Site Navigation:
Searchable Databases
Articles Archive
Pacific Nautical Heritage...
- Gallery of Light and Buoy Images
- Gallery of Mariners
- Gallery of Ship Images
- Gallery of Ship Wrecks
- Gallery of Monuments and Statues
- Gallery of Nautical Images
- Gallery of Freshwater Images
- Gallery of New Books
Canadian Naval Topics…
- Nautical History Videos
- UNTD
- British Columbia Heritage
- Arctic and Northern Nautical Heritage
- Western Canada Boat and Ship Builders
- Gallery of Arctic Images
- Reflections on Nautical Heritage
- British Columbia Heritage
Site Search:
Looking for more? Search for Articles on the Nauticapedia Site.
The Monument to the USS Phelps Carrying President Franklin D. Roosevelt
by John M. MacFarlane 2017
The plaque commemorating the visit of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the USS Phelps to Victoria BC. (Photo from the John MacFarlane collection.)
The USS Phelps (DD–360) carried President FranklinD. Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to Victoria on September 30, 1937 to Victoria BC on a goodwill visit to Canada.
The USS Phelps (Photo from the Wikipedia collection. )
The USS Phelps (DD–360) was built by the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation’s Fore River Shipyard, Quincy, Massachusetts and launched in 1935.
Premier T.D. Pattullo on board the U.S.S. Phelps; greeting American president, Franklin D. Roosevelt (Photo B-08121 from the British columbia Archives collection.)
The visit to Victoria was not the only presidential service of this vessel. In November 1936 Phelps, along with the cruiser Chester, escorted the heavy cruiser Indianapolis carrying President Franklin D. Roosevelt to Buenos Aires, Argentina for the opening of the Inter-American Peace Conference of 1936. The cruise included good-will visits to Montevideo, Uruguay and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
To quote from this article please cite:
MacFarlane, John M. (2017) The Monument to the USS Phelps Carrying President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Nauticapedia.ca 2017. http://nauticapedia.ca/Gallery/Monument_USS_Phelps.php
Site News: November 2, 2024
The vessel database has been updated and is now holding 94,538 vessel histories (with 16,140 images and 13,887 records of ship wrecks and marine disasters). The mariner and naval biography database has also been updated and now contains 58,599 entries (with 3989 images). Vessel records are currently being reviewed and updated with more than 35,000 processed so far this year.
Thanks to contributor Mike Rydqvist McCammon for the hundreds of photos he has contributed to illustrate British Columbia's floating heritage.
My very special thanks to our volunteer IT adviser, John Eyre, who (since 2021) has modernized, simplified and improved the update process for the databases into semi–automated processes. His participation has been vital to keeping the Nauticapedia available to our netizens.
Also my special thanks to my volunteer content accuracy checker, John Spivey of Irvine CA USA, who continues (almost every day) to proof read thousands of Nauticapedia vessel histories and provided input to improve more than 14,000 entries. His attention to detail has been a huge unexpected bonus in improving and updating the vessel detail content.