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| Courtesy Stephanie Alice (Flanigan) Woods | |||
A native of Defiance, Iowa, Winfield Ira Flanigan was a graduate of Highland Park College of Electrical Engineering and was employed in young manhood as a machinist in Marshalltown, IA and later as an electrician with the Marshall Telephone Company.
Winfield enlisted in the U.S. Navy in mid-1906 and within a few months was assigned to the training vessel Hancock at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York. His term of duty was spent in electrical engineering capacities aboard the flagship Connecticut on cruises around the globe with a battleship fleet.
His diary of the voyage, The Great White Fleet, was published privately by granddaughter Stephanie Alice (Flanigan) Woods in 2003 and is reproduced with permission on this website. In the introduction, she writes:
In 1907 President Teddy Roosevelt sent sixteen battleships of the Atlantic Fleet around the world in a show of growing U.S. naval strength. This is a transcription of our grandfather’s log of his experiences on the Pacific leg of this around-the-world cruise of the “Great White Fleet.” Winfield’s ship, the U.S.S. Connecticut, was the admiral’s flagship which led the white and buff-colored battleships and their auxiliary and torpedo boats in this daring first-of-its-kind cruise. The initial leg of the journey began on December 16, 1907 when President Roosevelt sent the fleet off from Hampton Roads, Virginia. They traveled south, through the dangerous Straits of Magellan, and north to San Francisco. On July 7, 1908 this log begins the tale of the second leg of the cruise from San Francisco, through the Orient, the Suez Canal, the Mediterranean, and back to Hampton Roads. The cruise ended on February 22, 1909 as the fleet was joyously welcomed back home again by the President and the American people. Winfield not only kept this diary of the Pacific cruise, but he also took photographs that he developed from glass negatives. Many of these negatives survive, along with the log, an album of photos and postcards, and other paper souvenirs. Pictures of some of these items are used here to illustrate the log. Photographs that Winfield took are labeled “WIF Photo.” Items he collected and put in the album are labeled, “WIF Album.” His souvenirs are “WIF Souvenir.” In addition, I have collected other items to help us understand more about what life must have been like on a battleship that was sailing around the world for 14 months. Copies of those items are labeled as to their sources. “USNHC” stands for the United States Naval Historical Center, whose website I relied on for many of the photos included in this document.
Winfield was the son of Marcellus "Tim" and Emily Frances (Parry) Flanigan -- also spelled "Flannigan" and "Flanagan" -- who were pioneers of Iowa, originating near Johnson Chapel in Henry Clay Township, Fayette County, PA.
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Copyright © 2026 Mark A. Miner |
