Ships
- USS Saratoga (CV-3) Captain from 11 July 1932 · Relieved on 31 December 1932
George Washington Steele, Jr., was born in Marion, Indiana, on 19 June 1879. His father, also George Washington Steele, had been a Union officer, a member of Congress, and the first governor of Oklahoma Territory. The son went to public school in Marion and to Shattuck School in Faribault, Minnesota, and then to the United States Naval Academy, where he graduated with the class of 1900. He was commissioned an ensign on 1 July 1902. On 1 July 1905 he was promoted to lieutenant, junior grade, and to lieutenant.
His early ships included the armored cruiser Brooklyn and the destroyer Barry. In 1903 he led a party sent to Beirut to recover the body of a murdered American consul, and the same year he took part in the international naval races at Kiel, where the American entry won the leading prize. After the Messina earthquake of 1908 he joined the relief work. On 21 April 1910 the Italian Red Cross awarded him its silver medal for that service.
Steele became a lieutenant commander on 1 July 1912. At the American entry into the First World War he was serving as aide to a British vice admiral, at sea in the cruiser Leviathan and in Washington. On 23 May 1917 he was made a commander, and the next day he went to the transport service in command of Henderson. Henderson sailed in the first American troop convoy to France. Steele kept the ship on that run through seven round trips, fourteen crossings, in waters menaced by submarines and mines. A temporary appointment as captain followed on 21 September 1918. He received the Navy Cross for his command of Henderson.
His captaincy was made permanent on 31 December 1921. A designated naval aviator, he commanded the rigid airship Los Angeles and the naval air station at Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1925 and 1926, during the airship's first years in American hands after her flight from Germany. From 1926 to 1928 he commanded the cruiser Pittsburgh on the Asiatic Station. In 1927, amid the fighting around Shanghai, he put a landing force ashore to protect foreign residents.
In 1928 the Navy sent him to Paris as naval attaché. He remained in that work through 1931, accredited as well to Madrid and Lisbon. A French decree of 7 May 1931 made him an officer of the Legion of Honor for his service in Paris. On his return to sea duty he commanded the aircraft of the Scouting Force and served with Carrier Division One, with duty in the seaplane tender Wright.
He took command of Saratoga on 11 July 1932. The ship had been laid down as a battle cruiser and finished as a carrier under the Washington Treaty. She had been in commission since November 1927, when Harry Ervin Yarnell was her first captain. Steele relieved Archibald Hugh Douglas, who had held the ship for the few weeks after Frank Robert McCrary left her. For the rest of 1932 Saratoga stayed in the Pacific Fleet's training routine on the California coast. Later that year she ran aground in fog. Steele refloated her, and she came off undamaged. A court-martial was convened in October, and in December he was passed over for promotion. Rufus Fairchild Zogbaum, Jr. relieved him on 31 December 1932. Steele left the active list that same day.
In retirement he worked for a time in private business, including a post with the Guaranty Trust Company in Paris in 1938. The Navy recalled him for the Second World War. From April 1942 to April 1944 he organized the service's aviation pre-flight schools and commanded several of them, including the school at Del Monte, California, and the unit at St. Mary's College. That work brought him the Legion of Merit. He died on 8 February 1955.