 "Idaho" joined the battleship for a cruise of the Mediterranean.While still abroad, sale of the ship was being negotiated with the Greek government.Greece had become engaged in a naval arms race with the Ottoman Empire in the early 1910s; in 1910 the Ottomans had purchased a pair of German pre-dreadnoughts (renamed and ) and ordered dreadnought battleships from Britain in 1911 and 1914.