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United States Asiatic Fleet

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The fleet was created when its predecessor, the Asiatic Squadron, was upgraded to fleet status in 1902. In early 1907, the fleet was downgraded and became the First Squadron of the United States Pacific Fleet. However, on 28 January 1910, it was again organized as the Asiatic Fleet. Thus constituted, the Asiatic Fleet, based in the Philippines, was organizationally independent of the Pacific Fleet, which was based on the United States West Coast until it moved to Pearl Harbor in the Territory of Hawaii in 1940.

Although much smaller than any other U.S. Navy fleet and indeed far smaller than what any navy generally considers to be a fleet, the Asiatic Fleet from 1916 was commanded by one of only four four-star admirals authorized in the U.S. Navy at the time. This reflected the prestige of the position of Asiatic Fleet commander-in-chief, who generally was more powerful and influential with regard to the affairs of the United States in China than was the American minister, or later United States Ambassador, to China.

1902–1907

In 1904, all armored cruisers were withdrawn from the Far East. Gunboats patrolled the Yangtze River in the Yangtze Patrol.

After Rear Admiral Charles J. Train became commander-in-chief of the fleet in March 1905, it was involved in various ways with the closing weeks of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. After the Imperial Japanese Navy's decisive defeat of the Imperial Russian Navy in the Battle of Tsushima Strait in May 1905, units of the Asiatic Fleet escorted three fleeing Russian cruisers into Manila Bay in the Philippine Islands, where Train ensured that their crews were well taken care of during a lengthy stay until they were able to return to Russia.

In November 1905, Train was at the center of a diplomatic dispute while with a group of American officers on a pheasant-hunting expedition near Nanjing (Nanking), China, when he accidentally shot a Chinese woman with birdshot, inflicting minor injuries on her. A mob of hundreds of Chinese villagers formed around Train's party and attacked it, pushing Train into the mud, seizing the officers' guns, and taking Train's son, Navy Lieutenant Charles R. Train, hostage. When the Asiatic Fleet landed 40 United States Marines to rescue the officers, the villagers attacked them with pitchforks and the Marines fired two shots. Local Chinese officials refused to return the officers' guns, but Train and his companions were able to extricate themselves without further injury to anyone. The governor of Nanjing later apologized for the mob's actions, returned the American officers' guns, and punished the ringleaders of the mob.

On 4 August 1906, Train died in Yantai (known to Westerners at the time as "Chefoo"), China, while still in command of the Asiatic Fleet. After a memorial ceremony, which Japanese Admiral Heihachiro Togo and other dignitaries attended at Yokohama, aboard Train's flagship, the battleship USS Ohio, the steamer Empress of China carried his body out of the harbor under escort en route to Washington, D.C.

In early 1907, the Asiatic Fleet was abolished, and its ships and personnel became the First Squadron of the United States Pacific Fleet.

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