Edmund Vance Cooke writes of the cruise of the American fleet around the globe in the following significant lines:
This is the song of the thousand men who are multiplied by twelve,
Sorted and sifted, tested and tried, and muscled to dig and delve.
They come from the hum of city and shop, they come from the farm and the field.
And they plow the acres of ocean now, but tell me, what is their yield?
This is the song of the sixteen ships to buffet the battle and gale,
And in every one we have thrown away a Harvard or a Yale.
Behold here the powers of Pittsburg, the mills of Lowell and Lynn,
And the furnaces roar and the boilers seethe, but tell me, what do they spin?
This is the song of the long, long miles from Hampton to the Horn,