In 1907, while the Panama Canal was under construction, President Roosevelt ordered the newly built ships to travel around the tip of South America to their first stop in San Francisco. Part of the exercise was to show Japan that American ships were able to defend her Western cities even though the navy was stationed on the Atlantic. From the West Coast the fleet moved on to the Phillipines, at the time under American rule, before visiting Japan. While there, the Japanese people went to great lengths to show the United States that they wanted peace after Theodore Roosevelt helped broker an end to their war with Russia. The fleet continued on their voyage below India, through the Mediterranean, and, two years after they began, landed back in Virginia.
