 There's history here! And here. There's history there! History is everywhere! The great white fleet is. It's also a little bit about the history of postcards, and I'll tell you why that's the case. Because I have published a book. I've had a book published, and the book is over here. It's called Dearest Many. And this book actually began when I was 10 years old. Because I inherited a big box of postcards in the albums from my grandfather's cousin, Minnie, whom I had never met. Had no idea. It just so happened that the executive of the will was not willing to throw them in the trash. So I got all these postcards and had so much fun looking at them because they were of pictures from around the world of places that I'd never heard of. And I had the where for all never to throw them away. I haven't got a clue how that happened. But these albums were beautiful. And so, when my first apartment, after I graduated from college and had my first teaching job, I went to an antique fair. And lo and behold, there was a man who was selling old postcards. So I thought, I can make a whole bunch of money! And so I went to him and told him about my postcards and invited him to my house, my apartment. And he came and spent about, I was very naive in those days. I saw you look, right? And so he came and spent about an hour looking over these postcards. And he said, OK, some of them are 25 cents I can give you and most of them are 5 cents. Luckily, even though I didn't know what I had, I sent him to the door and I kept the postcards. So as an adult, I began being interested in these cards. Where did these come from? And I realized that most of the dates were between 1907 and 1911. So I began taking them out of the albums because the more I learned about postcards, the albums were black pages with corners. And so the corners would be imprinted on the postcards if you kept them in there too long. So I was told, take them out. And then I put them in chronological order and began reading the backs of the cards to find out that they were written to my grandfather's cousin, Minnie, from someone named with just the initials WC. Haven't got a clue who he is or who he was at the time. So by 1990, I'm still carrying these boxes of postcards around. And I lived on the east coast. I was really now a collector and did some research to find out that in 1905, it was estimated that the post office around the world actually processed over 7 billion postcards. This was a huge craze. It was very much, you know, we've had different sections in our history where people are collecting baseball cards. You know, they've got to have everyone in the series, or they're collecting stamps. They've got to have everyone in the series. And the postcards were the same thing. When they first were published, they were published by the government in 1898. And it wasn't very long before regular public publishers took over. And they were undivided cards. Okay, this, because we're talking about battleships, I will show postcards dealing with battleships to begin with. This is an undivided card. And what they did was to have on one side, they would have the picture, but lots of writing space. Because on the back side, you could only have the address. The post offices would not process cards if they had anything else but an address. That's why they're called undivided cards. And so this is a publisher who published cards. This is the USS Iowa. And then every card he published, he had all the battleships and all the cruisers. So another one, once I get to where you're supposed to be, I love dealing with somebody else's. Okay, I tried to scan this so you could see the back of the card that was undivided. So this side is for address only. And my scanner would not accept the rest of the card because there was nothing there. This is another undivided card. And you can see all the writing space that would be available. And this publisher, again, published cards, every single battleship as well as every cruiser. And his mark was always the left-hand corner. You knew that those were his cards. So by 1907, then we finally got to a divided back, meaning that now the picture spans the whole back of the card and you could actually write a message on the front side. So for me, I've got another one here. Here we go. Come on, wake up. Okay, I have to show you this card, of course. This is a USS Oregon. All of these ships, and they still are, named after states except to one, the Carousage. And this publisher published every single one of the battleships. And this is all hand-glued glitter. You can see a little bit in the water. You can see them all on the guns. And so somebody for every single battleship and cruiser, hand-glued glitter. So I had to show that because, of course, it's a USS Oregon. So living on the East Coast, by the time 1996 arrived, there was an announcement in the newspaper that a new postcard club was originating. Come and bring cards for show and tell. So I said, okay, terrific. So I picked out five or 20 cards and I brought them because I still didn't know where these cards originated. So I remember, I still can see the faces of a couple of gentlemen and they said, these are from the Great White Fleet. And like a lot of people, I said, the Great White what? They said, the Great White Fleet, how many do you have? And I said, probably about 350, 375 cards. And they said, you have to write a book. Well, I'd never written a book. I'd written lesson plans and all kinds of stuff for my schoolwork, but never written a book. So I thought, okay, I got really energized. I love history. So I spent six years of research. And luckily I was on the East Coast. So I could spend three to four days living in the New York Library, which you've never been there. So wonderful. In the Boston Library, same way. I went to Annapolis and spent time in their library and museum, the Library of Congress. I read every article I could find and then I went to the West Coast and traveled from San Diego up to Seattle. The internet with eBay was just starting at that time. That meant that you could communicate actually with people, real people. I could say, hey, you're selling this card of the Great White Fleet and tell me about your collection. So we'd email back and forth. And lots of times they would send me on floppies, pictures of their cards. So I was able to create a further collection thanks to them. And I also traveled to Kentucky to find out who WC was because many originated from Kentucky. She and her brother had recently moved to Tulare. I found out who he was through Annapolis and the information from Kentucky. His name was John Maurice Blair. And I knew from my grandfather that a lot of people in the South had nicknames. Had nothing to do with their given name and somehow or another this man had a nickname of WC or whatever. Doesn't have to be a toilet? Pardon me? Water closet. Yeah, I know, I'm thinking too, water closet. So there must be something going on there. So I will tell you just a little bit about giving you a little background of postcards. Let me give you a background of how come there were 16 battleships that went around the world. Bear in mind we were the only country that had white battleships. And it was later called the Great White Fleet. Originally it was the Atlantic Fleet. And we were the only country that had that. And at the turn of the 20th century European navies were going with their ships, they were moving from port to port, steaming at high speeds, doing all these maneuvers, dropping their anchors simultaneously to spray the spectators on shore. And they would have fleet days, you know, parades, garden parties, all kinds of celebrations. We didn't do that in America. We had Teddy Roosevelt who was president. And Teddy Roosevelt decided he wasn't going to do that. Teddy Roosevelt also, before Teddy Roosevelt, we didn't have fleets of ships. We had individual ships that hugged close to our shores and were commanded by one admiral. So he was the one who said, okay, the Isthmus Canal, Panama Canal is being built. We are now, we can't consider ourselves isolated because we are subject to the South American navies and European navies. And we had a little problem with Japan and the Pacific side, which I'll go into. So he organized the Atlantic fleet and the Pacific fleet. And he said, okay, we're going to do something better than the European countries, right? We're going to decide, we're going to have our fleet of battleships go around the world. So, I'm going to show you. Come on. There we go. Here is another battleship that I want to show you. This is an undivided card because you can see down here the writing. Every one of our, this is in dry dock. Every one of our ships also had a lot of brass filigree on the ship. And inside here would be the emblem of whatever state the ship was named after. This is another card that I want to show you that was a series. And actually when you touch it, it feels like it's 3D. So, every cruiser, every battleship. It's difficult getting used to somebody else's computer. Come on. The reason why we were having some problems with Japan. Japan and Russia had had a war in 1904. And Japan won. President Roosevelt was the one who was the negotiator for the peace treaty. So this was in Portsmouth, Navy Yard, USA. And on the back of this card, obviously Roosevelt's chair would have been, he was right over there. On the back of this card has every single name of the people in attendance. Japan won the war. But Japan wanted Russia to pay for the ships that Japan lost and lives, even though they'd lost. And Roosevelt said, no, that's not going to happen. So Japan is a little upset with us. Also in San Francisco, Japan became upset with us because they were very concerned that we had so many immigrants coming into San Francisco taking over jobs that President Roosevelt said, okay, no Japanese child can go to a public school. They have to go to their own schools. And we're going to limit immigration. Well, of course, that was not accepted very well. So eventually he did lift that so that at least they could go, the children could go to a public school. So now we've got two fractions going on. We're concerned about Japan and we're not sure what's going on on the Atlantic coast. One of the things that he wanted, one of the things that was difficult while European navies did not decide to go on a world cruise was because the battleships, each battleship consumed approximately 90 tons of coal a day. And that's why so many of them hugged the shores. Because just about every two weeks then they had to find a place to recole. The other thing was that so many of the ships were now had a whole lot of new gadgets. Okay, we had the wireless that was just put into these ships before they left. And we didn't have engineers that knew how to take care of all this equipment. They were like the new automobiles that were coming out. What do we do with breakdowns? So the other navies said, no, no, we're not doing that. But Roosevelt said he felt there was no better way to gain respect from the other nations than by a show of force. And those of you who are familiar with Roosevelt know that was his personality from day one. He said, and I quote, I want all failures, blunders and shortcomings to be made apparent in time of peace and not in time of war. He said the Navy needs practice and navigations communications, coal consumption, crew stamina and fleet maneuvering. The officers felt this could be taken care of by just hugging the shores. Why do we have to do this? Congress and Joint Board of Army and Navy they weren't happy either. This was very costly. And in my book I detail the amount of money that was spent. Roosevelt true to his personality said I am the commander in chief. My decision is absolute. There's enough money in the Treasury to get to San Francisco and if you don't allocate any more money then just stay in San Francisco. End of topic, right? Together together the Atlantic Fleet to find that out of 28 ships 16 would be able to make it around the world. They didn't all but that was his thought. Again much later they were called the White Fleet. So now we've got to find a commander. He had a very good friend called Robely Evans. It was always called Fighting Bob. And this is an early picture of Robely. And he was a Civil War hero as well as a Spanish American war hero. So he was chosen to be the admiral to lead this fleet. Now that's an early cart. This is a little later picture and this is how he looked right before he led the fleet. I might add he didn't make it all the way. We found out that the crews eventually came back to Hampton Roads, Virginia that the officers were at least 10 to 12 years older than officers of other navies in Europe. And this was very detrimental with the amount that they ended up having to do. So there's Robely Evans. Pardon me? 57 almost 60 almost 60 years old. And he was ill. So by now that we've got the admiral, the commander then we've got the officers now we have to have a special campaign for the men. We had 4,000 men that had already joined the navy and this was their second tour, third tour duty. They had to recruit 10,000 new men. On a very special campaign. And they went to the west and the midwest because they wanted and I quote robust frame, intelligent, perfectly sound and healthy constitution and free from any physical defects of malformation. In other words, if these young guys and they were young, young men had acne or anything they were not accepted. They wanted also these men to be clean cut, hard working, church going men with rosy cheeks to impress the foreign nations. Join the Navy and see the world was coined during this campaign. Also, Roosevelt chose the publisher of postcard H.H. Stratton to go along on the cruise and plus the correspondence from different newspapers and magazines he told them only good things can be sent over the wireless to go to your newspapers and magazines flowered up. It can only don't ever put anything that is negative. Don't give the American public anything that's negative and every one of their writing pieces had to be scrutinized by a certain officer on each ship before they could be sent. So by December 9th, 1907 16 battleships headed for Hampton Roads, Virginia with big celebrations receptions, balls and luncheons, football games, baseball games rowing machines and as one newspaper man said they're treating them like heroes and they haven't done anything. He was not pleased. Did they get the 10,000 Yes they did. Yes they did. So we had 14,000 men that were on board. This is a card that I'm going to show you. This is how they would end up dropping anchor and of course we had a lot of cards that were produced for the white fleet. Just a couple more. This is where they anchored in Hampton Roads out of the hotel of Chamberlain Hotel looking at the white fleet and this was so crowded they ended up putting cots all in the hallways because so many people wanted to be there to greet the fleet. We had, the Navy had a desertion rate that was twice the army. So what they did before the fleet left they upped the pay and scheduled all kinds of recreational activities while they were on board because to keep the men from getting bored and also deserting at the next port. So every ship had a sick bay and I love these cards. Anybody that collects postcards loves these cards because this is a photograph that was taken by a sailor. This is the only card in existence. So when he went on port went to port they had all of these areas, shops where you could take your photograph and have it made into a postcard. So when I get one of these I know I've only got, this is the only one. I love it. So here's your sick bay and as Maurice who's writing to many says here's the sick bay but I don't want any part of it. I hope I don't have to go there. And they had a machine shop carpentry shop a tailor, a shoemaker and a sailmaking shop and anybody have any idea why we had to have a sailmaking shop? Yeah, I've heard that before exactly. I've heard that before but the main reason was they used these big sails for target practice. They put them out on rafts way out in the ocean and then they'd use it as target practice because twice a year they had to drill with target practice. So they had a printing shop and a library and each ship also had one to four pianos a band and an orchestra and a drama group and when they were in port you can see the sailors down here again this is an original postcard sometimes there would be like 2,000 men that would come aboard the ship that was having the drama the play and those only look like women remember they were all men they had a lot of costumes and the stage would actually be a portable stage and like I said they had all kinds of entertainment for these people and I have to show this one because Maurice was a musician first class musician and here we are with the band playing and if you notice at the top of the card men are dancing with men and this happened all the time in fact they would have presentations come to this ball blah blah blah blah do all kinds of things to keep the men entertained so they would play almost every night to entertain the men you know when these ships set sail they were already antiquated because England in 1906 had launched the dreadnought and the dreadnought used steam, turbine propulsion instead of just all coal so we were the only country at that point that was using only coal when we got back our next ships that were launched were dreadnoughts so what we did and I'm going to show you this is not a postcard but it needs to show you this is Hampton Roads and they came down through South America the first stop was Trinidad came through South America up through the west coast to Hawaii over to Australia New Zealand they went to the Philippines twice due to breakout of cholera they went to China after Japan they went through the Suez Canal the ships split the cruise split and some went to different European countries went through Gibraltar and then back to Hampton Roads in 14 months when they went to Trinidad which was the first stop it was estimated that thousands of cards were purchased by recruits and guess what the new recruits brought back to the ship monkeys and parrots added to the cats and dogs already aboard and some of the ships had goats and the Connecticut had a pet pig when they got to Rio it was estimated that 170,000 postcards were purchased I'm going whoops don't do that no no you're not going to do that exactly you bet my top price that I refuse to go above was $65 for a card this is a $65 card if you notice we have Young Roosevelt over here on our left and over here on the right is Young Robley and there is a tie a blue tie in the center when you open that tie this is what you're going to get it unfolds like an accordion and this is a picture you can't see it all on here of every single of the battleships 16 battleships in their commander then you fold it all back up put it in and tie it this of course is a card onward or nonward the fleet goes around wherever you go now you can be found sorry that's in the middle but lots and lots of cards during this time no a lot of them I purchased because so much of the original collection that went to many also had to do with areas that he visited parks and buildings and that type of thing so that's why I went to postcard collect shows to get what I could get this came from a floppy and that's why the resolution is not good but I couldn't afford this this card was over a hundred dollars it folded as you can see you can see the creases and when you fold it in then it was the size of a regular postcard but I like to show it because you can see the maneuver that these ships made so that they could come into port they would practice this and they were out to see not every time was this perfect when they came into port definitely so Maurice of course learned that many collected postcards that's how he started sending postcards he figured that this was the way he could see her again I think he had a thing for her in Kentucky so he started originally writing postcards to Dear Frank, her brother and then it became Dear Frank and Minnie and they met in Los Angeles in San Pedro and after that it became Dearest Minnie and so their romance began I want to talk about two different things that are unique to the Great White Pleat one is this again is an original card we're crossing the line this is the first time we've crossed the line and on Sunday morning on January 5th all hands were called on deck for General Muster and King Neptune and his slaves came aboard greeted by a sound of trumpets from the band a messenger in his court carried a large leather pouch containing a subpoena for each man who'd not crossed the equator and been granted permission for his majesty's domain so all dress regulations as you can see were lifted because if you're a board ship you must be wearing a uniform of the day so every ship had King Neptune come and of course they're using all their wonderful drama costumes and then once the invitations were delivered then he announced that he would be back 1.30 on January 6th and a Blair of the trumpets came again as King Neptune left January 5th at midnight midnight they crossed the border and as one reporter said and wrote in his newspaper they only put the men on watch who encountered King Neptune before and were considered honorable shellbacks those unfortunate who received the subpoenas from his majesty slept very little that night but since December 19th when they were at their first their first stop mysterious messages were seen on the Scuttlebutt the drinking area found detailing terrible things that would happen to the men when they crossed the line one of the messages stated in Trinidad that each ship and I quote received 150 gallons of coal tar 90 gallons of varnish 400 pounds of sulfur 4 sets of razors 18 brushes 4 sets of fine ribbed saws 4 surgical knives 2 large meat axes and 15 pairs of handcuffs another order was issued to the king's doctors to have their pills water ready and the barbers to complete the mixing of their lather of coal tar coal molasses and India ink King Neptune and his slaves came aboard at 130 as promised they were dressed in an assortment again of clothes and they were greeted by the band now this is my own postcard again it's a picture of insects or something got to the edge which kills me but because Maurice was in the band here they are celebrating here comes King Neptune Maurice I don't know would you believe that I don't know who he is there I have another picture of him when he was in Los Angeles in a car and I don't know which one he is because see I remember I never met many my grandfather's cousin I never even met her the story goes at one time that the slaves had been human but for some unknown transgressions to the king they had become weird creatures so even the captains had to bow to the court of the king because the king now was the ruler of the ship his wife his secretary to barbers a squad of policemen a royal carriage accompanied King Neptune and two doctors Dr. Flip and Dr. Flap boarded the Virginia carrying suitcases filled with saws knives, teeth extractors and many bottles of smelly medicines said this correspondence Dr. Flip told the ship surgeon he was from the old school and a graduate of the royal college of the doldrums a class so a large tarp and this is Stratton's card the man who went with the crews he always know his cards because he always has a number and so a large tarp was gathered on all four sides this was the tank and four barbers chairs were placed outside the tank so that the men would sit with their backs to the tank and then the royal police brought in and mixed grease mixed with white lead and shaved the men with a dull razor then these men were forced to swallow a pill of soap and canine the size of a nutmeg at that point and there's a lever on the barber chair and you can see this fellow the men would go head on into the tank where they were being waited for by the servants of his majesty and then they filled the mounds once again of these four men with tar shampooed their heads again with molasses and the louder the men protested the longer the initiation hazing exactly deck houses were kept running so that this gentleman over here coming out could be hosed down and sand and canvas were kept nearby also in order to scrub them as they merged from the tank once four land lubbers were initiated four more were brought in this happened all day officers and enlisted men received the same treatment so it just became now they became shellbacks and there were about 450 officers that were initiated that day and there were over 10,000 enlisted men they crossed the equator six times and every single time they went through the same initiation because they had people men that still deserted right so now we have to have new recruits and guess what we have to initiate the animals so this was performed every single time this story the very first time filled 20 columns of the New York Sun it wasn't the New York Times at that point it was the New York Sun just that paper alone and the newsmen it continued to write about every single thing going on every football game every ice cream social every boxing match so this is another postcard that was an actual picture so it doesn't look too bad it looks like they're having a good time this was a series of about four different postcards and it says I got mine at the equator crossing the equator you know and every man by the way got a very nice certificate saying that he was now initiated I have a picture of that in the book because I saw one in a scrapbook in Minneapolis so I was able to get a picture of that no, no, it's equator yeah so the other thing that I want to talk about is coaling again this is a picture postcard because this was a dirty yet fascinating process but this is the only way that they traveled with the coal and it was considered a drill because in time of war speed was very very important so the band would play and they would play probably ragtime music anything to get the temple going they'd have contests between the ships of who could fill the bags the fastest and their first job was to sand the decks I don't know if you're aware but in those days the decks were shiny wood that they kept polished all the time so they didn't want to mar the wood with the coldest so they sanded the decks and then the cranes would lift the sacks of ash from the bunkers and put it on a vessel that was called a lighter it's like a barge, a long barge if they were in a foreign country only the barge would come up and they'd put all the coal ash on the barge and the barge would go out somewhere in the ocean where nobody could see and dump it if they were in the United States they didn't bother with the barge or the lighter they just dumped it overboard it was much quicker okay after the hold was cleared out the first division and our division is four ships tied up alongside the waiting collier that was another problem that we had on this we only didn't have very many colliers ships that carry coal or ships so would tie up next to the colliers and then the men would go into the hot humid holds to begin their work so about 130 to 150 degrees down there in that hold so they were only allowed to stay there for 30 minutes before another shift came down and when they came up from the hold there was ice water that could be sprayed on them to be able to cool them off so what they looked like and again this is a picture postcard many times only the whites of their eyes could be seen they're coming up from the hold coughing coal dust just dripping with sweat when the shovelers filled an 800 pound sack then the derrick that we saw before lifts it to the main deck and drags it to the nearby coal chutes and the coal men receive the sacks of coal and dump them into the bunkers remember this happened about every two weeks this also is an actual photograph that isn't taken with a very good camera and as I was writing the book my publisher says now wait a minute this can't be it's all blurred and I said yes the postcards blurred obviously the camera was such that you better not move guys and some of them did it was estimated that by the end of 14 months each ship broke 280 shovels handles by all of this this work with the coal the men that were in the bowels of the ship that were shoveling coal all day long many of them were not allowed leave because again rosy cheeks right and lots of them couldn't get the coal dust from under their fingernails they couldn't get it off of their skin so therefore they were not allowed leave and as my book states there were many men several men that just went insane you know this was not not good onshore however in America again this became quite a deal we have teddy bears that are being purchased all over the place right with teddy Roosevelt we have boys who are now wearing tailor suits and we have replicas of the ships also women were wearing boater hats and I would love to have a postcard of that I've seen pictures but not a postcard actual replica of a ship so and other companies were using the great white fleet crews to advertise I don't know how many of you might remember but potential life insurance superimposed the battleships on the Gibraltar picture to advertise for their insurance so and this is another one that obviously came to me in a floppy from a gentleman in Australia again all over the world they used the battleships for their advertisements the Gibson girls artists came also came into play for to make cards dealing with the Gibson girls and said California captures the Atlantic fleet in 1908 and I got I like this one because the colors are wrong I love it because the colors are wrong I'm not sure what the publisher was doing but kind of cool and again she's in a sailor outfit right and this is the last of my of the Gibson girls the fleet when the fleet arrived in San Diego the officers were greeted by their wives the wives had boarded a train and come across the United States to greet their husbands in San Diego they came with two to three trunks full of gowns they weren't going to let their husbands out of their sight any longer so they followed them up the coast the west coast up to Seattle and then when they were going to Hawaii the wives hired a German passenger ship the Bremen to follow the fleet because they heard they read in the newspaper about all of these garden parties all of these fabulous dinners they didn't want to miss out the officers weren't real happy about that so say obviously it was their money this is another picture actual picture coming in to Seattle I think it's Seattle it's Washington it's hard to see with that it's hard to deal with not my own computer but every place they stopped plenty of postcards were published printed for them every place where they dropped anchor the next day would be a parade and the parade would involve approximately 5,000 of the men playing bands and they would go for 3 to 5 miles that's why we have a shoemaker on board and this shows this should be this is Tacoma let me go back to Bellingham glad somebody could but look at all of the people the people came from Oregon, Washington, Utah and British Columbia to see this I found it fascinating just as an aside fleet days now we're talking about fleet days at every place and I was in San Francisco Bay area over October Columbus Day weekend and I wasn't aware that San Francisco after the great white fleet now has a fleet week every year over Columbus Day all kinds of parades all kinds of exhibits and when I went online there were approximately 1 million people who attended that week fleet week in San Francisco this year well guess what, in 1908 there were over a million people that attended San Francisco's fleet week and think of the difference in population tents all over the hillsides people camping out in the roads in order to see this spectacular event yeah it was just 2 years after the earthquake and they were looking for something to celebrate that point this is another parade in Washington so you get an idea and I'm going to go back and come on I'm going to get there, there we go this one I want to show you because it's I found this very interesting this is in Seattle every time once they got to San Diego and beyond there was one day where people could come aboard a host ship they would take turns on who's going to be the host this is a ferry obviously ferrying the spectators from on shore and they would spend probably an afternoon on the ship they would have refreshments in the band we'd be playing in one section this happened every time I was amazed because I've looked at this car and I've said many times oh that doesn't happen today not after 9-11 when I went online with Fleet Week in San Francisco they do the same thing they have a long list of requirements before you come on board but they do the same thing so I was really amazed so this was okay except the sailors and the officers were really pleased about this because particularly the women wanted souvenirs so they'd come aboard and they would pick up anything that they could hide in their clothes spoons, cups, plates it didn't matter anything to be souvenirs and Heaven's to Betsy if an officer left anything on his dresser because they'd go down into the officers quarters and they'd pick up anything they could find on his dress and away they'd go also when these sailors came on leave land leave the women wanted souvenirs and they would tear the ribbons from their hats tear off buttons tear off scars and every time a sailor went back on board okay they would note how many things he was missing each item was 25 cents off of his pay so not a good situation but I had to show that card because of the it was typical okay I'm showing a couple of other cards when they got to Australia so many cards were produced in Australia that I could write a whole book dealing with Australia Australia spent lots of money because in Australia and New Zealand had been informed by England that they needed to increase their population they were concerned that their population would then be immigrated with Asians and they didn't want that they thought if they treated the Americans really really well that they would come and immigrate to their country it wasn't until later they realized we spent too much money you know didn't work but a lot of the cards you will also see have kangaroos okay yes and also cards of the area you know this is the capital building this is you know blah blah blah blah yeah mm-hmm so again I'm saying kangaroos because guess what they received yes every ship received a kangaroo oh my goodness and something that I didn't do when I need to do this they didn't take them on board oh absolutely they did absolutely they did because in Seattle and I found this in the library there I didn't want to paraphrase it because the writing is so different in the turn of the 20th century than it is today I need to read this to you it says 16 live bears is a unique site in any bar room and though small the future mascots of Uncle Sam's fighting machines made things exceedingly lively in that section of the house where the Bart Butler patrons of the Butler Bar and Grill imbibe their liquid refreshments bang when a table is one particular lively specimen of bear tribe wobbled around and caught its chain about the table leg there was a clatter and a crash and a shower of broken glass as the tray smashed to the floor the success of the bears in the future years in prosperity and honor for the ships and the crews to which they have attached their homeage was pledged a round of sparkling wine and as if enthused by the sediment proposed several cubs emitted a healthy lunged howl aboard the ships all was in readiness to receive the mascots on the Kansas Bruinsky as the specimen was immediately christened took firm hold of the situation by whipping all the dogs and cats aboard the Connecticut's Teddy once aboard had a row with the boat with the goat and the pig taking his claim as the new mascot on the Minnesota a green parrot and a brown monkey greeted the new teddy the parrot didn't like the bear at all and voiced his disapproval in language that would not have sounded nice in the presence of ladies the monkey gave a squeal grabbed a bunch of fur bear hide and dashed away with a big tuft of wool sticking out from behind his fingers and as Maury said I wish I could have been there what a sight this must have been men these little guys look like small puppies each one only weighing about nine pounds of course I'm sure they won't stay that size for long and I can tell you our goat is not happy to share the spotlight with the small but loud bag of fur all of those sixteen cubs had to go on the parade also in Seattle bear cubs so now every ship has a bear cub every ship also has a kangaroo some of them had also other animals from Australia and New Zealand what was the question about that picture yes okay I'll try okay isn't that the seal of the king of England yes yes was it Edward at that time 1908 because it's E.R. yeah yeah yeah so I'm assuming that means Edward Regent thank you I hadn't put that together I'll remember that thank you exactly thank you so this is another one from Australia and this is usually when I show this I get to see the whole thing this is again what I talked about you've got the American flag you've got the British flag and they look well together don't they gee some same stars same stripes talks about the fact that we are from the same family meaning okay guys we need to be all together here so even their postcards you know did this there's another one they were just fabulous cards from Australia and I'm just showing a few am I in the way when I'm clicking here for you guys again there's the kangaroo we got to Japan and they were really concerned about how they were going to be greeted with everything going on in fact the guns were already aimed at Japan when they arrived perfect greeting nothing was a miss and again they ended up with some beautiful cards they anchored in Yokohama and these flags were mandatory the people in Yokohama had to have an American flag and a Japanese flag flown above their houses above the door of their houses and they had to be the same size and of the same fabric the cheapest configuration cost a working man a full week salary and this was mandatory this is amazing did you have I bought that card that was a $25 card this was a Stratton card again the man who went on the cruise and here are all the men and officers enjoying a Gisa performance in Yokohama and a couple of other cards from Japan this next one I always have to show because it still astounds me here they are, they're on the spanks and they're climbing all over and they're writing their initials and I was here nobody cared at that time and I think about that today every time I see this card this is a Stratton card as well they came out in camels you can see some of them are on the backs of camels so now this was also a series of cards this particular publisher once they got into Gibraltar then they knew they were home bound and they had a 200 yard all of the ships homeward bound were on our way and they were ready they flew it and this was his card depicting the fact that flying the homeward they're coming home pardon me oh yeah in fact all of his cards in this particular series have the rosy cheeks on the sailors so when they got back to Virginia roads of course the next day they had to have the familiar parade they were met by the president and Taft who was going to be inaugurated soon bear in mind this is February this is February 22nd is when Roosevelt wanted the cruise to land back into Hampton roads and in those days from the time our first president we had inauguration in March because weather you couldn't have inauguration any earlier because transportation was horse horse buggy train so it was always March and Teddy Roosevelt was the same thing, inauguration was March so once we got back and they had the familiar parade and all along the cruise the admirals kept writing president Roosevelt got to change the colors of our ships they're being seen all over we can't camouflage these ships in white he refused, he refused but as soon as they came in to port the very next day all of the beautiful brass filigree everything was removed and they began painting the ships what we consider today the navy gray I am still like I told some people my computer's been hacked and I wanted to find online because I can't find these look like upside down wire waste baskets and they were put on there for fire prevention and I want to find out more about that I don't know what they were there for except it was for fire and my last picture is a postcard that Frank, her brother who was a photographer took this of her when they were visiting Maurice in Los Angeles and she has her white she will all white and her white hat so you get an idea so thank you