Mobilization Of The Fleet.

New York Times 100 years ago today, October 6, 1912:
    With the arrival in the North River to-day of Rear Admiral Osterhaus with ten battleships of the Atlantic Fleet, the mobilization and review of the United States Navy, planned long since, will be practically begun. Simultaneously the Atlantic Fleet will assemble at New York, the Pacific Fleet at San Francisco, and the Asiatic Fleet at Manila. With the flagship of the Atlantic Fleet, the Connecticut, nine other warships will be anchored off Riverside Park before to-night. The reserve fleet and the auxiliaries will arrive next Thursday, and the destroyers and other vessels on Friday. The mobilization will last from Saturday until Tuesday, Oct. 13. The fleet will comprise 123 ships of all classes, with 1,000 commissioned officers, 300 warrant officers, and 26,000 enlisted men. So large an assemblage of ships of war has not been known in the history of our country, so large a fleet has never been seen anywhere within a harbor. The British fleet has made great demonstrations at Spithead, but that is an open roadstead.
    Among the battleships will be eight dreadnoughts of the modern type, including the Arkansas and the Wyoming, each of 26,000 tons displacement; twenty-three boats of an earlier type, four armored cruisers, four small cruisers, and types of the gunboat, torpedo practice ship, mine laying ship, ammunition ship, destroyer, torpedo boat, submarine, and all needful tenders.
    That the spectacle will freshly inspire admiration for and confidence in our navy is not to be doubted. This will be a gala week in New York, with great crowds gathered by day and by night along the Manhattan park slopes and the heights on the New Jersey shore. Entertainment for our protectors on sea will be richly furnished by the various committees appointed by the Mayor. There will be a land parade Oct. 12, while President Taft and Secretary Meyer will review and inspect the ships Oct. 14 and 15. It is well, too, that these ships can be inspected by so large a number of the people who pay for them and believe in their efficiency. We trust that the mobilization will so thoroughly satisfy the people of the value of our navy that there will be no more talk in Congress of delaying its upbuilding and crippling its efficiency.