Biggest Fleet Ever Is Going To Europe.

New York Times 100 years ago today, April 21, 1913:
Secretary Daniels to Send Out an Aggregation More Powerful Than Roosevelt's.
WINTER IN MEDITERRANEAN
Starts About Jan. 1 — This Carries Out the Administration's Policy of Broadening Our Sailors' Training.
Special to The New York Times.
    WASHINGTON, April 20.— The visit made recently by Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the Navy, to the Atlantic Fleet has born fruit. While with the battleships Mr. Daniels learned that many of the enlisted men attached to them had never had the opportunity of seeing foreign lands. One seaman who had served for five years had done all his service in United States waters, except for a visit to Cuba. As a result of observation and inquiry in his stay with the warships Secretary Daniels announced to-day that next Winter practically the entire fleet would be sent on a three months' cruise to the Mediterranean.
    It was explained at the Navy Department that this decision was in furtherance of Secretary Daniels's policy of making the United States Navy, in times of peace, a great educational school where thousands of young men will receive thorough technical training in industries requiring special mechanical knowledge, and at the same time enjoy the broadening advantages of first-hand knowledge of the great countries of the world.
    The Mediterranean cruise will take the place of the usual Winter stay at Guantanamo, Cuba, where this Government has a naval station.
    The famous battle fleet that went around the world in President Roosevelt's Administration will be eclipsed in fighting strength and tonnage by the fleet that will be sent to European waters just as the first named fleet exceeded the White Squadron that took a foreign cruise in 1890. The start will be made about Jan. 1, 1914.
    Large posters in many colors inviting young men to join the navy have offered, as one inducement to enlistment, the opportunity to recruits to see the world. But in recent years the navy has failed to practice what it preached in this particular. Hard work has been the portion of the Atlantic Fleet for a long time and the men have had little chance for recreation. Their holiday periods have been spent in home ports or in the West Indies, and their expectation of visiting Europe has not been realized. It is with the object of making good the promise of experiences in the famous parts of the world and of giving them the educational advantages of sight-seeing in places of historical and romantic interest that the Navy Department will send the men of the Atlantic Fleet on a sort of holiday tour of Southern Europe next Winter.
    "I have decided to send the Atlantic Squadron on a Winter cruise covering the most interesting ports of the world." said Secretary Daniels to-day, "because I believe that we should offer to the enlisted men every opportunity which lies in our power to obtain that knowledge of other countries from personal observation which, in every rank of life, gives to the traveled man an advantage over those who have spent their lives at home in the upward struggles. The cruise this Winter will be so timed as to give every man in the fleet shore leave at every port of interest.
    "I, of course, am a firm believer in the general theory that the best way to find out if a thing will work is to try it, and I appreciate, from the technical side, the advantage that the officers of the fleet will gain in a long cruise of this kind, where various manoeuvres can be carried out at sea and many experiments in communication between ships and similar matters carried out under actual service conditions. But what seems to me equally if not more important is the educational value of this trip to the men behind the guns.
    "I hope before my administration is ended that the public will have a clear understanding of the splendid training in mechanics which the modern battleship offers to enlisted men. No man who has served in the navy leaves the service without being far better equipped to earn his living than he was before he enlisted.
    "The navy is a great and expensive institution, which must be kept always ready for times of war. Why not, then, use it as a great technical training school for our country in times of peace?"
    The main ships of the line which it is planned to send on this trip include the battleships Wyoming, Florida, Arkansas, Delaware, North Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Louisiana, Michigan, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Nebraska, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Connecticut, Kansas and Idaho. Comparing them with the battleship fleet which made the trip around the world in 1907, they aggregate a tonnage of 364,500 as against 223,500.
    A more striking example of the advance made in the navy's effective fighting power is shown by a comparison of the muzzle energy of the main batteries of the fleet which will make the Winter cruise with the muzzle energy of the ships of the around-the-world squadron. In round figures, the muzzle energy of the battleship fleet of 1907 summed up 5,300,000 foot pounds. The main batteries of the ships of the Atlantic fleet that will make the next trip total up to 9,550,000 foot pounds of muzzle energy, or almost twice as much. The battleships will be accompanied by all the destroyers that can be spared, and an accompaniment of supply and repair ships.
    It is planned to proceed from the home port of departure to Gibraltar, with possibly a stop or two on the way. As the fleet will be too large to be accommodated at one time in many of the harbors which will be visited. It will divide at Gibraltar and make a leisurely tour of the Mediterranean in divisions, stopping at practically every port of importance. The department is working out the schedule and ports of call, but it will be some time before these plans will be ready.