Battles of the Nineteenth Century, Page 153.

The Bombardment of Santiago-The First Landing in Eastern Cuba.

              On Saturday June 4^th there is an interesting entry in Consul Ramsden’s diary referring to the night after the Merrimac came in.  “Last night,” he writes, “just as I was going to bed, heavy firing began again, and lasted until twenty minutes past eleven, when an extra heavy report was heard, more like an explosion and after that all was still.  My wife had already gone to bed, and was sleepy, and would not get up, saying there would be plenty of time when they got nearer.  This time the firing was not rapid like that before daybreak, but more regular, and there were o quick firing guns.  It extended from Daiquiri to the Morro, and the localities varied between those two, backwards and forwards, and at times it seemed as if there were guns on the hills between here and the Lagunas.  There were the usual cannon reports made by steel guns, which we had not heard on previous occasions.  The latter shots were nearer to the Morro.  It was a splendid moonlight night, full moon, and we supposed the firing was to cover landing parties.  This morning I could get no news as to the cause of the firing, and now, though I have seen the general in command, the Military Governor and the Port Captain, I know no more about it; nor do they.  They assure me that along the coast, though the flashes could be plainly seen, neither shells nor shot fell on the coast.  It looks to me very much as if the destroyer Terror, which was at Porto Rico, had been trying to get in here, and that the American fleet was pummelling her, and perhaps finished her up, but this is only my conjecture.  There are nineteen ships outside.  No one knows the reason of last nights firing, but they are running the story that it was an attempt to bombard the town, which most certainly it was not.”

            What had really happened was that the American fleet was having another great battle with imaginary torpedo boats.  The New Orleans gave the alarm.  Then the New York and the rest of the fleet began to see torpedo boats, and blazed away at them.  One ship claimed to have sunk a two-funnelled destroyer close under her bows.  Another time the Oregon claimed to have cut a destroyer in two with a 13-inch shell as she ran into Morro Castle.

            A full account of the fight is to read in at least one popular American history of the war.  But the Spanish destroyers were certainly not out, and as Lieutenant Fremont, of the U.S. torpedo boat Porter, puts it, the fleet was firing at “caves in the shore line, moving trains on shore, and the tops of big waves.”

             Next day thee were some sceptics in the fleet who declared that they had all been the victims of a false alarm.  They were temporarily silenced by the discovery of two bronze Whitehead torpedoes floating on the sea off the harbour mouth.  The Porter found them and tried to pick them up.  One sank; the other was safely got on board, after Ensign Gillis, serving on board the boat, had pluckily swum to the torpedo, grappled it in the rough water, and swimming beside it, unscrewed the “war-head” and made it less dangerous to handle.  It was considered unsafe to leave the torpedoes afloat, even though it was risky to meddle with them, for left alone in the rough water they might have automatically exploded themselves on chance collision with one of the fleet.  For a while this discovery was taken to be a proof that there had been a real night attack, but they were subsequently identified as Whitehead torpedoes discharged by the Spaniards against the Merrimac on the Friday morning.

             Admiral Sampson had now a very powerful fleet before Santiago.  He had concentrated under his flag early all the best fighting ships.  He had with him the armoured cruisers New York and Brooklyn, the battleship Iowa, Indiana, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Texas, the cruisers New Orleans, Minneapolis, Detroit, Marblehead, and Nashville, the armed liner St. Louis, and a number of smaller craft.  The monitors and some of the gunboats were blockading Havana and Western Cuba.  The St. Paul, Harvard, and Yale were engaged in scouting duties off Puerto Rico and in the Atlantic.  The Columbia was repairing after serious collision with a merchant steamer.  Sampson might at any moment have to detach part of his force for other operations, for there were persistent rumours that the second Spanish fleet under Admiral Camara had either left or was on the point of leaving Cadiz.  This squadron was to be made up of the battleship Pelayo, these armoured cruisers Emperador Carlos Quinto, Cardinal Cisnervs, and Principe de Asturias, the second-class cruiser Alfonso XIII and Lepanto, and a number of armed liners and torpedo craft.  The fact, however was that this second squadron was in a very backward state.  This however was not fully realised in America, and the more possibility of its appearance increased the anxiety to deal effectually and at once with Cervera.

             On Sunday June 5^th Admiral Sampson sent in a letter to the Governor of Santiago, General Linares, demanding the surrender of the city within twenty-four hours, under threat of bombardment.  Linares answered proudly that he would not surrender within ten years.  Accordingly Admiral Sampson prepared to bombard the forts and the harbour.  He had received intimation from Washington that a land force would be sent to enable him to capture the place, and he therefore began a series of reconnaissances with a view to selecting a point for disembarkation.  If heavy siege guns could be placed on the neighbouring hills, the city and the Spanish fleet would be at their mercy, or if the forts at the entrance of the port could be silenced and demolished and the minefield destroyed, the fleet could force the passage into the harbour.  The work of the fleet in the next few days was intended as a preliminary to these operations.

             The weather was very bad on the Monday morning when the American fleet steamed in towards the sea forts of Santiago in two lines, cleared for action.  It was oppressively hot, rain was falling, and at times the heat and wet formed a dense mist upon the sea.  Of the two lines, that to the eastward, led by Admiral Sampson in person, was formed by the New York, Oregon, Iowa, New Orleans, and the auxiliary cruiser Yankee, this last largely manned by naval reserve volunteers.  The western line, led by Commodore Schley, was made up of the Brooklyn, Texas, Massachusetts, and Marblehead.  The two lines began to steam in towards the land at six a.m., forming in battle array some six miles from Morro Castle, and gradually diminishing the distance till the range was less than a mile and a half.  The weather was so bad that to open at long range would have been useless.  The first shots were fired from the big guns of the Iowa at half past seven, and the other ships then joined in, the firing being kept up heavily till ten.  After that, till near three, some of the ships fired an occasional shot, but the main bombardment may be said to have lasted less than three hours.

            The western squadron fired on Socapa and Morro, avoiding as far as possible the old tower of the fortress where Hobson was believed to be in prison.  It also sent shells over the hills into the harbour.  The eastern squadron attacked an earthwork battery recently constructed near Aguadores, a small town to the east of Morro.  It also bombarded the light railway that runs along the coast on this side, and sent a shower of shells here and there into the country between Santiago and the sea.  The Admirals report on the day’s work claimed a complete success.  This was his telegraphic despatch to Washington: -

            “Bombarded forts at Santiago de Cuba half past seven to ten a.m. June 6^th.  Have silenced works quickly without injury of any kind, though within 2,000 yards.

             The newspaper reports enlarged on this.  According to them, Santiago had been shelled into silence,” and its sea forts were utterly wrecked.            

             Without having the least desire to depreciate the exploits of the United States, it is well to try to estimate these bombardments at their true value and see both sides of the case.  For sooner or later some of our own coast towns may have to face the threat of bombardment, and it is well that undue should be obviated by definite knowledge of what is likely to happen in such a case.  It may be safely asserted that this great bombardment of the Santiago forts was absolutely without results.  The despatch of General Linares, in which he reported to Madrid that the damage done was unimportant, was ridiculed at the time, but it is completely confirmed by the independent testimony of Consul Ramsden.  In the first place the Spanish batteries were not silenced for the simple reason that they never made any serious attempt to the 9^th: -“The news telegrams say that Sampson reports having silenced the forts here.  As a matter of fact, he did not even dismount a gun, and the Socapa battery fired twenty-seven shots, and that of Punta Gorda three.  They did not fire more because between the heavy rain and the smoke from the tremendous fire of the Americans they could not see; and I myself happened to see the three shots fired from the Punta Gorda battery, two of which were towards the end, and the third was the last shot fired, as I remarked at the time.”

           No wonder there was any casualties in the American fleet.  The only ship hit was the Massachusetts, which had one of her fighting tops damaged.  The two squadrons were in action against batteries, which attempted no reply.  Even if they had answered there were only three modern long-range guns on the whole sea front of Santiago.  The fleet therefore had no opposition to overcome.  It fired at least 1,500 heavy shells, perhaps twice that number.  The fire was at times terrific in its intensity.  Mr. Ramsden notes how his wife asked him “what the sound like a railway moving in the air was, and was consider surprised to find it proceeded from the shells flying about.”  Hobson watched the bombardment from his window in the Morro tower, and tells how furious the fire was.  “Each shell,” he says, sang a different tune.  The smaller shells moaned and screeched as they passed, but the 13^th-inch shells (each weighing nearly half a ton) left a sound behind them like that of the sudden and continued smashing of a huge pane of glass.  The crackling was sharp and metallic, something like sharp thunder without the roar, and the sound continued, but decreased after the shell had gone.  In many instances the shells struck projecting points of rock, and ricocheting, spun end over end across the hills.  The sound they made as they struck again and again was like the short sharp puffs of a locomotive starting with a heavy train.”  No wonder there was something like a panic among the civil population of the city; but for all that, the troops and the volunteers turned out promptly when the rumour came that the Americans were trying to land to the eastward.  And now as to the actual damage done by this heavy fire.  Several shells fell in the bay, but the only ship hit was the Reina Mercedes.  Six were killed and seventeen wounded on board of her.  One of the fatally injured was Lieutenant Acosta, who had taken care of Hobson when he was brought on board a few days before.  A shell took off his right leg, but the bravely continued to give orders as to the removal and care of the other wounded till he died.  Hobson was much affected when told of his gallant and chivalrous adversary’s death.  Three times the shells set the Mercedes on fire, but the flames were promptly extinguished.  Two officers were killed and four men wounded at the Morro barracks, the total loss of the troops being three killed and eighteen wounded.  Some houses near Morro and Socapa and of Smith Cay were damaged, an iron bridge on the coastline was injured, and the roadbed torn up by the shells.  The ground beyond the line for a couple of miles inland was strewn in places with the fragments of shells, chiefly six and eight inch projectiles.  Altogether it was a small result for such an expenditure of ammunition, and affords a striking proof of the uncertainty of bombardments even by skilled gunners with modern weapons, and without having to face any return fire.

            The rumour current in Santiago during the bombardment that the Americans were trying to land was well founded, though the descent was made not near the city, but seventeen miles away to the eastward at Daiquiri or Baiquiri, a seaside village between the Sierra Maestra and the shore.  At Daiquiri there was a small iron pier, used in shipping minerals from the neighbouring mines, and close to the pier was a station on the coastline.  The possession of the pier, the only one on the coast for miles, would be of great value to an invading army, and if the Spaniards had known their business better they would have promptly destroyed it.  During the bombardment the lighter cruisers ran down to Daiquiri and opened with their quick firers on the village, which was held by a Spanish detachment of cavalry and infantry under Colonel Aldea.  At the same time a small force of insurgents appeared on the wooded slopes above the place.  Aldea withdrew his men, and his report asserted that he had no casualties, and that the only men hit by the American shells were some of the Cubans who approached the village before the gunners on the ships realised that it was evacuated.  As soon as Daiquiri was clear of the enemy 500 American marines were landed at their pier and joined hands with the insurgents.  Aldea fell back into the hills, skirmishing at long range.  The Americans held Daiquiri till next day and then re-embarked.  The reasons for this retreat are not quite clear.  They seem to have been that the Cubans were not so strong in the neighbourhood as had been anticipated’ the marines were wanted for work elsewhere, and the arrival of the invading army was not so near at hand as had been anticipated when the occupation of the village and pier was ordered, though the embarkation of the troops at Tampa had actually begun.

             The American staffs seems at this period not to have actually decided when the descent was to be made, for on the day that Daiquiri was evacuated Admiral Sampson took steps to occupy Port Guantanamo, nearly forty miles east of Santiago.  At half past five on Tuesday morning the cruiser Marblehead, the auxiliary cruisers St. Louis and Yankee, and two gunboats, steamed into the outer bay of Port Guantanamo, just as the sun rose over the sea.  Spaniards were evidently unprepared for the visit, and made a very small show of resistance.  An old battery on the east point, at the entrance to the inner bay, and another near the town of Caimamera, fired a few shots at the large ships, falling, however, to hit them, but under the storm of shells discharged from the quick firers in reply the gunners rapidly evacuated the batteries.  On the point at the eastern side of the outer bay known as Playa del Este there was a telegraph station, into which ran the shore ends of cables connected with the Haytian submarine telegraph, and another cable ran across the bay to Caimamera, linking the cable station with the land lines to Santiago.  The Marblehead knocked the cable to pieces with a couple of shells, and the gunboats grappled and cut three of the cables.  This operation deprived the Spaniards at Santiago of the line they usually communicated with Europe.  Henceforth they were only able to send messages by a round about route through Havana, Cienfuegos, and the South American lines.

              There was a small Spanish lying off Caimamera, but she took refuge in the inner bay, where report said there were a couple of colliers waiting for Cervera.  No attempt was made to capture and bring them out, for it was believed that the entrance to Joa Bay was heavily mined.  So far as it went the operation was a complete success, but this was only its first stage.  Sampson meant to secure possession of the Playa del Este point in order to establish cable communication thence with the United States; he further wished to hold Guantanamo Bay as a shelter for his small craft in case of bad weather, and a place where he could form a coal depot for the blockading fleet.  It might also be used as a landing place for the army, though the distance from Santiago was against this.  It had been hoped that on the appearance of the squadron the Cuban insurgents would come down in force and secure the ground on the east of the port, but they failed to put in an appearance, so the actual occupation of Playa del Este had to be deferred till arrival of troops from the States.

            The first of these, a battalion of marines, 850 strong, under Colonel Huntington, arrived off Guantanamo on board the transport Panther from New York on the Friday morning.  A formidable squadron had been detached from the blockading fleet to cover their landing.  The Marblehead, the Yankee, and the two gunboats had been watching the port since the bombardment of Tuesday.  On Thursday evening she was joined by the battleship Oregon, the torpedo boat Porter, and two colliers.  Early on Friday afternoon the ships entered the outer bay, the Oregon leading the line.  A Spanish camp and blockhouse on the shore were so hurriedly evacuated when the ships opened fire that the first landing parties found watches and other personal property in the tents, and the Spanish flag was still lying from the flagstaff.  It was hauled down and the Stars and Stripes rose in its place.  The Spaniards, as they abandoned Caimamera, set fire to the little town.  The marines encamped on the hill near Playa del Este, and pushed out a line of pickets into the dense bush and broken ground in their front.

             All was quiet during the Friday night, but about three on the following afternoon firing began in the bush.  Spanish guerrillas,, well armed with Mauser rifles and evidently experts in bush fighting, were stalking and driving in the pickets.  As they fell back towards the ridge the fire became heavier, always from invisible foes, and bullets began to whistle into the camp.  A sergeant and two men were shot dead while the pickets were retiring, and their bodies lay for a while on the ground held by the enemy.  They were recovered a little later.  The Spaniards had taken their hats, boots, and cartridge belts.  The shots that killed them had been fired at close quarters.  At long range the bullet of the Mauser repeating rifle makes a small clean cut wound, but at short ranges, or if the bullet has been deformed by a ricochet, the wound is large, jagged, and gaping.  The sight of such wounds was something unfamiliar to the American Officers and soldiers, and they formed the hasty conclusion that the marks on the bodies of their comrades indicated brutal mutilation after death.  Admiral Sampson, with out further inquiry gave official sanction to the report.  “Outpost of four marines killed and their bodies barbarously mutilated,” was his cable message to Washington.  Immediately there was a loud outery against Spanish savagery.  Cervera’s courtesy in the affair of the Merrimac had led to expression of kindly feeling towards he Spaniards.  The news from Guatanamo caused a violent reaction, and might easily have led to a cry for no quarter in the Cuban war.  One leading newspaper declared that, after such a deed as this, the extermination of every Spaniard in the island would be a service to humanity.  A few days later, however, expert reports from the surgeons proved that the Mauser bullets had not injured except the bodies.

              To return to the story of the skirmish, the firing went on all through the night.  Surgeon Gibbs, attached to the marine battalion, was killed in the camp, but the only other casualty was one man wounded.  The Spaniards kept under cover, only showing themselves once when soon after midnight they tried to rush the ridge.  No one could sleep with the continually crackling fire of rifles and the whistle and patter of falling bullets, and there were endless narrow escapes.  The warships turned their searchlights on the bush.  The marines, lying down on the crest, fired at the flickering flashes of the Mausers; a steam launch with a machine gun in her bows ran close in to the shore and tried to enfilade the enemy, but still the firing went on.  Only that the guerrillas were such bad marksmen, the marines on the hill would have lost heavily.

             At sunrise on Sunday morning the Marblehead signalled from the bay that there was a mass of the enemy to the right of the camp, apparently regular infantry.  She shelled their position and then retired.  Half an hour later the battleship Texas arrived from before Santiago, and her captain gave timely help to the weary garrison of the camp by landing a party of his marines who had had a good nights rest.  They brought with them two Colt machine guns.  There were mounted in a trench on the ridge.  Colonel Huntington had decided to withdraw his camp to the slope of the hill, keeping only a firing line on the crest, as the tents on the hill formed too conspicuous a mark for the Spanish sharpshooters.  The enemy kept up a desultory fire all day.  It was not even stopped by the intervention of the big guns of the Texas and the Marblehead, which shelled the woods during the morning.  The enemy’s riflemen even replied to the artillery with their Mausers, bullets came whistling over he docks of the two ships, and the Cuban pilot of the Marblehead was wounded.

              It was very rarely that the enemy hidden in the trees could be seen even with the keen anxious eyes and powerful field glasses and telescopes that searched the bush from the ships and the camp.  When they were “spotted” it was seen that they had adopted the tactics of Malcolm’s army when it came to Birnam wood on the march against Macbeth: -

“Let every soldier hew him down a bough,

And I bear before him; thereby shall we shadow

The numbers of our host.”

             The Spaniards had cut fronds of fern and large palm leaves, and fastened them in their caps, belts and bandoliers.  Thus they were unseen as they worked through the bush, and could even stealthily and quietly cross openings in it unobserved.  It was the Cuban guides who first called the attention if the Americans to this ruse of forest warfare, and it was curious that often a Cuban scout with his unaided sight was able to point out the enemy’s skirmishes where the officers with their field glasses had failed to distinguish them.  What were the enemy’s losses no one could say.  All the fire from the camp was at random into the bush, and the Spaniards seemed to be very little impressed by it.

             Some field pieces and a fresh party of marines were landed in the evening.  The crest of the hill had been entrenched during the day, a reinforcement of sixty Cubans had come in whom, it was hoped would be useful as bush fighters, and the camp was in a better position.  As soon as night fell, the Spanish again closed in upon the front, and the flicker and crackle of their rifles went on all night.  The losses of the marines were their sergeant major killed and five men wounded.  Everyone was exhausted with want to sleep.  Happily, however, for the little garrison, the Spanish fire almost ceased during the Monday; further Cuban reinforcements to the number of about 300 were ferried across the bay by the boats of the warships, and the night that followed was perfectly quiet.  All except the men on outpost duty slept the deep sleep of wearied men.  The Cuban scouts had by this time found the position of the Spanish camp in the bush, and on Tuesday it was determined to attack it.  It was about four miles away at a point where there were the only wells of good water to be found for miles in the bush.  In the forenoon a little column nearly 600 strong marched out from the American camp.  It consisted of half a battalion of marines under Captain Elliot and Lieutenant Nevile and Mahoney and a company of Cubans under Colonels Laborde and Tomas.  Ranks have a tendency to run high in Cuban armies, however small the force nevertheless, though the two colonels were present the captain kept command of the united force.  Shortly before midday the troops advancing through dense bush came to the top of a ridge from which the Spanish camp was sighted a little more than half a mile in front.  For some time the officers had noticed frequent calls like those of a wood pigeon.  They were really the signals of the Spanish scouts falling back quietly on a prepared position in front of the camp.  There suddenly opened a heavy fire from a line of trenches concealed in the deep bush.  Not a man was to be seen, but the Mauser bullets came ripping through the tangle of fern, palm and cactus.  The attacking force replied-the Cubans widely, the marines with steady volleys.  A signaller on the ridge opened communication with the gunboat Dolphin, which had been steaming along the shore inside the bay, and indicated to her the position of the Spanish camp, which she proceeded to shell very effectually.  After standing the cross fire for some time Spaniards began to give way. The guns of the Dolphin curiously enough covered their retreat all intentionally.  Captain Elliot tried to signal to her that the Spaniards were going and he wanted to push on and cut them off, but it was some time before he succeeded in stopping her fire, and until he did so he could not advance on to the ground swept by her quick firers.  When at last he rushed up to the camp he surprised part of the Spanish rearguard, taking prisoners a lieutenant and eighteen men.  From these it was learned that the force, which had so persistently harassed the camp, consisted of six companies of Spanish regulars and two companies of volunteer guerrillas. 

             They had lost forty killed in the action; these were found on the ground.  They had carried off some wounded with them in their retreat.  The loss of the victors was only six-namely, one of the marines seriously wounded, and two Cubans killed and three wounded.  The camp was burned, the wells filled with stones and rubbish, and the column returned to camp.  After this the attacks of the Spanish ceased.

            Such was the first fight on Cuban soil.  It was a series of mere skirmishes, only important because it was the first actual experiences of what the Spaniards could do on land.  It increased the growing feeling that the struggle for Cuba would be long and costly, and made men pay little attention to Admiral Sampson’s prediction that, within twenty-four hours of the landing of even 10,000 men, Santiago could be easily captured.

             The Spaniards had been driven from their camp on the east side of the bay on the 14^th of June.  One of the cut cables was picked up and connected with the station behind the marine camp, and communication was established via Hayti with the United States.  Further progress in the occupation of Port Guantanamo was made on the 16^th, when the squadron in the bay utterly wrecked a battery beyond Caimamera, which the Spaniards had occupied.  In moving out from the attack the Texas fouled and dragged after her a self acting torpedo, which ought to have been exploded by the contact with her side, but it was out of order, a heavy growth of barnacles having completely clogged the lever of the firing key.     

            During these days of anxious waiting for the arrival of the transports with the invading army Admiral Sampson’s fleet before Santiago was not quite idle.  The dynamite cruiser Vesuvius had been for some time under his orders, but so far she had only been used as a despatch boat.  Among naval men there was a certain amount of doubt as to how her guns would act in real warfare, notwithstanding the test made in peace experiments, and the Admiral had till now hesitated to make use of her in his attacks on the forts.  Her three guns were fixed diagonally in her dock, the muzzles projecting, the breeches and loading arrangements being under cover below.  Each threw a shell or “aerial torpedo” loaded with 250 pounds of guncotton.  They were colossal air guns, the range varying from 1,000 to 1,500 yards, the range varying from 1,000 to 1,500 yards, according to the compression of the air pumped into them, and the direction or aim being given by altering the position of the ship.  At such short range against good gunners there would be great risk of the dynamite gun being hit while the shell was moving through it, in which case gun and ship would be “hoist with their own petard.”  But the bad gunnery of the Spaniards seemed to minimise this risk, and for further safety the Vesuvius was first brought into action at night.  On the evening of Monday the 13^th towards midnight, he steamed in close to the harbour mouth and discharged three of her shells in the direction of the Socapa battery.  The story of this first experiment with dynamite gun in war is worth telling in detail.  Here is the impression of it given by one of the best of the correspondents of the fleet, the representative of the New York Herald-an impression apparently shared by his collegues, some of whom used still more picturesque language on the subject: -

             “Three shells, each containing two hundred pounds of guncotton, were fired last night from the dynamite guns of the Vesuvins at the hill at the western entrance to Santiago Harbour, on which there is a fort.  It was the first test of a dynamite cruiser in actual warfare.  The frightful execution done by those three shots will be historic.  Guns in that fort had not been silenced when the fleet drew off after the attack that followed the discovery of the presence of the Spanish fleet in the harbour.  In the intense darkness of last night the Vesuvius steamed in to close range and let go one of her mysterious missiles.  She was about half a mile from the beach, west of the Morro.  The Oregon’s searchlight played on her mark ashore.  Lieutenant Commander Pillsbury gave the word to fire.  Lieutenant Quimby opened the air vent.  There was no flash, no smoke.  There was no noise at first.  The pneumatic guns on the little cruiser did their work silently.  It was only when they felt the shock that the men on the other warship knew the Vesuvius was in action.  The first shot exploded on the hillside below the battery.  The second struck close to the Spanish position.  From what I know of the position of the Spanish torpedo boats in Santiago Harbour, it seemed to me, looking from the sea, that they might have been struck.  The third load of guncotton was dropped on the very crest of the hill from which a battery was being fired the other day.  After her last shot the Vesuvius went away at a sixteen-knot gait.  Two shells fell just beyond her as she was departing.  A few seconds after the gun was fired there was a frightful convulsion on the land.  On the hill, where the Spanish guns had withstood the missiles of the ordinary ships of war, tons of rock and soil leaped high in air.  The land was smitten as by an earthquake.  Terrible echoes rolled around and around through the shaken hills and mountains.  Sampson’s ships, far out to sea, trembled with the awful shock.  Dust rose to the clouds and did the scene of destruction.  Then came a long silence; next another frightful upheaval, and following it a third so quickly that the results of the work of the two mingled in midair.  Another stillness, and then two shots from a Spanish battery, that, after the noise of the dynamite, sounded like the crackle of firecrackers.  The Vesuvius had tested herself.  She was found perfect as a destroyer.  She proved that no fortification could withstand her terrible missiles.”

            Of course it was difficult to know what had occurred on shore.  The fact was that, two of the shells having failed to explode, the third made a big hole in a field on the top of the Socapa headland.  The gunners got a glimpse of the Vesuvins and blazed away at her with the very guns she was expected to destroy.  The deluded Spaniards did not know that anything particular had occurred.  Consul Ramsden gives the impression current in the town: “The day passed quietly,” he writes, “until half past eleven at night, when, just as I was getting into bed, shots were heard.  There were only eight fired, and we went to sleep.  It seems that some ship came in near, and they fired at her, and she answered.”  So much for the terrible destruction caused by this first eruption of the Vesuvius.

             Before going on to tell the story of the invasion it will be well to complete the record of these occasional bombardments of Santiago by the fleet.  They all point the same moral, that bombardment causes, in most cases, more noise than harm, and against brave men who remember Rudyard Kipling’s rule that “noise never frightens a soldier,” they are a costly and inefficient means of attack.  At dawn on the day after the exploit of the Vesuvius the New Orleans signalled that the Spaniards were mounting new guns, and was given permission to stop them by shelling the batteries.  She kept at it for about ten minutes, firing some 150 shots.  The Socapa replied without succeeding in hitting her.  Two men were wounded in the battery, and one on board a ship.  Several of the shots from the cruiser were too high, and fell far up the harbour near Ratones Cay.  “Nobody seemed much the worse, and people did not bother their heads much about it,” is Consul Ramsden’s note on the brief bombardment.

            On the Wednesday evening (June 15^th) the Vesuvius was given another chance.  This time the point aimed for was the upper end of the harbour mouth near Cay Smith, where it was believed the Spanish destroyers lay.  As before, two shells failed to explode, but the third was more successful.  To quote the same correspondent: “From where the fleet lay the entrance to the harbour looked in the black night like a door opening into the livid fire of a Titanic furnace.  A crater big enough to hold a church was blown out of the side of Cay Smith.”  We happen to have an interesting account of what did occur from the other side in our consul’s diary.  Thus it runs: -

             “At night on the 15^th we heard a few shots, and one very loud one.  An officer of the Pluton told me that a big shell, which looked like a comet as it came somewhat slowly through the air, fell near them, between Smith Cay, and then came travelling in the water by means of a screw, and burst just in front of the ship.  He says that had theirs been a heavy ship it would have burst it up, but the little Pluton, which only draws 7 ½ feet, was just lifted out of the water, and everyone on board was thrown off his feet, but no one really hurt.  The water round was strewn with dead fish, and the Mercedes also felt the concussion, which was behind the Pluton.  He says it was a dynamite shell from the pneumatic gun if the Vesuvius.”

               The description of the screw like attachment to the shell shows how carefully the Spanish officer observed it.  The dynamite shells have an arrangement of the kind to steady them I their flight.  It was one more experiment proving that dynamite ships are not such fearful engines of war.  The American navy has accepted the adverse view and will have no more of them.

            As before, the midnight eruption of the Vesuvius was the prelude to a bombardment at dawn.  The first shots were fired just before half past six, and the bombardment went on for a little over an hour.  The ships engaged were the cruisers New York, Brooklyn, and New Orleans, and the battleship Iowa, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Texas.  According to press reports they fired 5,000 heavy shells, but other data point to this being an exaggeration, the real number being about 2,500.

             No shots were fired at the tower of Morro Castle, because it was believed that Hobson and his comrades were still imprisoned there.  They had, however been removed some days before to one of the barracks in the city.

             As usual, the Spanish fire was ill directed and harmless, though the range was never over 3,000 yards, and all the ships engaged were large targets.  The gunners could therefore fire from the American ships with little more risk than if they were engaged in shooting for prizes.  The impression on board the fleet was that the batteries were seriously injured, and that some of them were utterly wrecked and disarmed.  Towards the end of the hour very few shots came from the shore, but the Spaniards firing on the fleet as it withdrew, the shots falling harmlessly in its wake, showed that the batteries were not actually silenced.  There was however no serious damage done.  The Spaniards lost very few men, and the injuries to the batteries could be repaired in an hour.  Several shells flying too high passed over the headlands and fell into the bay.  Two struck the water opposite the public wharf of the city.  Many more fell lower down the harbour, in the water or on the shore.  One struck close to Cervera’s flagship, as she lay at her moorings near Ratones Cay, and sent up a fountain of water as high as her mast.  At the Morro batteries one man was killed and six wounded; at the Socapa three were killed and four wounded.  In all, there were fourteen casualties.  Such is Ramsden’s record of the day.  One of the men killed at Socapa was hit fairly by the exploding shell, and only half his body could be found.  One of the guns in the battery was completely buried by the mass of earth blown from the rampart by an exploding shell.

             Altogether the bombardment had proved as ineffectual as its predecessors.  These results seem to suggest that even a first class modern fleet would have a very rough experience if pitted against well-constructed forts armed with numerous heavy guns and served by well-trained gunners.  The Spanish forts at Santiago were partly improvised earthworks.  Ill trained artillerists, who had evidently had very little peace practice, manned them.  But it is only fair to add that these Spanish gunners had to work with, for the most part, old fashioned weapons, of short range and of no great accuracy, even in the best of hands.  Sampson had an idea that he had to deal with a formidable array of heavy guns of modern date.  We know now, after the event, what the armament of the sea front of Santiago was.  Most of the guns at the Morro batteries were old and inefficient pieces, only fit for an artillery museum or a saluting battery.  There were among them a few small Krupps, with an effective range of under 2,000 yards, and useless against armour.  The guns at Estrella and Santa Catalina were of the same type.  At Punta Gorda, in a new earthwork, there were three mortars with a range of 800 yards, intended to prevent the forcing of the channel, and one long range Hontoria gun of six-inch calibre, taken from the Mercedes. At the Socapa there were in the upper battery some old guns, and two more six-inch Hontorias.  In another battery, lower down the slope, there were some light modern quick firers.  These were mounted chiefly to protect the submarine mines in the entrance.  The only really formidable guns on the whole front were the three Hontorias.  These were all that had even a chance of seriously injuring the opposing fleet.  The other guns were only used to play a game of bluff, and to make the attacking force believe that there were facing strongly armed batteries.

             Nor was the torpedo defence of Santiago much more formidable than that by artillery.  There were two lines of submarine mines at the entrances.  One of seven mines ran from Socapa to the Estrella battery.  The battery of light quick firers at Socapa protected it, but the cables ran into Estrella, and the firing keys were there.  Two, perhaps three of these mines were exploded the night the Merrimac ran in, so that there must have been a serious gap in this outer line.  The inner line of six mines ran from Socapa to Cay smith, and the Reina Mercedes was for awhile moored just behind it, with her torpedo tubes pointed across the channel, so as to have a shot with them at anything that came round Socapa Point.  After the performances of the Vesuvius it was considered dangerous to keep such a heavy ship so near the harbour mouth, and she was taken further up the bay.  There were no torpedoes in the channel between Cay Smith and Punta Gorda.  A chain blocked it.  It would not have been a difficult matter for the Americans to destroy this very imperfect mine field.  When the Merrimac ran in, the Spaniards suspected that she was towing a cable with a string of counter mines behind her, and were surprised that no explosions followed in the channel.  It was hoped that the shells of the Vesuvius would destroy some of the mines, but it is not certain that any of them were damaged in this way.  The channel was supposed to be full of them, but there were never more than thirteen mines in position, just as there were never more than three armour-piercing guns in the batteries.

              It is curious that Admiral Sampson did not discover this state of things.  It is still more curious that, having in his own estimation repeatedly silenced the batteries and found by actual experience that they always failed to damage his ships, he did not risk some of his vessels in the attempt to force the entrance.  With his enormous superiority of force he could have afforded to take some risk.  But he took none, although the experience of the Merrimac attempt had shown that a large ship could run the gauntlet of the batteries.  His lack of enterprise it was that necessitated a costly and dangerous land campaign.  But for his call for the land forces to help him to destroy Cervera’s fleet or force it out of its stronghold, the advice of General Miles would have been taken and the invasion of Cuba deferred until the proper season for land operations.

              There was another defect, and a still more serious one, in the defensive resources of Santiago of which the American commanders were not aware.  If they had known of it, the fact would have materially influenced there plans and perhaps spared them the land expedition in the sickly rainy season.  Santiago had from the first possessed no large store of provisions.  It was now rapidly approaching a state of famine.  On the day of the third bombardment meat was at eighty cents a pound, and unless one went early to market there was none at any price.  Flour had run short, and was being eked out with rice.  Vegetables were scarcely to be had.  The blockade alone would before very long starve the Spanish squadron into venturing to sea and force the weak garrison of the city to evacuate the place.  It was reported in the American newspapers that Santiago was provisioned for a year.  If it had been, the result of the summer campaign might have been different.

             But it must also be said that Cervera’s lack of initiative was something far worse than Sampson’s.  He ought to have made use of his stay at Santiago to clean up his ships and get their machinery into good order.  It was not beyond the resources of his engineers to get the Hontoria guns, which were left on the Mercedes, fitted in the barbettes of the Colon.  Considering the wild excitement that false alarms had caused more than once in the American fleet at night and the anxious strain caused by the presence of his torpedo destroyers in the port, he ought to have made some real use of them.  Every night the blockading fleet kept its searchlights playing on the entrance to the bay, watching for a possible sortie of his cruisers.  A sailor with a little more dash would have sent out his torpedo boats to throw the fleet into confusion, and while the searchlights were seeking for those wasps of the sea, he would have dashed out with his cruisers and swept through the hostile fleet with all his guns ablaze.  If he got through he might hope to shake off all but the swiftest of the enemy in a few hours steaming, and then he might try the chance of battle with the foremost of his pursuers.  Such a plan might have ended in disaster, but it could not be worse disaster than awaited him.  But if he had been the man to play this bold game, he would never have shut himself up in the first instance behind the headlands of Santiago Bay.

               While General Linares and Admiral Cervera were preparing to hold Santiago against the American fleet and army, Marshal Blanco was making much more elaborate preparations for the defence of Havana, and he had more abundant resources at his disposal for this purpose.  As soon as the war began he had withdrawn most of the outlying garrisons from the interior of the province, and was thus able to concentrate some 50,000 men in and around the capital.  Many of these were employed with the help of civilian labour in surrounding the city on the landside with a strong girdle of earthworks, shelter trenches and wire entanglements.

              Although there were persistent reports of disorders in the city, it is certain that Blanco found not the least difficulty in preserving order.  The cafes and theatres were open, and the place did not present the aspect of a city blockaded by a hostile squadron and threatened with a siege at an early date.  Although some supplies ran short, the city never felt anything like scarcity.  The blockade was to a great extent relaxed as soon as Cervera’s fleet appeared in the West Indies, the few ships that watched the harbour lying far out to sea, and being deprived of the help of the torpedo boats.  On the few occasions when the blockading cruisers same in close the gunners on the sea front, especially those at the Reina battery, shot so well as to impress the enemy with the idea that it was an unnecessarily risky performance.  The inefficiency of the blockade resulted in its being at least once broken by a large steamer with a valuable cargo of provisions.  But the regular source of supplies for Havana came from another quarter.  Blanco kept open communications across the island with the small harbour of Batabano on the south coast.  The American fleet never effectually blockaded this part of Cuba.  The deep bay behind the Isle of Pines, fringed as it is with outlying barriers of coral reefs, would have required a whole flotilla of gunboats to watch it, and the Spaniards ran in cargo after cargo of provisions, the steamers that brought them coming, some from Kingston, Jamaica, and some from Kingston, Jamaica, and some from the south American ports.  Batabano was thus nearly to the end of the war the open back door of Havana.