Pre-World War I
Following shakedown along the eastern seaboard and in the Caribbean, North Carolina carried President-elect William Howard Taft on an inspection tour to the Panama Canal in January–February 1909. From 23 April – 3 August, the new cruiser cruised the Mediterranean. Sailing with Montana to protect Americans threatened by conflict in the Ottoman Empire. North Carolina sent a medical relief party ashore on 17 May to Adana, Turkey, to treat both wounded and desperately ill Armenians, victims of massacre. North Carolina provided food, shelter, disinfectants, distilled water, dressings and medicines, and assisted other relief agencies already on the scene. For the remainder of her Mediterranean cruise, North Carolina cruised the Levant succoring both American citizens and refugees from oppression.
In the years before World War I, North Carolina trained and maneuvered in the western Atlantic and Caribbean and participated in ceremonial and diplomatic activities. Highlights included attending centennial celebrations of the independence of Argentina (May–June 1910) and Venezuela (June–July 1911); carrying the Secretary of War for an inspection tour of Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo, Cuba, and the Panama Canal (July–August 1911); and bringing home from Cuba bodies of the crew of the destroyed Maine for their final interment in Arlington National Cemetery.
Read more about this topic: USS North Carolina (ACR-12)
Famous quotes containing the words war i and/or war:
“War is a most uneconomical, foolish, poor arrangement, a bloody enrichment of that soil which bears the sweet flower of peace ...”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore.”
—Apocrypha. Ecclesiasticus, 44:14.
The line “their name liveth for evermore” was chosen by Rudyard Kipling on behalf of the Imperial War Graves Commission as an epitaph to be used in Commonwealth War Cemeteries. Kipling had himself lost a son in the fighting.