All naval officers are of opinion that professionally the cruise was of great benefit both to the men and the ships. It was absolutely true, as Admiral Evans telegraphed the Navy Department from Magdalena Bay, that the vessels were in better condition when they arrived there than when they left Hampton Roads. They had been shaken down, as the expression goes. They had become a coherent force. A large quantity of work had been done on each of them such as is usually done in navy yards. The longer the cruise continued the more the truth of the naval saying that "the place for ships to be is at sea, not in navy yards" seemed confirmed. A large part of the routine work on the ships was taken up with drills preliminary to target practice. The purpose of a warship is to shoot; it is a truism to say it. Hence the large amount of time given to learning how to shoot accurately and quickly was precisely what was needed on the fleet. The value of all this work will become known when the Navy Department decides to make public such of the records as may be deemed desirable regarding the work at Magdalena Bay. One may not speak freely of that work, but it is not beyond the limits of propriety to say that the American people will not be ashamed of the men behind the guns when even partial results are made known. The voyage revealed the cruising qualities of the ships and many lessons were learned from incidental mishaps--as many lessons were learned at Magdalena Bay from similar causes as to the way to improve target shooting. On the Atlantic coast there were frequent minor breakdowns, boilers, condensers, steering engines and the like needing repairs. All these incidents showed not only how and where mishaps were likely to occur, but showed that it was possible to make repairs in such cases at sea. Although several ships dropped out of the column at various times only once was the fleet slowed down, and then only for a few hours while repairs were going on. The ships might fly "breakdown" pennants but they kept up right along. On the Pacific coast there were very few mishaps, and these chiefly relating to steering gear. One of the ships had a cylinder accident coming up to Santa Barbara roadstead, but the ship kept right along in the column. There is little doubt that if pleasure stops had not been made it would have been comparatively easy to take the fleet right on around the world without docking or sending them to a navy yard for repairs. Many officers in the fleet regret that such a course was not adopted, once it was decided to have the fleet encircle the globe, so as to make a record such as the naval world has scarcely dreamed of.