The voyage of the Great White Fleet lasted a total of 434 days. While some historians have claimed that Mahan’s work had a great influence on Roosevelt, it is more appropriate to say that it articulated and solidified what he already believed. Mahan’s thesis was that, in the modern age, the dominant power was the one with the largest navy, along with a network of coaling stations to project naval power around the globe.

When, two years later, Mahan published his classic book The Influence of Sea Power upon History, Roosevelt was among the first to endorse it. In 1888 the future president struck up a friendship with Alfred Thayer Mahan, naval officer and president of the Naval War College. He had been fascinated by warships since childhood, and began advocating for naval expansion even during his college years at Harvard. Although his only time in combat had been on land, at heart Roosevelt had long been a Navy man. By all accounts he was grinning ear to ear as the massive battlewagons steamed past, for the president more than any other individual was responsible for this cruise. Watching the procession from the yacht Mayflower was the President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt. Naval display, Hampton Roads, Jamestown, Virginia (Philadelphia, Pa.: W. The ships’ hulls were painted white, giving the flotilla its name: the Great White Fleet. It consisted of sixteen battleships, organized in four squadrons and accompanied by six destroyers and six auxiliary vessels, and carrying 14,000 sailors. On the morning of December 16, 1907, an impressive armada of warships steamed from Hampton Roads, Virginia to begin a voyage that would take them around the globe. Its global voyage was a showcase of American naval power. The Great White Fleet was the result of Theodore Roosevelt’s determination to build a modern navy and flex American military muscle.

Naval fleet armada