The Germans could easily send their U-boats across the Atlantic. There was a possibility that they might strike quickly without warning. Naval strategists do not yet understand why Germany did not make an immediate dash against our coasts in the spring of 1917, instead of waiting until 1918. Allied and American officers alike expected the submarines to extend their operations to this side of the Atlantic when this country entered the war. It was necessary to provide for the fleet a rendezvous with which the Germans were not familiar, one easily defended, where battleships could carry on their work free from attack until the time came to bring them into action. But why Guacanayabo? Though you would hardly notice it on the average map, the Gulf of Guacanayabo is a sizeable body of water, extending in a sort of semicircle some seventy miles, the broadest part about fifteen miles wide. On the southern coast of Cuba, it extends from Santa Cruz del Sur to below Manzanillo, nearly to Cape Cruz. With plenty of deep water inside, once the main channel is closed, only a navigator familiar with the turnings and depths can navigate safely through the other channels, for the Gulf is surrounded by a chain of islands, with many shoals. Difficult for submarines to negotiate submerged, it is easily defended against them. When Admiral Mayo had placed his ships in this landlocked harbor, shut the door and turned the key, they were as safe as my lady's jewels in a safety deposit vault. At Guacanayabo the fleet continued its work, going out to sea for battle practice and long-range gunnery in the daytime, returning at night to conduct night firing with the secondary batteries, torpedo attack, and other exercises. There was even room in the Gulf to carry on torpedo firing and defense at 10,000 yards distance. There the fleet remained until it was ordered north, on March 20th. "I feel sure that if this force had engaged an enemy on its cruise north in the spring of 1917, the victory would have been ours," said Admiral Henry B. Wilson, commander of the flagship, and Admiral Joseph Strauss, in command of the _Nevada_, declared: "In April, 1917, we could have gone out in mid-ocean and engaged the German fleet and come out successfully. Our ships were superior; our guns were superior; I believe our morale was superior." Upon the arrival of the fleet, Yorktown became the center of battle training. During the entire war this base was one of the busiest places in America. Every ship was carrying on intensive training day and night--training gunners, engineers, firemen, deck officers and crews, armed guards for merchant vessels, men of every rank and rating to man transports, destroyers, patrol craft, and all the many vessels put into European and trans-Atlantic service. In addition to new men in their own crews, the special training squadron of older battleships trained more than 45,000 officers and men for service in other vessels.