Nevertheless Roosevelt, as usual, could not be deterred by
opposition; and when the Hague Conference in 1907, through the
veto of Germany, refused to limit armaments by sea and land, he
warned Congress that one new battleship a year would not do, that
they must build four. Meanwhile, he had pushed to completion a
really formidable American Fleet, which assembled in Hampton
Roads on December 1, 1907, and ten days later weighed anchor for
parts unknown. There were sixteen battleships, commanded by Rear
Admiral Robley D. Evans. Every ship was new, having been built
since the Spanish War. The President and Mrs. Roosevelt and many
notables reviewed the Fleet from the President's yacht Mayflower,
as it passed out to sea. Later, the country learned that the
Fleet was to sail round Cape Horn, to New Zealand and Australia,
up the Pacific to San Francisco, then across to Japan, and so
steer homeward through the Indian Ocean, the Suez Canal, and the
Mediterranean to Gibraltar, across the Atlantic, and back to
Hampton Roads.
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