1812 was over, the Mediterranean policy was revived in full force. Within three weeks after the news of peace arrived in 1815, Congress declared war on Algiers and plans were made to send to the Mediterranean two powerful squadrons under Decatur and Bainbridge, with arrangements for either the sword or the olive branch. Bainbridge’s orders included one significant sentence: “When you have accomplished the objects of your cruise, you will return to Newport, R.I., with your fleet, leaving a frigate and one or two small vessels to cruise within the straights until further orders.” Until the French actually took over Algeria in 1830, the fear of renewed depredations kept American naval forces regularly in the Mediterranean. By that time, the policy of having a Mediterranean Squadron had become so well fixed that it was able to go on of its own momentum through the nineteenth century, long after its original raison d’être had disappeared.

Throughout all those years, it remained the most desirable of all the stations, in the eyes of everyone from the commander-in-chief down to midshipmen and bluejackets. No other station presented the opportunity for such pleasant shore leave, or such a share of the amenities of life. Many of the other maritime nations maintained fleets or squadrons in those waters, so that there was much dining and wining back and forth. For a quarter century, the American squadron was based on Port Mahon on Minorca. In later days, the European Squadron, as it was renamed, found a pleasant winter anchorage at Villafranca, with the Riviera close at hand. There might be doubts at times as to how necessary such service might be, but there was no question of its dignity or its popularity. In 1851, when Matthew Calbraith Perry was approached concerning the Far East mission to Japan which would give him such fame, he wrote to the Secretary of the Navy: “Advance in rank and command is the greatest incentive to an officer. ... I could only look to the Mediterranean for advance in that respect, as that station in time of peace has always been looked upon as the most desirable.” He did not want the “East India Squadron” unless its sphere of action and its force “be so much enlarged as to hold out a well-grounded hope of its conferring distinction upon its commander.” One naval officer, recalling his Mediterranean duty in 1894, remarked “To be ordered to a ship on the European station was simply to be included as a member of a perpetual yachting party.”

The establishing of the Mediterranean Squadron, coupled with the example of the ubiquitous British warships in every worthwhile port of the world, soon led to the creation of several other American squadrons on distant overseas stations. The resultant pattern lasted through the century with slight modifications; most of the names were changed at the close of the Civil War:

Original Name	Later Name, 1865
Mediterranean, (1801) 1815	European
West India, 1821	(Absorbed in Home, 1842)
Pacific, 1821	At times, North & South Pacific
Brazil, 1826	South Atlantic
East India, 1835	Asiatic
Home, 1841	North Atlantic
African (1821) 1843	(Absorbed in European)

 

The number of vessels serving on the various stations totalled 17 in 1830; 32 in 1850; 34 in 1870; and 20 in 1890. While there was a fairly similar organizational setup for the various squadrons, each station had certain individual aspects.

Pirates were responsible for the beginning not only of the Mediterranean Squadron but also of the West Indian. But instead of the well-organized big-business methods of the Barbary States, the Caribbean pirates shocked the world still more with their brutal cruelty, based on the principle that “dead men tell no tales.” In 1821, a considerable naval force was set up in those waters to combat the menace; small, fast vessels were found best equipped for the work. In five years the pirate situation was well in hand, but the warships continued to be maintained there. In 1842, the West Indian Station was absorbed in the new Home Station, whose ships spent a considerable portion of their time in Caribbean waters. In later days, there was often a separate Caribbean force within the over-all Atlantic Fleet.

The troubled conditions in Latin America during its long wars of independence hastened the demand for naval forces in those waters. When an occasional American warship did touch in at one of the ports, the commander was likely to receive a pathetic memorial from the American merchants and mariners there, expressing their appreciation of the temporary visit; urging more of the same; and pointing out how much better they were treated when the Stars and Stripes were in port. They would also call attention to the fact that there was generally a British warship on hand and that, consequently, no one ever pushed the British around. Out of that situation came two squadrons, the Pacific on the west coast in 1821 and the Brazil on the east coast five years later. The Pacific Station was an extensive and rather lonesome one. At the outset the squadron spent most of its time on the west coast of South America from Valparaiso up past Callao to Panama, with an occasional run out to Hawaii. That was rather dreary duty, but for the captains, at least, there was some compensation in the fat fees received for carrying private specie, a British custom that was not thoroughly approved at Washington. The acquisition of California in 1846 gave a northward emphasis to the station, further accentuated by the purchase of Alaska in 1867. By that time, the station was often being divided into two separate ones—the North Pacific, based on San Francisco, and the South Pacific, based on Panama. The Brazil Squadron concentrated its attention on the region from the bulge down to the Rio Plata, with the ships spending much of their time at Rio and Buenos Aires.

Somewhat less desirable than the Mediterranean, but perhaps even more essential and lively was the equivalent of the British “China Station,” known in the United States Navy as the East India at first and then the Asiatic. It came into being rather more gradually than the others, with nine separate cruises despatched to Far Eastern waters between 1800 and 1839, six by single ships and three by pairs of ships. On the sixth of these cruises, a two-ship affair, in 1835, the senior officer was authorized to fly the commodore’s pennant. The founding of the station is dated from that, although it was some time before the squadron assumed the conventional pattern. It was a station where anything could happen, all the way from chronic brushes with Chinese pirates up to armed clashes in Korea and the diplomatic achievements of Kearney in China and Perry in Japan. Hong Kong became the usual base because of its superior communication facilities. Several other nations maintained squadrons in those waters; the opportunity for international fraternizing was not wasted. Because of the distance from home and the special Far Eastern problems involved, this was regarded ;as a most responsible command. In 1873, when old Admiral Goldsborough was trying to beg off from the assignment, Secretary Robeson wrote him: “As the Asiatic is considered by far the most independent and important of the -stations, it is proper that it should be commanded by a rear-admiral of large naval experience and great personal intelligence.”

One of the stations did not properly come under the heading of “distant.” Along with its distant stations, Britain also kept a Home Fleet close at hand for defense. Between 1837 and 1841, a series of Anglo-American incidents sharply drew attention to the fact that in case of trouble it might be wise to follow the British example and not have all the nation’s forces scattered in distant parts of the world. The advent of steam increased the danger of a sudden raid. In 1841, Secretary Badger recommended the project to the President: “While squadrons are maintained in various parts of the world for the preservation of commerce, our own shores have been left without adequate protection. Had a war with Great Britain been the result . . . not only would our trade have been liable to great interruption, and our merchants to great losses abroad, but a naval force comparatively slight might, on our very shores, have seized our merchant ships and insulted our flag, without suitable means of resistance or immediate retaliation being at the command of the government. To guard against such a result ... it is necessary that a powerful squadron should be kept afloat at home.” Congress gave its approval on August 1, 1841. A year later, however, Secretary of the Navy Upshur modified the original purely local aspects and extended its cruising ground “from the banks of Newfoundland to the river Amazon, including the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.” The old West India Squadron thus ceased to exist as a separate entity. In view of this development, the change of name from “Home” to “North Atlantic” in 1865 was quite appropriate.

The least desirable of the stations and the shortest-lived of the lot was the African, set up to cooperate with the British in the suppression of the slave trade on the Guinea Coast. It had a temporary start in the early 1820’s at the time of the founding of Liberia under American auspices, but soon lapsed. In the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, however, the British, who were strenuously and seriously trying to curb the slavers, secured American agreement to maintain a squadron totalling at least 8,000 tons to cooperate against the slave trade. It was doubly unpopular work. In the first place, the deadly climate of the Guinea Coast took a heavy toll. Then, too, every officer realized that seizures would not be welcomed in Washington, where southern influence was strong. The British criticized the Americans for “pulling their punches,” utilizing too distant a base, and failing to use small fast vessels for pursuit work. The station did not survive the Civil War.

The lack of ships on hand to meet an emergency at home was keenly felt at the outbreak of the Civil War. Buchanan’s Secretary of the Navy Toucey was roundly criticized for doing nothing to recall any vessels in view of the impending emergency. His successor, Welles, reported that when he took over on March 4, 1861, “such vessels as were in condition for service were chiefly on distant stations, and those which constituted the home squadron were most of them in the Gulf of Mexico.” The blockade policy demanded “the recall of almost the whole of our foreign squadrons for service on our own coasts,” but that took time. All three of the Steam vessels had arrived from the Mediterranean by July 3, but the first from the Brazil station did not get home until August 17 nor the first from Africa until September 15. At the end of the year, three ships from the East India Station were still en route. By September 1862, only nine vessels were left on the remote stations instead of the usual 30 or so. Of those, one each was on the Mediterranean, Brazil, and Africa posts; two in the Far East, where the Wyoming would exchange shots with Japanese forts and just miss the Alabama in the Straits of Sunda; and four in the Pacific, two of which were ordered to stand by at San Francisco and Acapulco to guard that coast against possible Confederate raiders. The remaining vessels called in from the stations were largely absorbed into the four temporary blockading squadrons.

At the close of the war, no time was lost in reversing the process. As early as March, 1865, twelve days before Appomattox, Secretary Welles wrote to Commodore Godon: “It is proposed to reestablish the Brazil Squadron as circumstances now admit of the withdrawal of many of the vessels that have been engaged in the blockade and sending them on foreign service, and the Department selects you for the command of it.” The other old stations were likewise revived, except for the African, but most of the names were changed. As we noted in an earlier table, the Brazil Station became the South Atlantic; the Home, the North Atlantic; the East India Station became the Asiatic; the Pacific was divided into North Pacific and South Pacific; while the Mediterranean, along with the African, was included in the new expanded European Station.

However much the different stations might differ in their particular aspects, certain fairly uniform conditions were in vogue from squadron to squadron and from decade to decade. The most distinctive features were the ship-by-ship, port-by-port pattern of “showing the flag,” and the three-year tour of duty.

The squadrons were administrative rather than tactical units. Except during the winter months in the Mediterranean, it was rather unusual for all the vessels to be assembled in any one place. Those orders from Welles to Godon, just quoted, went on to say: “The interests of our commerce, the discipline of the service, and the objects of the Government in maintaining a naval force in the waters of Brazil, will be best subserved by showing the flag in prominent places at short intervals. The vessels of the Squadron should not remain stationary, or lie in port for any unnecessary purpose that is not rendered important by the condition of affairs in that particular locality.” That represented the Department’s chronic efforts to pry the vessels away from the more attractive ports of call. The resultant movements, station by station and ship by ship, were set forth for many years in the annual report of the Secretary of the Navy. One of the few occasions, aside from Perry’s Japan mission, when a whole squadron acted in concert came in 1836 when, at President Jackson’s direction, the Mediterranean Squadron applied pressure on the Neapolitans who were stalling on a debt due to the United States. The negotiations were getting nowhere until, one after another in impressive sequence, the five cruisers entered the Bay of Naples. With the arrival of the fifth, the Neapolitans suddenly decided to pay. That use of squadrons, however, was exceptional. Describing the later days of the station practice, Mahan wrote that the Navy still thought in terms of single ships just as the Army still thought in terms of company posts.

The three-year “cruise” was a dominant feature of the distant squadrons throughout the period. A ship enlisted a crew for those three years and she was expected to deliver them back at her home yard before that time was up. On arrival there, the crew was discharged, and the officers were given a brief leave. On the more distant stations, particularly the Asiatic, more than half of the three-year period was often used up in going and coming. There were only a few exceptions to this general practice. Because of its unhealthy conditions, the African Station tour of duty was reduced to two years. The river gunboats in China stayed out there indefinitely while other vessels brought out new crews to relieve the old ones.

Anyone who has read the memoirs or biographies of the earlier American naval officers will realize what those distant stations meant during the formative years of a career. While most of their opposite numbers in the Army were marooned in little company or battalion posts out on the frontier, the junior naval officers were seeing the world from the Riviera to Hong Kong and from Halifax to Valparaiso.

The day would come when some of them would go out to one of those stations as commander-in-chief. One rated that rich and very satisfying title even if, as often happened, the command consisted of only two or three moth-eaten cruisers, each going its own way. Before the Civil War, a station command gave one the temporary “spot” title of commodore, which was thereafter good for the rest of one’s life. After the Civil War, it normally rated the rank of “Acting Rear Admiral,” if one were not a rear admiral already. Dewey, however, fought Manila Bay as only a commodore because the Secretary disapproved of the manner of his appointment.

The normal administrative duties were not heavy—discipline and other personnel problems primarily, including brawls and bad debts ashore; ruffled consular feelings; protocol relations with foreign squadrons; and local conditions in different ports. No elaborate staff was necessary for such business. From time to time in the larger squadrons there was a “fleet captain,” prototype of the later chief of staff, but that was not general. The detailed annual lists in the Navy Register normally indicate simply a flag secretary and a flag lieutenant. As time went on, a “fleet” surgeon, paymaster, engineer, and, sometimes, ordnance officer, could be frequently found.

The Civil War marked a sharp turning point in the importance and effectiveness of station-keeping, although the pattern varied little throughout the century. Up to 1861, the United States had a flourishing merchant marine, whose ships visited almost every worthwhile port around the world and could profit by the Navy’s showing of the flag. After 1865, our merchant shipping began to share the Navy’s slump in the post-bellum “Dark Ages,” so that commerce protection became less valid as an argument for the distant squadrons.

The falling-off in the relative quality of the warships was another major factor in the decline after the Civil War. In the earlier days, the squadrons consisted chiefly of sailing frigates and sloops-of-war, with an occasional ship-of-the-line as flagship in the Mediterranean. Ship for ship, they could generally hold their own in quality and effectiveness with their counterparts in other navies. During the 1850’s steam began to complicate the picture; in 1860, the squadrons consisted of 22 sailing vessels and nine steamers. The latter could still fairly well hold their own with the steam warships of other nations, but from then on it was a case of arrested development, so far as the stations were concerned. Despite the Navy’s innovations during the Civil War, the ships sent out to the squadrons for the next quarter century were wooden cruisers armed with obsolescent ordnance. To save coal, their propellers were cut down and they were expected to use sail wherever possible—a return to the “good old days.” In the meantime, the European navies, and even the Chilean, were making steady advances in hulls, engines, and ordnance, so that the American cruisers, in comparison, became veritable floating historical exhibits. One is apt to date the “New Navy” from 1881, when Secretary Hunt appointed his advisory board, or 1883, when Congress made its first appropriation for new steel ships, the first of which was not commissioned until 1885. The wooden ships however, were still well in the majority when the Pacific Squadron faced the modern German cruisers at Samoa in 1889, and for a while even after that. The Kearsarge, which had been a good cruiser during the Civil War, was still on station service in 1893 when she piled up on Roncador Reef near Cuba. The “Old Navy,” in fact, did not end its active service until December 11, 1897, when the ancient wooden Marion, after two years of showing the flag along the coasts of Chile and Peru, was finally decommissioned at Mare Island. For a quarter of a century before that, neither she, nor the others of her type that made up the distant squadrons, could have done any effective fighting in defending American rights or advancing American policy against a major navy. Fortunately, relatively few American merchantmen were left to be defended and relatively little policy to be upheld.

Not unnaturally, the necessity for the distant stations gradually began to be questioned. This attitude became more acute as the new steel ships came into commission. A need was felt for tactical practice which the individual vessels on station had been missing. In 1889, the new vessels of the “White Squadron” were formed into a “Squadron of Evolution” for that purpose, despite the temptation to show off the new ships to the foreigners.

The European and South Atlantic Stations were the most vulnerable. In the days of sail and slow communications, when the stations were first set up, it would have taken months to “get the word” of an emergency and rush ships out to meet it. With steam and cable, and even more with wireless, ships could be hurried to a trouble spot without having to stay out there all the time. Around 1890, Dewey was lunching one day with Secretary Tracy who asked him: “Dewey, if you were secretary of the navy, what would you do with our ships in time of peace?” Dewey replied, “I would bring all the ships home from the European station, the South Atlantic Station, and the South Pacific Station, then divide them into two parts; one part I would keep on the North Atlantic station, and the other on the Pacific.” He pointed out that the United States had virtually no interests to protect and really nothing to do on the foreign stations, but our coasts needed defense; and that the public ought to have a chance to see the ships with some local “flag showing.” By the turn of the century, others were thinking as Dewey had, urging that as many of the major ships as possible be gathered into a single fleet capable of full- dress maneuvers. One of the most effective champions of this idea was Rear Admiral Henry C. Taylor, Chief of Navigation and “father” of the General Board. There was conservative opposition within the Navy, however; the old station duty was pleasant, and it was far more gratifying to be commander-in-chief on one’s own than to command a division in someone else’s fleet.

The year 1904 was the last of the old full station pattern, both in the United States Navy and in the Royal Navy. Out of the Navy Register and the Navy List it has been possible to mine figures indicating the size and distribution of the two navies, both in home waters and on distant stations:

United States Navy			Royal Navy
Home Waters
	No.	Tons		No.	Tons
North Atlantic	28	146,000	Home Fleet	13	153,000
Pacific	7	26,000	Channel Fleet	12	145,000
			Cruiser Squadron	6	67,000
Distant Stations
European	3	14,000	Mediterranean	53	283,000
South Atlantic	4	12,000	No. America & W.I.	11	38,000
Asiatic	29	75,000	South Atlantic	5	14,000
			Pacific	4	17,000
			Cape of Good Hope	7	26,000
			East Indies	9	19,000
			China	40	146,000
			Australia	11	33,000

 

The American Atlantic Fleet, incidentally, included a subordinate Caribbean Squadron of 10 ships and 35,000 tons, as a moderately “distant” squadron, while some of the Pacific station service included South Pacific duties.

Before that year was out, Sir John Fisher, the new First Sea Lord, had drastically altered the British pattern. At a single stroke of the pen in December he struck 154 vessels from the active list—mostly small, slow gunboats that had been showing the flag on remote stations. The British South Atlantic and Pacific Squadrons were abolished completely as independent units; the North America & West Indies, Cape of Good Hope, and East India Squadrons were stripped of many of their ships. This was a preliminary to Britain’s gradually gathering her principal forces at home to counter the new menacing German naval construction across the North Sea. Diplomatic arrangements were being made with the Japanese and the French which would enable the Royal Navy to withdraw some of its heavier units from the Far East and the Mediterranean.

The United States followed the British example in 1905 abolishing its independent European and South Atlantic Squadrons and incorporating their ships with the North Atlantic Fleet which thereupon was rechristened the Atlantic Fleet. The last ships on the European Station were the Brooklyn, San Francisco, and Machias, under Rear Admiral Charles S. Cotton; their total tonnage was barely equal to one of the British battleships. The South Atlantic Squadron, under Rear Admiral Benjamin P. Lamberton, included the Newark, Detroit, Montgomery, and Gloucester. Those two squadrons had one final melodramatic task in mid-1904 when President Theodore Roosevelt ordered them to Morocco where bandits had seized a Greek from Trenton, New Jersey. His orders, “Perdicaris alive, or Raisuli dead” were well timed to thrill the Republican convention which renominated him. Once Cotton and his ships sailed home past Gibraltar in 1905, the United States Navy was to abandon the Mediterranean as a regular peacetime haunt for more than forty years. Without formal action, the Navy about this time gave up its regular “South Pacific” flag-showing on the west coast of South America.

With the new big Atlantic Fleet moving between Hampton Roads, Newport, and Guantanamo, and the Pacific force based principally on the California coast, the only really distant remaining force was the Asiatic Squadron. The consolidation movement was so strongly in the air that even that Far Eastern force was temporarily absorbed as a squadron in the Pacific Fleet in 1907, but by 1910 it was back in its independent status as the Asiatic Fleet, retaining that title until the United States entered World War II. For a while it remained a fairly strong force, but it gradually became evident that it was unwise to leave that many ships too close to Japan. It was eventually whittled down to a cruiser or two, a few destroyers and submarines, and some little gunboats for the Chinese rivers. In compensation, its commander-in-chief was raised to four-star rank to uphold the prestige of the United States. In contrast to the Mediterranean situation, with its 1905-1946 hiatus, the United States Navy has remained continually in the Far East since 1835. After World War II, of course, the Asiatic Fleet, descendant of the East India Squadron and Asiatic Squadron, became the Seventh Fleet, subordinate to an over-all Far East command. As such, it has been carrying on the naval end of the Korean fighting.

The close of World War II also brought the United States Navy back to the Mediterranean, gradually and rather informally at the outset but eventually becoming, like the old British Mediterranean Fleet, one of the most powerful naval concentrations in the world, if not the most powerful. In tracing the ancestry of our Sixth Fleet, now in the Mediterranean, one may find it more closely related to that huge British Mediterranean Fleet than to the former small Mediterranean-European Squadron, barely a twentieth of the former’s size. As the preceding table indicates the British “Med” Fleet was the most powerful single naval unit in the world in 1904. It was no simple flag-showing device, but a fleet prepared to bear a heavy share of what had seemed to be possible war in those waters. In the meantime, its presence doubtless served as a deterrent and helped to maintain the Pax Britannica. Sir John Fisher was commanding the North America and West Indies Station in 1899 when he learned that he was to become Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean. He wrote to a friend, “You will appreciate what a terrible wrench it is to give up 18 months of this lovely station! Particularly as I don’t like the Mediterranean! However, there’s no mistake about it that the Mediterranean is the tip-top appointment of the Service, and, of course, if there’s war, there’s a peerage or Westminster Abbey.”

The parallel with the Sixth Fleet is not difficult to appreciate, for it was in fact set up to take the place of the old British fleet in those critical waters. Our postwar showing of the flag there began artistically in the fall of 1945 when the Missouri bore the remains of the dead Turkish ambassador to Istanbul, at a time when Russian advances seemed to be threatening Turkey. Then the big carrier Franklin D. Roosevelt, properly escorted, spent some time in the Mediterranean, making several timely appearances at troubled spots. This was “flag-showing” to be sure, but of a quite different type from the “permanent yachting party” of the 1890’s. The Sixth Fleet, which has since grown to powerful proportions in those waters, is, as we know, constantly on the alert to meet any contingency and, as both sides realize, there are plenty more such ships and planes where those came from. Altogether, Edward Preble and Stephen Decatur would quite approve of the present role of their Navy in the very waters where they demonstrated distant service at its best.