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Dateline
- July 19, 2009
HMAS Sydney and HMAS Ballarat in New York
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| New
York turned on a spectacularly clear day to welcome Australian
warships HMAS Ballarat and HMAS Sydney as they sailed
past the Statue of Liberty into the Hudson as part of
centenary celebrations of the visit of the US Navy's 1908
Great White Fleet visit. |
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One-hundred-and-one
years ago, sixteen US battleships, painted white to
demonstrate their peaceful intentions, known as the
Great White Fleet, made a tour of the world as a demonstration
of US naval might - a visit that began the deepening
of the relationship between Australia and the US.
The Australian
ships are midway through a six-month deployment, a kind
of diplomatic mission that involves visits and exercises
in India, Europe, Canada and the US.
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The voyage of a lifetime for many young sailors has
even had a brush with pirates. The
Ballarat and Sydney received a call for help from an
oil tanker while in the Gulf of Aden and were forced
to intervene to stop two skiffs of Somali pirates from
boarding the vessel.
"I think
we stopped one and possibly two ships from being highjacked,"
said the Sydney's captain, Peter Leavy, adding that
the ships remained to patrol the waters for five days.
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But the visit to New York is the most significant. Last
year, the USS McCain, named after the former presidential
candidate, John McCain's grandfather, and the USS Shoup
visited Australian shores, a visible symbol of the way
in which Australia's alliance with America has grown and
strengthened. On
Sunday, Theodore Roosevelt IV, who is managing director
of Barclays in New York, and the great grandson of Alfred
Deakin, Tom Harley, the chairman of the Australian Heritage
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Commission,
were choppered out to Australian ships to take part in
their historic moment in New York.
It was Prime
Minister Deakin who invited President Theodore Roosevelt
to send the Great White Fleet to Australia in 1908,
as part of his campaign to build support for an Australian
navy.
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"I guess
it's a feeling of enormous warmth. I have been privileged
to go to Australia once in my life but Australia has
been an incredibly loyal ally to the United States,"
Mr Roosevelt said. "She
has provided us with a lot of wisdom and insight into
what's happening in Asia, and this is one way of commemorating
this important relationship."
Mr Harley said the New York visit honoured the start
of a "very important relationship".
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| "It's
a relationship born in peace and forged in war, but is
far deeper than a just a defence alliance," he said.
"The
visit of the Great White Fleet was cooked up by Alfred
Deakin, sending a message through behind the British government's
back, to President Roosevelt asking him to visit,"
Mr Harley said. "The
British were not at all amused by his impertinence in
going behind them given that they had carriage of Australian
foreign policy. |
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He wanted
to build the case for an Australian navy and he thought
the best way to do that was to have a massive demonstration
of naval power :the peaceful aspects as well as the
military aspects." A
quarter of Australia's population met US naval personnel
when they came to Sydney, Melbourne and Albany 101 years
ago, Mr Harley said. Australians
fell in love with US sailors on that visit, and have
since hosted many visits by the American fleet during
war and peacetime.
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