32nd President.  14x8.5 black and white photograph of FDR seated with White House photographer John Thompson, double matted and signed on the mat under the image, “For Johnny Thompson from his old friend Franklin D. Roosevelt.” There is a typed note affixed to the left of the inscription reading: “ Aboard U. S. S. Houston Panama Canal-July 1938 .” The photograph is framed to an overall size of 20.5x15.5.  Amazing image showing a near full-length image of Roosevelt (images showing him beneath the waist are quite uncommon) in formal but casual attire with a table full of cigars and cigarettes to his right.  Not examined out of frame but some minor wrinkling is noted, else a clean autographed item for display.  Frame with some wear.

President Roosevelt sailed on the “Houston” four times, in 1934, 1935, 1938, and 1939.

The USS “Houston” (CA-30) was launched by the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company on September 7, 1929. In Manila on November 19, 1940, she became the flagship of Admiral Thomas C. Hart, Commander of the Asiatic Fleet. On the night of the Pearl Harbor attack, the “Houston” left from Panay Island bound for Darwin, Australia, where she arrived on December 28, 1941. Following the Japanese victory at the Battle of the Java Sea on February 27, 1942, On the night of February 28th, the “Houston” and the Australian light cruiser HMAS “Perth” attempted to pass through Sunda Strait in an effort to reach the safer waters of the Indian Ocean. As they approached the entrance to the strait near midnight, they unexpectedly encountered a Japanese covering force of nearly one dozen destroyers, three cruisers, and numerous torpedo boats and minesweepers that were protecting the invasion fleet. The “Perth” was sunk, followed, shortly after midnight, by the “Houston,” after she had scored hits on three destroyers and sunk a minesweeper. Of the original crew of 1,061 men, 368 survived, becoming slave labor to the Japanese on “The Railway of Death” and “The Bridge on the River Kwai.” The U.S.S. “Houston” is remembered as “The Galloping Ghost of the Java Coast.” Captain Barker is quoted as having said sadly, but proudly, of his old command, “she went down fighting.”