When I was a prep school student contemplating military service in 1959, the idea of a Navy humanitarian relief fleet, splash featured across that year’s 27 July Life Magazine, was inspirational by every measure. It was being advanced from the Pentagon by Navy Commander Frank Manson, and it garnered enthusiastic support in Congress from influential Senators Hubert H. Humphrey and George Aiken, as well as several House members. They sponsored twin resolutions asking President Eisenhower to put such a fleet in operation.

Except for a small medical aid group, Project Hope, overall fleet development was overshadowed by other Cold War challenges. In the 58 years since, the fleet’s creation has been repurposed by several dedicated officers. As each has advocated, it’s an idea that’s time has come. Yet there has never been complete follow through, and the idea’s time is now overdue.

The need for its creation and mission is ineluctable, given last year’s multiple disasters in Texas, Florid, and the Caribbean islands, each followed by uneven response to stricken U.S. citizens. The public call should be, “Action now!” against the carnage and ruination of global warming weather extremes and the mounting refugee surges of civil wars and simultaneous political upheavals.

While the Pentagon and OPNAV may presently lack the budget flush and the big post World War II mothball fleet resources of the fifties to apply, the creation should go forward to make the U.S. Navy a truly multitask force for defense and world good, living up to its ambassadorial imperative. To achieve that now demands the orchestrated focus of the President, Congress, Secretaries of Defense, Navy, the Joint Chiefs, Chief of Naval Operations, and fleet commanders and integrated allied forces.

The historical precedent for the Navy White Fleet has been set even longer. In 1907, when President Theodore Roosevelt dispatched 16 coal-burning battleships around the world to demonstrate the United States’ rise to world power, the international public opinion effect was electric.

For a new White Fleet support impact, it is axiomatic that nothing moves more material faster to anywhere than the U.S. military. Such speed and efficiency is the vital boost FEMA needs to get fully functioning on-scene when hurricanes, floods, fires and earthquakes threaten American and other lives.

To constitute the White Fleet, the Navy can recommission what reserve vessels it has, both with and beyond service life, to deploy sizable and capable unit platforms. As USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) demonstrated in the Indonesian earthquake/tsunami around Banda Aceh, a single carrier, only briefly on station, brought shore order, medical care, and relief supplies to 35,000 people.

In fact, CV and LPH carriers and LHD command vessels contain fresh water, generating and receiving capability to serve littoral and shore linkage.

White Fleet interface with its grey counterpart presents ideal training and readiness exercises for deck forces, cargo handling, supply corps, seabee battalions, engineering, medical, aviation, and small craft handling. When on and off mission deployment, both fleets support each other with active-duty and reserve manpower.

With its size and mission, the White Fleet command structure should parallel the active force, beginning with a four-star flag. Subordinate levels of unit and group ship operation and on board division leadership can be the same and complemented by BUMED and necessary field professional oversight. Fleet support must be augmented and divided into two ocean task groups to cope with relief calls.

Finally, multinational interaction of the White Fleet should remain under U.S. senior command and at the direction of the President. Foreign naval units of allied nations and United Nations assignment can and should join and operate with it on a “pay to play” basis of recent regional joint exercises. In every sense, the promise, practicality and effectiveness opportunities of the White Fleet are staring our national interest right in the face.

During his 50s, service in the OPNAV Congressional Liaison Office; subsequent tour at the Naval War College and throughout his senior career as a fleet public affairs officer; then retiree author and military historian, Captain Frank Manson remained dedicated to the White Fleet concept, up to his death in 2005. “The people of the U.S. are builders by nature,” he wrote, “they like positive and creative programs. And their organizational brilliance is beyond dispute. America may unilaterally never be able to bring peace to the world, but its leadership can prevent all from losing hope. That is why I propose the new White Fleet —to bring people closer to people.”

To address the magnitude of our present day relief urgency, his vision has to become reality, with the job beginning in E-Ring planning. Then we must pilot it past the shoals of budget, bureaucracy and politics. In this techno-social media-driven diplomacy we’re in now, the U.S. can and must show with its fleets, not its various “tweeting” intentions, but what it is capable of doing and expeditiously acting upon for global welfare and peace.