Fleets To Be Here Again This Fall.

New York Times 100 years ago today, April 14, 1913:
President Wilson Expected to Review Them, as His Predecessors Have Done.
WAR GAME BEING PLANNED
With an Attack Upon and Defense of New York — Will Have a New Commander-In-Chief.
    Great as was the naval review In the Hudson last year, when the mobilized Atlantic and Reserve Fleets of the United States Navy passed in review before President Taft, greater still will be the mobilization and review which the Navy Department is now arranging for the early part of next Fall, when President Wilson is expected to review the united fleets at anchor and later receive the salutes of more than a hundred fighting ships as they steam past him on their way to sea.
    When the Democrats came out victorious in the elections last November there were many officers of the navy who shook their heads in doubt as to what the fate of the navy would be under the new conditions. Those fears have vanished, and it is believed that in Josephus Daniels the navy has one of the most enthusiastic and friendly executive heads it has had in years.
    There were many who advanced the opinion that the change of administrations would end, at least for a few years, the great spectacles that have taken place in the Hudson in the last three years. They did not believe that Woodrow Wilson would sanction such a show of America's sea-fighting strength and that with the Presidential review of 1912 the annual Hudson mobilization was a thing of the past, so far as the present Administration was concerned.
    But the information that conies from Washington shows that not only will the review take place as usual, but it will be preceded by the working out of a wonderful naval problem which will involve an attack upon and defense of New York City by the Atlantic and Reserve Fleets.
    Immediately the war game is concluded and New York is either captured or the enemy theoretically sent to the bottom of the ocean, all the ships will proceed into the Hudson and form a review line that will stretch from a point off Twenty-third Street to a point a little south of Yonkers. In this great column will be probably 700,000 tons of warships and auxiliaries. Among these ships will probably be the mighty super-dreadnought Texas, the 27,000-ton ship now nearing completion, which will go into commission as the world's biggest and most powerfully armed vessel of the all-big-gun type. The Texas's sister ship, the New York, now being completed at the New York Navy Yard, will probably not be ready to take her place in the armada.
    The problem involving an attack upon and defense of New York is being worked out by Rear Admiral Bradley A. Fiske, until recently in command of the First Division of the Atlantic Fleet, but now the aid for operations in the Navy Department. The scheme at present is tentative, but, as it is known to have the approval of Secretary Daniels, there is little reason to doubt that the problem will be a part of the 1913 mobilization, and that the Secretary of the Navy will personally watch the solution. President Wilson will in all probability not witness the working out of the problem.
    The President, however, is expected to come to New York and will probably spend two days with the fleet, reviewing it at anchor on the first day of his visit and again under way on the second and last day of the mobilization.
    When the fleet comes this year there will be a new commander-in-chief in the person of Rear Admiral Charles J. Badger and a new flagship will have taken the place of the famous around the world flagship Connecticut. Admiral Badger's flag flies from the forepeak of the new superdreadnought Wyoming, and the Connecticut is now one of the five vessels constituting the Fourth Division of the Atlantic Fleet.
    When the fleet was here last Fall the United States was then listed for the last time as the second naval power of the world. When it assembles the coming Fall Germany will have passed us, and instead of being a very poor second we will be a still poorer third.