Battle-ships of the first-class should bear the names of kingdoms of the federation;
armored cruisers the names of kings; cruisers the names of cities, and so on down the line.
For a while this policy worked well, but with the advent of faster, long-range,
armored cruisers developed by France specifically for distant-waters operations in the 1890s, the days of a ship living out its twilight years in glorious isolation abroad looked to be numbered.
Because American naval forces in the Pacific comprised just four
armored cruisers capable of facing their German counterparts, the Philippines might "lie practically at the mercy of the first comer." A powerful American battle fleet ploughing Pacific waters would prevent such a catastrophe and create a new balance of power in the Far East, but until completion of the Panama Canal, the Pacific fleet could not be strengthened without weakening that in the Atlantic.(16)
Edward Seymour on the China Station; served in the First Peking Relief Expedition (June 10-26, 1900) and was severely wounded during the Boxer Rebellion (June 1900-May 1901); naval assistant to the controller (third sea lord); appointed to command
armored cruiser Drake (August 1903); director of naval ordance at the Admiralty (1905-1907); rear admiral (August 1907) in Atlantic Fleet; returned to the Admiralty as third sea lord under Sir John Fisher (1908); appointed acting vice admiral in command of the Atlantic Fleet (December 1910); transferred to the Home Fleet as commander of the 2d division; confirmed as vice admiral (November 1911); supervised the gunnery experiments on H.M.S.
Pond, skipper of the USS Pennsylvania, an
armored cruiser. They foresaw that airplanes would have an important role in any future wars and that the Navy should plan accordingly.
Born in Wetumpka, Alabama, the son of Spencer James and Annie Amanda Robinson McMorris (August 31, 1890); graduated from the Naval Academy, sixth in a class of 156, having won the nickname "Soc," short for Socrates, for his intellectual abilities (1912); served aboard battleships and an
armored cruiser in the Atlantic, and took part in the landing at Veracruz (April 21, 1914); serving aboard U.S.S.
entered World War I (June 1917); served in the North Atlantic on convoy-escort ships (1917-1918); engineer officer aboard the
armored cruiser Seattle (August 1918-March 1919); served aboard the ex-German transport Patricia (March-July 1919); promoted to lieutenant commander (July), he served in a series of shore billets in the northeast, followed by service as aide and flag secretary on the staff of the commander, Special Service Squadron (1921); aide to commandant of the Mare Island Navy Yard, California (1922); his first command was the flush-deck destroyer Decatur (May 1924-May 1927); as commander, he attended both the Army and Naval War Colleges (June 1928-July 1930); returned to sea as navigator on U.S.S.
Born in Portland, Oregon (December 23, 1889); graduated from the Naval Academy (1912), his first sea duty was aboard the
armored cruiser U.S.S.
Battlecruisers associated with the last generation of large
armored cruisers are excluded.