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One of President Theodore Roosevelt’s attempts to increase the United States’ global standing and recognition would have a direct impact on the sleepy Pacific port of San Diego. Roosevelt’s plan was for sixteen battleships with assorted escort vessels, crewed by 14,000 sailors, to set out on a fourteen-month goodwill voyage, visiting twenty ports on six continents.
From April 13 through 18, 1908, the Great White Fleet, as it would one day come to be known, began its official goodwill visit to the port of San Diego. In those days, the harbor had yet to be dredged, and hence the visiting battleships, cruisers and support vessels, were obliged to anchor off Coronado. Over the course of the visit, thousands of sailors attended parades and receptions in San Diego, before proceeding on to San Francisco, and eventually crossing the Pacific to Japan, Australia and other ports of call. As mementos of such occasions, sailors would often swap hat bands such as those displayed here.