Popular Culture Review Volume 29, Number 2, Summer 2018 | Page 100

Black Belt and Blue Water
knew that such experience did not translate automatically into the “ much more complicated job of guiding a large destroyer along the fog-shrouded New England coastline , with its dangerous rocks and complex tides . Roosevelt impressed all aboard as he took the destroyer through Lubec Narrows , the strait separating the mainland and Campobello ” ( Cross 2003 42-43 ). Many years later , when Halsey was an admiral , he wrote :
The fact that a white-flanneled yachtsman can sail a catboat out to a buoy and back is not [ sic ] guarantee that he can handle a high-speed destroyer in narrow waters A destroyer ’ s bow may point directly down the channel , yet she is not necessarily on a safe course . She pivots around a point near her bridge structure , which means that two-thirds of her length is aft of the pivot , and that her stern will swing in twice the arc of her bow . As Mr . Roosevelt made his first turn , I saw him look aft and check the swing of our stern . My worries were over . He knew his business ( quoted in Cross 2003 43 ).
A look at FDR late in his presidency�and late in his life� makes those elements of greatness clear . Rigdon , the naval aide assigned to FDR , had accompanied the president on most if not all of his travels ( Rigdon 1962 4 ). One was an extensive voyage to Hawaii , and subsequently to Alaska . FDR had left the mainland to sail “ for Pearl Harbor July 21 , 1944 ” ( Smith 2008 620 ), to meet General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz to work out joint strategy . Admiral William Leahy , who was a member of the president ’ s party on the voyage , “ thought FDR was ‘ at his best as he tactfully
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