Tars!

This is coolbert: "What ever you say, tell the truth!" - - President Benjamin Harrison.

"NO unnecessary wenching, drinking to excess, brawling of an unseemly manner." - - Bert. [from a previous blog entry of mine!]

During the around-the-world voyage of the Great White Fleet, President Roosevelt MUST have had the Baltimore Crisis [1891] on his mind. A desire on the part of the President that American sailors of the Fleet, while ashore, would NOT behave in a manner that would incite and inflame the locals! American tars [sailors], would behave with civility and decorum.

The Baltimore crisis. American sailors, while ashore, in a bar, attacked by a Chilean mob, several killed, others hurt.

Attacks that nearly resulted IN A WAR between the U.S. and Chile.

"Two drunken sailors from the USS Baltimore were killed outside of a bar in the Chilean port of Valparaíso"

"In response to this action [Itata Incident] on October 16 1891 a mob attacked a group of sailors on shore leave from the cruiser USS Baltimore outside of a bar in the Chilean port of Valparaíso two sailors were killed and 17 were injured."

"During the American sailors' shore leave on October 16, 1891, a mob of enraged Chileans who had been whipped up as the result of the Itata's capture (and perhaps for other reasons), attacked the sailors from the Baltimore. Two sailors were killed and several were wounded seriously. That Valparaiso riot stirred up saber-rattling from enraged American officials, threatening war against Chile"

"perhaps for other reasons"!! What could those other reasons have been? Some sort of behavior of such an offensive nature that murder was the result!

AND, those American officials who threatened war, should have had second thoughts. The U.S.S. Baltimore could best be classified as an ironclad gunboat, and nothing more. AT THE TIME, THE BALTIMORE CLASS GUNBOAT [?] WAS THE MOST SIGNIFICANT NAVAL VESSEL IN THE U.S. NAVY INVENTORY!! Chile did possess a battleship, the U.S. at the time not even having one warship of the same class [battleship]!!

U.S. naval expansion, to include an ocean-going fleet of world-class battleships, was a result of the realization that the U.S. Navy of the time [1891], was NOT EVEN capable of engaging the Chilean Navy on an equal basis, much less the German or British navies!!

coolbert.