A Great Tragedy Impends: June to August 1914

Abstract

In the late spring of 1914, Roosevelt sailed again for Europe, arriving at Cherbourg on June 4 aboard the RMS Olympic. This trip had two main objectives: The first was to attend the wedding of his son Kermit to Belle Willard, the blonde socialite daughter of Joseph Edward Willard, the American ambassador to Spain. Besides this family obligation, this voyage also allowed the Colonel to accept an invitation to speak before the Royal Geographic Society in London to answer those who still disputed his claim to have charted earlier that year in South America an unknown “River of Doubt” as long as the Rhine.¹ It was in fact remarkable that Roosevelt was making the Atlantic voyage at all. Only a few months before he had almost died in the Amazonian jungles, at one point instructing Kermit, who came along as he had on the African safari four years before, to leave him behind and save himself and the remnants of their small party.