On June 18, 1910, Theodore Roosevelt returned to New York City after a fifteen-month tour abroad, having travelled through Africa and western Europe. An elaborate city celebration drawing a million people marked his homecoming. Aboard the ocean liner Kaiserin Auguste Victoria ex-President and Mrs. Roosevelt were met by a revenue cutter, the Manhattan, carrying the Roosevelt children. TR then went aboard a larger cutter, the Androscoggin, and officially became a guest of the city. After boating up the Hudson River along the New Jersey shore to West Fifty-Ninth St., the Androscoggin moved back along the Manhattan shore to Battery Park, followed by a water parade of almost one hundred vessels. TR was greeted by Mayor William J. Gaynor at the Park, where both briefly spoke to an assembled crowd, with notables seated on a flag-draped stand expanded for the occasion to hold 600 people.
