WAR CORRESPONDENTS AND DESPATCH-BOATS
Fewthings impressed me more forcibly, in the course of my two weeks' stay at Key West, than the costly, far-sighted, and far-reaching preparations made by the great newspapers of the country to report the war. There were in the city of Tampa, at the time of my arrival, nearly one hundred war correspondents, who represented papers in all parts of the United States, from New England to the Pacific coast, and who were all expecting to go to Cuba with the army of invasion. Nearly every one of the leading metropolitan journals had in Tampa and Key West a staff of six or eight of its best men under the direction of a war-correspondent-in-chief, while the Associated Press was represented by a dozen or more reporters in Cuban waters, as well as by correspondents in Havana, Key West, Tampa, Kingston, St. Thomas, Port-au-Prince, and on the flagships of Admiral Sampson and Commodore Schley. Every invention and device of applied science was brought into requisition to facilitate the work of the reporters and to enable them to get their work quickly to their home offices. The New York "Herald," for example, paid fifty dollars an hour for a special leased wire between New York and Key West, and set up,in the latter place and in Tampa, newly invented, long-distance phototelegraph instruments, by means of which its artist in the field could transmit a finished picture to the home office every twenty minutes.
In their efforts to get full and accurate news of every event at the earliest possible moment, the war correspondents shrank from neither hardship nor danger. A week or two before my arrival in Key West, for example, Mr. Scovel, one of the most daring and enterprising of the war correspondents, landed from a despatch-boat on the coast of Cuba in the night, with the intention of making his way to the camp of General Gomez. As he had not had a previous understanding with the latter, no arrangements had been made to meet him, he could get no horses, and, with only two or three companions, he walked eighty miles through tropical forests and swamps, dodging Spanish sentinels and guerrillas, living wholly upon plantains and roots, and sleeping most of the time out of doors in a hammock slung between two trees. He finally succeeded in obtaining horses, reached the insurgent camp, had an interview with General Gomez, rode back to the coast at a point previously agreed upon, signaled to his despatch-boat, was taken on board, and returned safely to Key West after an absence of two weeks, in the course of which he had not once tasted bread nor slept in a bed.
Upon the record of such an achievement as this most men would have been satisfied, for a time, to rest; but Mr. Scovel, with untiring energy, went from Key West to the coast of Cuba and back three times in the next seven days. On the last of these expeditions he joined a landing force carrying arms and ammunition to the insurgents, participated in a hot skirmish with the Spanish troops, wrote an account of the adventure that same night while at sea in a small, tossing boat on his way back to Key West, and filed six thousandwords in the Key West cable-station at two o'clock in the morning.
I speak of this particular case of journalistic enterprise, not because it is especially noteworthy or exceptional, but because it illustrates the endurance and the capacity for sustained toil in unfavorable circumstances, which are quite as characteristic of the modern war correspondent as are his courage and his alert readiness for any emergency or any opportunity.
Owing to the distance of the seat of war from the American coast and the absence of telegraphic communication between Cuba and the mainland, newspapers that made any serious attempt to get quick and exclusive information from the front had not only to send correspondents into the field, but to furnish them with means of moving rapidly from place to place and of forwarding their despatches promptly to an American telegraph office or a West Indian cable-station. Every prominent New York paper, therefore, had at least one despatch-boat for the use of its correspondents, several of them had two or three, and the Associated Press employed four. These boats were either powerful sea-going tugs like theHerculesand thePremier, or swift steam-yachts of the class represented by theWanda, theKanapaha, and theBucaneer. Exactly how many of them there were in West Indian waters I have been unable to ascertain; but I should say not less than fifteen or twenty, with almost an equal number of naphtha-and steam-launches for harbor and smooth-water work. In these despatch-boats the war correspondents went back and forth between Key West and Cuba; watched the operations of the blockading fleet off Havana, Matanzas, or Cardenas; cruised along a coast-line nearly a thousand miles in extent, and, if necessary, went with Admiral Sampson's squadron to a point of attack as remote as Santiago de Cuba or San Juan de PortoRico. Whenever anything of importance happened in any part of this wide area, they were expected to be on the spot to observe it, and then to get the earliest news of it to the nearest cable-station—whether that station were Kingston, Cape Haitien, St. Thomas, Port-au-Prince, or Key West. All of the newspaper despatch-boats were small, many of them had very limited coal-carrying capacity, and some were nothing but sea-going tugs, with hardly any comforts or conveniences, and with no suitable accommodations for passengers. The correspondents who used these boats were, therefore, compelled to live a rough-and-tumble life, sometimes sleeping in their clothes on benches or on the floor in a small, stuffy cabin, and always suffering the hardships and privations necessarily involved in a long cruise on a small vessel in a tropical climate and on a turbulent sea. The Florida Strait between Key West and the north Cuban coast is as uncomfortable a piece of water to cruise on as can be found in the tropics. It is the place where the swiftly running Gulf Stream meets the fresh northeast trade-winds; and in the conflict between these opposing terrestrial forces there is raised a high and at the same time short, choppy, and irregular sea, on which small vessels toss, roll, and pitch about like corks in a boiling caldron. I was told by some of the correspondents who had cruised in these waters that often, for days at a time, it was almost impossible to get any really refreshing rest or sleep. The large and heavy war-ships of the blockading fleet rode this sea, of course, with comparatively little motion; but it is reported that even Captain Sigsbee was threatened with seasickness while crossing the strait between Havana and Key West in a small boat.
Discomfort, however, was perhaps the least of the war correspondent's troubles. He expected discomfort, and accepted it philosophically; but to it was added constant and harassing anxiety. As he could not predict or anticipatethe movements of the war-ships, and had no clue to the plans and intentions of their commanding officer, he was compelled to stay constantly with the fleet, night and day, in order to be on the scene of action when action should come. This part of his duty was not only difficult, but often extremely hazardous. As soon as night fell, every light on the war-ships was extinguished, and they cruised or drifted about until daybreak in silence and in darkness. Owing to their color, it was almost impossible to follow them, or even to see them at a distance of a mile, and the correspondent on the despatch-boat was liable either to lose them altogether if he kept too far away, or be fired upon if he came too near.
On my visit to the flagshipNew YorkI was accompanied by Mr. Chamberlain, one of the war correspondents of the Chicago "Record." Just before we went over the side of the ship on our return to the "Record's" despatch-boat, Mr. Chamberlain said to Admiral Sampson: "Can you give me any directions or instructions, admiral, with regard to approaching your fleet in hostile waters? I don't want to be in your way or to do anything that would imperil my own vessel or inconvenience yours."
"Where do you propose to go?" inquired the admiral.
"Anywhere," replied the war correspondent, "or rather everywhere, that you do."
The admiral smiled dryly and said: "I can't give you any definite instructions except, generally, to keep away from the fleet—especially at night. You may approach and hail us in the daytime if you have occasion to do so, but if you come within five miles of the fleet at night there is likely to be trouble."
This was all that Mr. Chamberlain could get from the admiral; but the officer of the deck, whose name I did not learn, had no hesitation in explaining fully to us the natureof the "trouble" that would ensue if, through design or inadvertence, a newspaper despatch-boat should get within five miles of the fleet at night. "We can't afford to take any chances," he said, "of torpedo-boats. If you show up at night in the neighborhood of this ship, we shall fire on you first and ask questions afterward."
"But how are we to know where you are?" inquired the correspondent.
"That's your business," replied the officer; "but if you approach us at night, you do it at your own peril."
When we had returned to the despatch-boat, Mr. Chamberlain said to me: "Of course that's all right from their point of view. I appreciate their situation, and if I were in their places I should doubtless act precisely as they do; but it's my business to watch that fleet, and I can't do it if I keep five miles away at night. I think I'll go within two miles and take the chances. Some of us will probably lose the numbers of our mess down here," he added coolly, "if this thing lasts, but I don't see how it can be helped."
The difficulty of keeping five miles away, or any specified distance away, from a blockading fleet of war-ships at night can be fully realized only by those who have experienced it. Except on Morro Castle at Havana there were no lights on the northern coast of Cuba; if it was cloudy and there happened to be no moon, the darkness was impenetrable; the war-ships did not allow even so much as the glimmer of a binnacle lamp to escape from their lead-colored, almost invisible hulls, as they cruised noiselessly back and forth; and the correspondent on the despatch-boat not only did not know where they were, but had no means whatever of ascertaining where he himself was. Meanwhile, at any moment, there might come out of the impenetrable darkness ahead the thunder of a six-pounder gun, followed by the blinding glare of a search-light. Unquestionably the correspondentswere to be believed when they said privately to one another that it was nervous, harassing work.
But the list of difficulties and embarrassments which confronted the correspondent in his quest of news is not yet at an end. If he escaped the danger of being sunk or disabled by a shell or a solid projectile at night, and succeeded in following a fleet like that of Admiral Sampson, he had to take into serious consideration the question of coal. Fuel is quite as essential to a despatch-boat as to a battle-ship. The commander of the battle-ship, however, had a great advantage over the correspondent on the despatch-boat, for the reason that he always knew exactly where he was going and where he could recoal; while the unfortunate newspaper man was ignorant of his own destination, was compelled to follow the fleet blindly, and did not know whether his limited supply of coal would last to the end of the cruise or not. When Mr. Chamberlain sailed from Key West at night with the fleet of Admiral Sampson, he believed that the latter was bound for Santiago, on the southeastern coast of Cuba. TheHerculescould not possibly carry coal enough for a voyage there and back; in fact, she would reach that port with only one day's supply of fuel in her bunkers. What should be done then? The nearest available source of coal-supply would be Kingston, Jamaica, and whether he could get there from Santiago before his fuel should be wholly exhausted Mr. Chamberlain did not know. However, he was ready, like Ladislaw in "Middlemarch," to "place himself in an attitude of receptivity toward all sublime chances," and away he went. Nothing can be more exasperating to a war correspondent than to have a fight take place while he is absent from the scene of action looking for coal; but many newspaper men in Cuban waters had that unpleasant and humiliating experience.
The life of the war correspondent who landed, or attempted to land, on the island of Cuba, in the early weeks of the war, was not so wearing and harassing, perhaps, as the life of the men on the despatch-boats, but it was quite as full of risk. After the 1st of May the patrol of the Cuban coast by the Spanish troops between Havana and Cardenas became so careful and thorough that a safe landing could hardly be made there even at night. Jones and Thrall were both captured before they could open communications with the insurgents; and the English correspondents, Whigham and Robinson, who followed their example, met the same fate. Even Mr. Knight, the war correspondent of the London "Times," who landed from a small boat in the harbor of Havana with the express permission of the government at Madrid and under a guaranty of protection, was seized and thrown into Cabanas fortress.
If a war correspondent succeeded in making a safe landing and in joining the insurgents, he had still to suffer many hardships and run many risks. Mr. Archibald, the correspondent of a San Francisco paper, was wounded on the Cuban coast early in May, in a fight resulting from an attempt to land arms and ammunition for the insurgents; and a correspondent of the Chicago "Record" was killed after he had actually succeeded in reaching General Gomez's camp. He was sitting on his horse, at the summit of a little hill, with Gomez and the latter's chief of staff, watching a skirmish which was taking place at a distance of a quarter of a mile or more, between a detachment of insurgents and a column of Spanish troops. One of the few sharp-shooters in the enemy's army got the range of the little group on the hill, and almost the first ball which he sent in that direction struck the "Record" correspondent in the forehead between and just above the eyes. As he reeled in the saddle Gomez's chief of staff sprang to catch him and break his fall. The next Mauser bullet from the hidden marksmanpierced the pommel of the saddle that the staff-officer had just vacated; and the third shot killed Gomez's horse. The general and his aide then hastily escaped from the dangerous position, carrying the "Record" correspondent with them; but he was dead. In the first two months of the war the corps of field correspondents, in proportion to its numerical strength, lost almost as many men from death and casualty as did the army and navy of the United States. The letters and telegrams which they wrote on their knees, in the saddle, and on the rocking, swaying cabin tables of despatch-boats while hurrying to West Indian cable-stations were not always models of English composition, nor were they always precisely accurate; but if the patrons of their respective papers had been placed in the field and compelled to write under similar conditions, they would be surprised, perhaps, not at the occasional imperfection of the correspondents' work, but at the fact that in so unfavorable and discouraging an environment good work could be done at all.
OFF FOR SANTIAGO
Themost important event in the early history of the war, and the event that controlled the movements of the Red Cross steamerState of Texas, as well as the movements of General Shafter's army, was the arrival of the Spanish fleet of cruisers and torpedo-boats at Santiago de Cuba on May 19. There had been skirmishes and bombardments before that time, at Matanzas, Cardenas, and various other points on the Cuban coast; but none of them had any strategic importance, or any particular bearing upon the course or the conduct of the war. It was the appearance of Admiral Cervera at Santiago which determined the field of action, and, to some extent, the plan of campaign. The invasion of eastern Cuba had already been under consideration, and when the Spanish fleet took refuge in Santiago harbor the President and his counselors decided, definitely and finally, to begin operations at that end of the island, and to leave the western provinces unmolested until fall. The regular army, it was thought, would be strong enough, with the aid and coöperation of Admiral Sampson's fleet, to reduce the defenses of Santiago, and the volunteers might be left in camp at Chickamauga, Tampa, and Jacksonville, to get in training for an attack upon Havana at the end of the rainy season.
The preparations for the invasion of Cuba seemed, at thattime, to be nearly, if not quite, complete. The whole regular army, consisting of seven regiments of cavalry, twenty-two regiments of infantry, and fourteen batteries of artillery, had been mobilized and transported to the Gulf coast; the quartermaster's department had, under charter, twenty-seven steamers, with a carrying capacity of about twenty thousand men; immense quantities of food and munitions of war had been bought and sent to Tampa, and there seemed to be no good reason why General Shafter's command should not embark for Cuba, if necessary, at twenty-four hours' notice.
On May 26, just a week after the appearance of Admiral Cervera and his fleet at Santiago, the President held a consultation at the Executive Mansion with the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, and the members of the Board of Strategy, and decided to begin the invasion of Cuba at once. Orders were presumably sent to General Shafter to prepare for an immediate movement, and Secretary Long telegraphed Admiral Sampson as follows:
Washington, May 27, 1898.
Sampson, Care Naval Base, Key West:
If Spanish division is proved to be at Santiago, it is the intention of the department to make a descent immediately upon that port with ten thousand United States troops, landing about eight nautical miles east of the port. You will be expected to convoy transports....
[Signed]Long.
Three days later General Shafter was directed, in the following order, to embark his command and proceed at once to Santiago:
War Department, Washington, May 30, 1898.
Major-General William R. Shafter, Tampa, Florida:
With the approval of the Secretary of War you are directed to take your command on transports, proceed under convoy of the navy to the vicinity of Santiago de Cuba, land your force at such place east or west of that point as your judgment may dictate, under theprotection of the navy, and move it on to the high ground and bluffs overlooking the harbor, or into the interior, as shall best enable you to capture or destroy the garrison there and cover the navy as it sends its men in small boats to remove torpedoes, or, with the aid of the navy, capture or destroy the Spanish fleet now reported to be in Santiago harbor.
You will use the utmost energy to accomplish this enterprise, and the government relies upon your good judgment as to the most judicious use of your command, but desires to impress upon you the importance of accomplishing this object with the least possible delay....
[Signed]H. C. Corbin,Adjutant-General.
In view of the fact that General Shafter had been nearly a month at Tampa, and of the further fact that his command was composed wholly, or almost wholly, of regular troops, who were completely equipped for service when they left their stations, he should have been able, it seems to me, to comply with this order at once; but, apparently, he was not ready. Day after day passed without any noticeable change in the situation, and on June 7 the army at Tampa was apparently no nearer an advance than it had been when Cervera's fleet entered Santiago harbor on May 19.
Admiral Sampson, who was anxious to strike a decisive blow before the enemy should have time to concentrate and intrench, then telegraphed Secretary Long as follows:
Mole, Haiti, June 7, 1898.
Secretary of Navy, Washington:
Bombarded forts at Santiago 7:30A. M.to 10A. M.to-day, June 6. Have silenced works quickly without injury of any kind, though stationary within two thousand yards. If ten thousand men were here[1]city and fleet would be ours within forty-eight hours. Every consideration demands immediate army movement. If delayed city will be defended more strongly by guns taken from fleet.
[Signed]Sampson.
When this despatch reached Washington, the Secretary of War sent General Shafter two peremptory telegrams, as follows:
War Department, June 7.
Major-General Shafter, Port Tampa, Florida:
You will sail immediately, as you are needed at destination at once. Answer.
[Signed]R. A. Alger,Secretary of War.
Executive Mansion, Washington, June 7, 1898, 8:50P.M.
Major-General Shafter, Port Tampa, Florida:
Since telegraphing you an hour since, the President directs you to sail at once with what force you have ready.
[Signed]R. A. Alger,Secretary of War.
Upon receipt of these "rush" orders, General Shafter hastily embarked his army, amid great confusion and disorder, and telegraphed the Secretary of War that he would be ready to sail, with about seventeen thousand officers and men, on the morning of June 8. Before the expedition could get away, however, Commodore Remey cabled the Secretary of the Navy from Key West that two Spanish war-ships—an armored cruiser and a torpedo-boat destroyer—had been seen in Nicholas Channel, off the northern coast of Cuba, on the night of June 7, by Lieutenant W. H. H. Southerland of the United States gunboatEagle. Fearing that these Spanish vessels would intercept the fleet of transports and perhaps destroy some of them, Secretary Alger telegraphed General Shafter not to leave Tampa Bay until he should receive further orders.
Scouting-vessels of the navy, which were promptly sent to Nicholas Channel in search of the enemy, failed to locate or discover the two war-ships reported by the commander oftheEagle, and on June 14 General Shafter's army, after having been held a week on board the transports in Tampa Bay, sailed for Santiago by way of Cape Maysi and the Windward Passage. The Spanish fleet under command of Admiral Cervera had then been in Santiago harbor almost four weeks.
It is hard to say exactly where the responsibility should lie for the long delay in the embarkation and despatch of General Shafter's expedition. When I passed through Tampa on my way south in June, the two railroad companies there were blaming each other, as well as the quartermaster's department, for the existing blockade of unloaded cars, while army officers declared that the railroad companies were unable to handle promptly and satisfactorily the large quantity of supplies brought there for the expedition. Naval authorities said that they had to wait for the army, while army officers maintained that they were all ready to start, but were stopped and delayed by reports of Spanish war-ships brought in by scouting-vessels of the navy.
That there was unnecessary delay, as well as great confusion and disorder, there seems to be no doubt. As one competent army officer said to me, in terse but slangy English, "The fact of the matter is, they simply got all balled up, and although they worked hard, they worked without any definite, well-understood plan of operations."
The principal trouble seemed to be in the commissary and quartermaster's departments. Many of the officers in these departments were young and inexperienced; army supplies from the North came down in immense quantities on two lines of railway and without proper invoices or bills of lading; it was often utterly impossible to ascertain in which, out of a hundred cars, certain articles of equipment or subsistence were to be found; and there was a lack everywhere of cool, trained, experienced supervision and direction. It was thebusiness of some one somewhere to see that every car-load of supplies shipped to Tampa was accompanied by an invoice or bill of lading, so that the chief commissary at the point of destination might know the exact nature, quantity, and car-location of supplies brought by every train. Then, if he wanted twenty-five thousand rations of hard bread or fifty thousand pounds of rice before the cars had been unloaded, he would know exactly where and in what cars to look for it. As it was, he could not tell, often, what car contained it without making or ordering personal examination, and it was almost impossible to know how much of any given commodity he had on hand in trains that had not yet been unloaded or inspected. As the result of this he had to telegraph to Jacksonville at the last moment before the departure of the expedition for three or four hundred cases of baked beans and forty or fifty thousand pounds of rice to be bought there in open market and to be sent him in "rush shipment." It is more than probable that there were beans and rice enough to meet all his wants in unloaded trains at Tampa, but he had no clue to their car-location and could not find them. Such a state of things, of course, is wholly unnecessary, and it should not occur a second time. To take another example:
When our army embarked at Port Tampa it was the business of some officer somewhere to know the exact capacity of every transport and the numerical strength of every regiment. Then it was some one's business to prearrange the distribution of troops by assigning one or more designated regiments to one or more designated steamers and giving necessary orders to the colonels. As it was, however, according to the testimony of every witness, a train-load of troops would come to the docks at Port Tampa, apparently without orders or assignment to any particular steamer, and while they were waiting to learn what they should do, and whiletheir train was still blocking the way, another train-load of soldiers would arrive in a similar state of ignorance and add to the disorder and confusion. As a natural consequence, men got on wrong steamers and had to be unloaded, and often, after transports had moved out into the bay, parts of companies and regiments had to be transferred in small boats from one vessel to another. These are examples of what seems to have been bad management. In another class of cases the trouble was apparently due to mistaken judgment. To the latter class belongs the loading and treatment of horses and mules. It would have been much better and safer, I think, to load these animals on vessels especially prepared for and exclusively devoted to them than to put them into stifling and unventilated holds of steamers that also carried troops. If, however, this was impracticable, it was manifestly best to load the animals last, so as to expose them for as short a time as possible to such murderous conditions. The mules, however, were loaded first, and held in the holds of the transports while troops were embarking. They began to die from heat and suffocation, and then they were unloaded and reshipped after the troops were on board. This caused unnecessary delay, as well as the loss of many valuable animals. Eighteen perished, I am told, on one transport while the troops were embarking.
These cases of disorder and bad judgment are only a few out of many which were the subject of common talk among officers and civilians in Tampa. I could specify many others, but criticism is at best unpleasant duty, and the only justification for it is the hope that, if mistakes and disorders are pointed out and frankly recognized, they may be guarded against in future.
The army of invasion, when it finally left Tampa Bay for the Cuban coast, consisted of 803 officers and 14,935 enlistedmen.[2]With its animals and equipment it filled thirty-five transports. It comprised (in addition to regular infantry) four batteries of light field-artillery, two batteries of heavy siege-guns, a battalion of engineers, a detachment of the Signal Corps, twelve squadrons of dismounted cavalry, and one squadron of cavalry with horses. All of the troops were regulars with the exception of three regiments, namely, the First Cavalry (Rough Riders, dismounted), the Seventy-first New York, and the Second Massachusetts. The command was well supplied with food and ammunition, but its facilities for land transportation were inadequate; its equipment, in the shape of clothing and tentage, was not adapted to a tropical climate in the rainy season; it carried no reserve medical stores, and it had no small boats suitable for use in disembarkation or in landing supplies on an unsheltered coast. Some of these deficiencies in equipment were due, apparently, to lack of prevision, others to lack of experience in tropical campaigning, and the rest to lack of water transportation from Tampa to the Cuban coast; but all were as unnecessary as they afterward proved to be unfortunate.
When the army of invasion sailed, the Red Cross steamerState of Texas, laden with fourteen hundred tons of food and medical supplies, lay at anchor in Tampa Bay, awaiting the return of Miss Barton and a part of her staff from Washington. As soon as they arrived, the steamer proceeded to Key West, and on the morning of Monday, June 20, after a brief consultation with Commodore Remey, we sailed from that port for Santiago de Cuba. In the group assembled on the pier to bid us good-by were United States Marshal Horr;Mr. Hyatt, chairman of the local Red Cross committee; Mr. White, correspondent of the Chicago "Record," whose wife was going with us as a Red Cross worker; and Mrs. Porter, wife of the President's secretary, who had come with Miss Barton from Washington to Key West in order to show her interest in and sympathy with the work in which the Red Cross is engaged. About ten o'clock the steamer's lines were cast off, the gang-plank was drawn ashore, the screw began to churn the green water into boiling foam astern, and, amid shouted good-bys and the waving of handkerchiefs from the pier, we moved slowly out into the stream, dipped our ensign to theLancaster, Commodore Remey's flagship, and proceeded down the bay in the direction of Sand Key light.
THE CUBAN COAST
Thecourse usually taken by steamers from Key West to Santiago lies along the northern coast of Cuba, through the Nicholas and Old Bahama channels, to Cape Maysi, and thence around the eastern end of the island by the Windward Passage. Inasmuch, however, as we were going without a convoy, and Commodore Remey had advised us to keep out of sight of land, in order to avoid possible interception by a Spanish gunboat from some unblockaded port on the coast, we decided to go around the western end of the island, doubling Cape San Antonio, and then proceeding eastward past the Isle of Pines to Cape Cruz and Santiago. Tuesday afternoon we saw the high mountains in the province of Pinar del Rio looming up faintly through the haze at a distance of twenty-five or thirty miles, and late that same evening we passed the flash-light at the extremity of Cape San Antonio and turned eastward toward Cape Cruz and Santiago. After rounding the western end of the island we had a succession of thunder-storms and rain-squalls, with a strong easterly breeze and a heavy head sea; but Thursday night the weather moderated, and at half-past six o'clock Friday morning we sighted Cape Cruz rising out of the dark water ahead in a long, transverse stretch of flat table-land,backed by mountains and terminating on the sea in a high, steep bluff.
The coast of Cuba between Cape Cruz and Santiago is formed by a striking and beautiful range of mountains, known to the Spaniards as the "Sierra Maestra," or "Master Range," which extends eastward and westward for more than a hundred miles and contains some of the highest peaks to be found on the island. As seen from the water its furrowed slopes and flanks are deceptively foreshortened, so that they appear to fall with extraordinary steepness and abruptness to the sea; its rocky, wave-worn base is whitened by a long line of snowy breakers; its deep, wild ravines are filled with soft blue summer haze; and down from the clouds which shroud its higher peaks tumble in white, tortuous streaks the foaming waters of unnamed and almost unknown mountain torrents. As one sails, at a distance of two or three miles, along this wild, beautiful coast, the picture presented by the fringe of feathery palms over the white line of surf, the steep slopes of the foot-hills, shaggy with dark-green tropical vegetation, and the higher peaks broken in places by cliffs or rocky escarpments and rising into the region of summer clouds, is one hardly to be surpassed, I think, in the tropics. The average height of this range is three or four thousand feet; but in many places it is much greater than this, and the summit of the peak of Turquino, about midway between Cape Cruz and Santiago, is eighty-four hundred feet above the level of the sea.
Our captain thought that we should be off the entrance to Santiago harbor about three o'clock Saturday morning, and at half-past three I was on the bridge. There was not a sign, as yet, of dawn, and although I could make out faintly the loom of high land to the northward, it was so dark on the water that nothing could be distinguished at a distance of five hundred yards, and in the absence of all lights on thecoast it was almost impossible to determine our exact position. Somewhere ahead of us,—or perhaps around us,—in the impenetrable gloom, were twelve or fifteen ships of war; but they were cruising about in silence and darkness, and the first evidence that we should probably have of their proximity would be the glare of a search-light and the thunder of a gun. About four o'clock the lookout forward shouted to the captain, "Vessel on the port bow, sir," and a large, dark object stole silently out toward us from under the shadow of the land. I took it, at first, for a gunboat; but it proved to be the transportSantiago, which had not yet disembarked her troops and was cruising aimlessly back and forth, as we were, waiting for daylight.
At a quarter past four the sky in the east began to grow lighter, and as the hidden sun climbed swiftly to the horizon the world about us began to assume form and color. Almost directly in front of us were two fine groups of high, forest-clad mountains, separated by an interval of perhaps ten or fifteen miles. In this gap and nearer the sea was a long stretch of lower, but still high, table-land, which extended from one group of mountains to the other and seemed to form the outer rampart of the coast. About the middle of this rocky, flat-topped rampart there was a deep, narrow notch, on the eastern side of which I could see with a glass a huge grayish-stone building, elevated a little above the level of the table-land on one side and extending down the steep declivity of the notch in a series of titanic steps on the other. I hardly needed to be informed that the notch was the entrance to the harbor of Santiago, and that the grayish-stone building was Morro Castle. Between us and the land, in a huge, bow-shaped curve, lay the war-ships of the blockading fleet, with Commodore Schley's flagship, theBrooklyn, at one end, Admiral Sampson's flagship, theNew York, at the other, and the battle-shipsTexas,Indiana,Iowa,Massachusetts, and half a dozen gunboats and cruisers lying at intervals between. The convex side of the crescent was nearest to Morro Castle, and in this part of the curve were the battle-shipsTexas,Indiana, andIowa, with the small gunboatSuwaneethrown out as scout or skirmisher in the position that the head of the arrow would occupy if the line of the blockading vessels were a bent bow eight miles long.
We steamed directly in toward the entrance to the harbor, without being stopped or questioned, and took a position in front of Morro Castle, about one thousand yards south of the battle-shipIndiana. From this point of view, with the aid of a good glass, we could make out quite distinctly the outlines of the castle, and were a little disappointed to see still floating over it the red-and-yellow banner of Spain. We had had no news for more than a week, and thought it possible that both the castle and the city were in the possession of General Shafter's army.
The entrance to the Bay of Santiago appears, from a distance of three or four miles, to be a narrow cleft or notch in the high, flat-topped rampart which forms the coast-line. On account of an eastward curve in the channel just beyond Morro Castle, one cannot look through the notch into the upper harbor. At a distance of a quarter of a mile from the entrance, the line of vision strikes against a steep hill, which forms one side of the curving, fiord-like passage leading to the city. Owing to the great depth of water off the entrance to the bay, it is impossible for vessels to anchor there, and the ships of the blockading fleet simply drifted back and forth with the winds and tides, getting under way occasionally, when it became necessary to change position.
After breakfast I went off in a boat to the flagshipNew York, called upon Admiral Sampson, and obtained from hima brief account of all that had happened off that coast since the 1st of May.
Admiral Cervera, with a fleet of seven Spanish war-ships, left the Cape Verde Islands for West Indian waters on the 29th of April. On the 13th of May he was reported at the French port of St. Pierre, Martinique, and from there he sailed to Curaçao, an island off the coast of Venezuela, nearly due south of Haiti. From Curaçao it was thought he would be likely to go either to Cienfuegos or Havana; and on the 19th of May Commodore Schley, with the Flying Squadron, was sent to watch the former port, while Admiral Sampson, who had just returned from Porto Rico, resumed the blockade of Havana. Cervera, however, did not go to either place. Leaving Curaçao on the 16th, he crossed the Caribbean Sea, and at daybreak on the morning of Thursday, May 19, he entered the harbor of Santiago de Cuba for the purpose of obtaining a fresh supply of coal. His fleet then consisted of the second-class battle-shipCristobal Colon, the armored cruisersVizcaya,Almirante Oquendo, andMaria Teresa, and the torpedo-boat destroyersFurorandPluton. What he expected to do, after coaling his vessels, does not clearly appear; but certain of his Spanish friends in the United States have recently published what seems to be an authorized statement, in which they set forth his views as follows:
Admiral Cervera did not enter Santiago harbor with any intention of remaining there, or of seeking refuge from the pursuit of the American fleets. His object was merely to make some slight repairs to his vessels, obtain a fresh supply of coal, and then run out to sea. As a result of interference from Havana, however, he was prevented from carrying out his plans. No sooner had he reported his arrival in Santiago than "Captain-General Blanco communicated with Spain and asked the Minister of Marine to place Admiral Cervera and his fleet under his (Blanco's) orders. Blanco then orderedCervera to remain in Santiago and assist in the defense of the shore batteries. Admiral Cervera protested strongly against this, and appealed to Spain; but it is doubtful whether his appeal ever reached the government. He asked to be allowed to coal up and then leave Santiago, where he might be free to meet the American fleet, rather than to be bottled up in a blockaded harbor. He contended that he could not possibly be useful to Spain by remaining in Santiago harbor, with the certainty of American ships coming to keep him there, whereas, outside and free, his strong fleet could be of great value to the Spanish cause. The answer of General Blanco was that Admiral Cervera was now subject to his orders; that he, and not Admiral Cervera, was in command of affairs in Cuba, and that the admiral must obey his command. Cervera could then do nothing."
If this semi-official statement of Admiral Cervera's case is an accurate one, the Santiago campaign, which ended in the destruction of Cervera's fleet and the capture of the city, was the direct result of General Blanco's interference. The Spanish admiral had plenty of time to coal his vessels and make his escape before either of our fleets reached the mouth of the harbor, and if he had done so there might have been no Santiago campaign, and the whole course of the war might have been changed. But the opportunity soon passed.
On the 20th of May the news of Cervera's appearance at Santiago was reported to the Navy Department in Washington, and Secretary Long immediately cabled it to Admiral Sampson by way of Key West. On the following day, May 21, Sampson sent theMarbleheadto the southern coast of Cuba with an order directing Commodore Schley to proceed at once to Santiago unless he had good reason to believe that the Spanish fleet was really in Cienfuegos.When this order reached Schley, on the 23d of May, he felt sure that he had Cervera "bottled up" in Cienfuegos harbor, and he did not become aware of his error until the 25th. He then proceeded with his fleet to Santiago, but did not reach there until the 26th. Cervera had then had a whole week in which to coal his vessels and make his escape. That he fully intended to do this seems to be evident from the statement of Mr. Frederick W. Ramsden, British consul at Santiago, whose recently published diary contains the following entry, under date of May 23: "The Spanish fleet is taking in coal, water, and provisions in a hurry, and it is evident that it is preparing to go to sea, probably to-night or in the morning, as I hear the pilots have been ordered for this evening."
If Cervera had gone to sea on the evening of May 23, or the morning of the 24th, as was plainly his intention, he would have made his escape without the slightest difficulty, because Admiral Sampson was then cruising off Havana, while Schley was still blockading Cienfuegos. What would have been the course of the war in that event, it is impossible to say; but General Shafter would certainly have been held at Tampa until the Spanish fleet had been overtaken and destroyed, and then, very likely, the army of invasion would have landed at some point nearer to Havana. Admiral Cervera, however, for some reason not yet positively known, remained in Santiago a whole week, and at the expiration of that time it is doubtful whether he could have made his escape, even had he wished to do so, because Commodore Schley, with the Flying Squadron, was off the entrance to the harbor. Six days later, when Schley's squadron was reinforced by the powerful fleet of Admiral Sampson, Cervera's last chance of escape vanished, and there was nothing left for him to do but assist the forts and the garrison to defend the city to the last, or make a desperateand almost hopeless attempt to break through the line of the blockading fleet.
Late in May, while Admiral Sampson was still cruising off Havana, he sent an order, by the captain of theNew Orleans, to Commodore Schley, directing the latter to "use the collierSterlingto obstruct the [Santiago] channel at its narrowest part leading into the harbor," so as to make the escape of the Spanish fleet absolutely impossible. "I believe," he said, "that it would be perfectly practicable to steam this vessel into position, drop all her anchors, allow her to swing across the channel, and then sink her, either by opening the valves, or whatever means may be best."
Commodore Schley, for some reason, did not obey this order; but as soon as Admiral Sampson reached the mouth of Santiago harbor, he proceeded to carry out the plan himself. At three o'clock on the morning of June 3, Lieutenant R. P. Hobson, with a volunteer crew of seven men, ran the steam-collierMerrimacinto the mouth of the harbor, under a heavy fire from the Spanish batteries, dropped her anchors in mid-channel between Churruca Point and Smith Cay, opened her sea connections, exploded a number of torpedoes hung along her sides at the water-line, and when she sank, hung on to a raft attached by a rope to the sunken vessel. They were rescued from this position by the Spaniards and thrown into Morro Castle, but were treated with the consideration and courtesy to which their gallantry entitled them. On the afternoon of the same day, Admiral Cervera, who with his own hand had dragged Hobson from the water, sent his chief of staff out to theNew York, under a flag of truce, with a letter to Admiral Sampson, in which he informed the latter that the lieutenant and his men were safe, and referred in terms of admiration and respect to their courage and devotion to duty.
Unfortunately,—or perhaps fortunately,—the object forwhich Lieutenant Hobson and his men risked their lives was not attained. TheMerrimacfailed to swing around so as to lie transversely across the channel, but sank in such a way as to place her hull parallel with the middle of it and near its eastern edge. This left plenty of water and plenty of room for vessels to pass on the western, or Smith Cay, side. Egress, however, although still possible, was extremely difficult and dangerous, on account of the strictness and closeness of the blockade which was established when Admiral Sampson arrived and took command of the combined fleets. The battle-ships and larger vessels, which formed the outer line of the blockade, were disposed in a semicircle around the mouth of the harbor, at a distance of four or five miles, with the flagshipNew Yorkat one end of the line and theBrooklynat the other. Inside of this semicircle, and much nearer the entrance, were stationed two or three small cruisers or gunboats, whose duty it was to watch the mouth of the harbor incessantly and give instant warning of the appearance of any hostile vessel. At night, when the danger from the Spanish torpedo-boats was greatest and when Cervera's fleet was most likely to escape, a powerful and piercing search-light was held constantly on the mouth of the narrow cañon between Morro and Socapa; the battle-ships closed in so as to diminish the radius of their semicircle by nearly one half; the cruisers and gunboats, under cover of the blinding radiance of the search-light, moved a mile nearer to the mouth of the harbor; and three steam-launches patrolled the coast all night within pistol-shot of the enemy's batteries. In the face of such a blockade it was virtually impossible for Cervera to escape, and almost equally impossible for his torpedo-boats to come out of the harbor unobserved, or to reach any of our larger vessels even if they should venture out. Long before they could get across the mile and a half or two miles of waterthat separated the harbor entrance from the nearest battleship, they would be riddled with projectiles from perhaps a hundred rapid-fire guns. Torpedo-boats, however, did not play an important part on either side. Our own were prevented from entering the harbor by a strong log boom stretched across the channel just north of the Estrella battery, and those of the Spaniards never even attempted to make an aggressive movement in the period covered by the blockade. Admiral Cervera evidently thought that the chance of accomplishing anything by means of a torpedo-boat attack was too remote to justify the risk.
On the 6th of June Admiral Sampson bombarded the shore batteries and the mouth of the harbor for two hours and a half, destroying a number of houses on Smith Cay, setting fire to the Spanish cruiserReina Mercedes, which was moored near the end of the Socapa promontory, and killing or wounding twenty-five or thirty officers and men on the cruiser, in the batteries, and in Morro Castle. The earthwork batteries east and west of the entrance did not prove to be very formidable and were quickly silenced; but the submarine mines in the narrow channel leading to the upper harbor, which prevented our fleet from forcing an entrance, could not be removed without the coöperation of a land force. All that Admiral Sampson could do, therefore, was to bombard the harbor fortifications now and then, so as to prevent further work on them; occupy the lower part of Guantanamo Bay, forty miles east of Santiago, as a coaling-station; and urge the government in Washington, by telegraph, to send the army forward as speedily as possible.
The fleet of transports which conveyed General Shafter's command to the southern coast of Cuba arrived off the entrance to Santiago harbor at midday on the 20th of June, after a tedious and uneventful voyage of five days from the Dry Tortugas around the eastern end of the island. General Shafter at once held a conference with Admiral Sampson and with the Cuban general Garcia, who had come to the coast to meet the fleet, and, after considering every possible line of attack, decided to land his force at two points, within supporting distance of each other, ten or fifteen miles east of the entrance to Santiago harbor, and then march toward the city through the interior. The points selected for debarkation were Siboney, a small village about ten miles east of Morro Castle, and Daiquiri,[3]another similar village five miles farther away, which, before the war, was the shipping-port of the Spanish-American Iron Company. From Daiquiri there was a rough wagon-road to Siboney, and the latter place was connected with Santiago by a narrow-gage railroad along the coast and up the Aguadores ravine, as well as by a trail or wagon-road over the foot-hills and through the marshy, jungle-skirted valleys of the interior.
When we reached the entrance to Santiago harbor in the Red Cross steamerState of Texason the 25th of June, the Fifth Army-Corps—or most of it—had already landed, and was marching toward Santiago along the interior road by way of Guasimas and Sevilla. The landing had been made, Admiral Sampson told me, without the least opposition from the Spaniards, but there had been a fight, on the day before our arrival, between General Wheeler's advance and a body of troops supposed to be the rear-guard of the retiring enemy, at a place called Guasimas, three or four miles from Siboney, on the Santiago road. Details of the fight, he said, had not been received, but it was thought to be nothing more than an unimportant skirmish.
In reply to my question whether he had any orders for us, or any suggestions to make with regard to our movements,he said that, as there seemed to be nothing for the Red Cross to do in the vicinity of Santiago, he should advise us to go to Guantanamo Bay, where Captain McCalla had opened communications with the insurgents under General Perez, and where we should probably find Cuban refugees suffering for food. Acting upon this suggestion, we got under way promptly, steamed into the little cove of Siboney to take a look at the place and to land Mr. Louis Kempner of the Post-Office Department, whom we had brought from Key West, and then proceeded eastward to Guantanamo Bay.
THE FIGHT AT GUANTANAMO
Asthe southeastern coast of Cuba is high and bold, with deep water extending close up to the line of surf, vessels going back and forth between Santiago and Guantanamo run very near to the land; and the ever-changing panorama of tropical forest and cloud-capped mountain which presents itself to the eye as the steamer glides swiftly past, within a mile of the rock-terraced bluffs and headlands, is a constant source of surprise and delight, even to the most experienced voyager. It is an extremely beautiful and varied coast. In the foreground, only a rifle-shot away across the blue undulating floor of the Caribbean, rises a long terraced mesa, fronting on the sea, with its rocky base in a white smother of foaming surf, and its level summit half hidden by a drooping fringe of dark-green chaparral and vines. Over the cyclopean wall of this mesa appear the rounded tops of higher and more distant foot-hills, densely clad in robes of perennial verdure, while beyond and above them all, at a distance of five or six miles, rise the aërial peaks of the splendid Sierra del Cobre, with a few summer clouds drifting across their higher slopes and casting soft violet shadows into the misty blue of their intervening valleys. Here and there the terraced mesa, which forms the coast-line, is cut into picturesque castle-like bluffs by aseries of wedge-shaped clefts, or notches, and through the openings thus made in the rocky wall one may catch brief glimpses of deep, wild ravines down which mountain torrents from the higher peaks tumble to the sea under the dense concealing shade of mango-and mimosa-trees, vines, flowering shrubs, and the feathery foliage of cocoanut and royal palms.
Wild, beautiful, and picturesque, however, as the coast appears to be, not a sign does it anywhere show of a bay, an inlet, or a safe sheltered harbor. For miles together the surf breaks almost directly against the base of the terraced rampart which forms the coast-line, and even where streams have cut deep V-shaped notches in the rocky wall, the strips of beach formed at their mouths are wholly unsheltered and afford safe places of landing only when the sea is smooth and the wind at rest. Often, for days at a time, they are lashed by a heavy and dangerous surf, which makes landing upon them in small boats extremely difficult, if not absolutely impracticable.
About thirty-five miles from Santiago harbor, as one sails eastward, the wall-like mesa on the left sinks from a height of two or three hundred feet to a height of only twenty or thirty; the mountains of the Sierra del Cobre come to an end or recede from the coast, leaving only a few insignificant hills; and through a blue, tremulous heat-haze one looks far inland over the broad, shallow valley of the Guantanamo River.
We entered the beautiful Bay of Guantanamo about half-past five o'clock on Saturday afternoon, and found it full of war-ships and transports. The white hospital steamerSolacelay at anchor over toward the western side of the harbor, and between her and the eastern shore were theDolphin, theEagle, theResolute, theMarblehead, and three or four large black colliers from Key West. As we roundedthe long, low point on the western side of the entrance and steamed slowly into the spacious bay, a small steam-launch came puffing out to meet us, and, as soon as she was within hailing distance, an officer in the white uniform of the navy rose in the stern-sheets, put his hands to his mouth, and shouted: "Captain McCalla presents his compliments to the captain of theState of Texas, and requests that you follow me and anchor between theMarbleheadand the Haitian cable-steamer."
"All right," replied Captain Young, from the bridge.
"That sounds well," I said to one of the Red Cross men who was standing near me. "It shows that things are not allowed to go helter-skelter here."
We followed the little launch into the harbor and dropped anchor in the place indicated, which was about one hundred yards from shore on the eastern side of the channel, and just opposite the intrenched camp of Colonel Huntington's marines. I was impatient to land and see the place where the American flag had first been raised on Cuban soil; but darkness came on soon, and it did not seem worth while to leave the ship that night.
After breakfast on the following morning, I took a small boat and went off to theMarbleheadto call upon Captain McCalla, who was in command of the station. I had made his acquaintance in Washington, when he was one of the members of a board appointed to consider means of sending relief to the Greely arctic expedition; but I had not seen him in many years, and it is not surprising, perhaps, that I almost failed to recognize him in his Cuban costume. The morning was hot and oppressive, and I found him clad in what was, in the strictest sense of the words, an undress uniform, consisting of undershirt, canvas trousers, and an old pair of slippers. Like the sensible man I knew him to be, he made no apology for his dress, but welcomed me heartily and introduced me to Captain Philip of the battle-shipTexas, who had just come into the harbor after a fresh supply of coal. As I entered, Captain McCalla was telling Captain Philip, with great glee, the story of his experience off the Cuban coast between Morro Castle and Aguadores, when his vessel, theMarblehead, was suddenly attacked one night by the whole blockading fleet.
"They saw a railroad-train," he said, "running along the water's edge toward Siboney, and in the darkness mistook it for a Spanish torpedo-boat. The train, of course, soon disappeared; but I happened to be cruising close inshore, just there, as it passed, and they all turned their search-lights on me and opened fire."
"All except theIowa," corrected Captain Philip, with a smile.
"Yes, all except the Iowa," assented Captain McCalla, laughing heartily, as if it were the funniest of jokes. "Even theTexasdidn't show me any mercy; but Bob Evans knew the difference between a railroad-train and a torpedo-boat, and didn't shoot. I told him, the last time I saw him, that he was clearly entitled to take a crack at me. Every other ship in the fleet had had the privilege, and it was his turn. I'm the only man in the navy," he said, with renewed laughter, "who has ever sustained the fire of a whole fleet of battle-ships and cruisers and got away alive."
After Captain Philip had made his call and taken his leave, I explained to Captain McCalla the object of our coming to Guantanamo Bay, and asked whether there were any Cuban refugees in the vicinity who needed food and could be reached. He replied unhesitatingly that there were. He was in almost daily communication, he said, with General Perez, an insurgent leader who was then besieging Guantanamo city, and through that officer he thought he could send food to a large number of people who had taken refugein the woods north of the bay and were in a destitute and starving condition. He had already sent to them all the food he himself could spare, but it was not half enough to meet their wants. With characteristic promptness and energy he called his stenographer and dictated a letter to General Perez, in which he said that Miss Clara Barton, president of the American National Red Cross, had just reached Guantanamo Bay in the steamerState of Texas, with fourteen hundred tons of food intended for Cuban reconcentrados, and asked whether he (Perez) could furnish pack-animals and an escort for, say, five thousand rations, if they could be landed on the western side of the lower bay. This letter he sent to General Perez by a special courier from the detachment of Cubans then serving with the marines, and said that he should probably receive a reply in the course of two or three days. As nothing more could be done at that time, I returned to theState of Texas, reported progress to Miss Barton, and then went on shore to send a telegram to Washington by the Haitian cable, which had just been recovered and repaired, and to take a look at the camp of the marines.
When, on May 26, Commodore Schley, with the Flying Squadron, arrived off the entrance to Santiago harbor, and began the blockade of that port, the great need of his vessels was a safe and sheltered coaling-station. The heavy swell raised along the southern coast of Cuba by the prevailing easterly winds makes it often dangerous and always difficult to lay a collier alongside a battle-ship in the open sea and transfer coal from one to the other. Understanding and appreciating this difficulty, Secretary Long telegraphed Admiral Sampson on May 28 to consider the question whether it would not be possible to "seize Guantanamo and occupy it as a coaling-station." Sampson replied that he thought it might be done, and immediatelycabled Commodore Schley off Santiago as follows: "Send a ship to examine Guantanamo with a view to occupying it as a base, coaling one heavy ship at a time." The official correspondence thus far published does not show whether Commodore Schley received this order in time to act upon it before Sampson arrived or not; but as soon as the latter came he caused a reconnaissance of Guantanamo Bay to be made, decided that the lower part of it might be seized by a comparatively small land force if protected by the guns of a few war-ships, and immediately sent to Key West for the first battalion of marines, which was the only available landing force at his command. Meanwhile the auxiliary cruiserYankeebombarded and burned a Spanish blockhouse situated on a hill near the entrance to the lower harbor of Guantanamo, and on June 8 Captain McCalla, in theMarblehead, seized and occupied—as far as he could do so without a landing force—all that part of the bay which lies between the entrance and the narrow strait leading to the fortified post of Caimanera.
The marines, under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Huntington, arrived on the steamerPanther, Friday, June 10, and proceeded at once to disembark. The place selected for a landing was a low, rounded, bush-covered hill on the right, or eastern, side of the bay, about a quarter of a mile from the entrance. On the summit of this hill the Spaniards had made a little clearing in the chaparral and erected a small square blockhouse; but inasmuch as this blockhouse had already been destroyed and its garrison driven to the woods by the fire of theYankee, all that the marines had to do was to occupy the abandoned position and again fortify the hill. In some respects this hill, which was about one hundred and fifty feet in height, made a strong and easily defended position; but, unfortunately, it was covered nearly to the summit with a dense growth of bushesand scrub, and was commanded by a range of higher hills a little farther to the eastward. The enemy, therefore, could not only creep close up to the camp under cover of the dense chaparral, but could fire down upon it from the higher slopes of the wooded range which runs parallel with the bay on its eastern side.
The landing was made, without opposition, about two o'clock on the afternoon of Friday, June 10. Under cover of the guns of the war-ships, the marines disembarked on the strip of beach at the foot of the hill; burned all the houses and huts left by the Spaniards, so as to guard against the danger of infection with yellow fever; and then deployed up the hill, pitched their shelter-tents on its eastern slope, and spent all the afternoon and a large part of the next day in landing ammunition and stores, establishing outposts, and making arrangements for a permanent camp.
The Spaniards, who must have been watching these operations from the concealment of the bushes and from the slopes of the adjacent hills, gave no sign, at first, of their presence; but seeing that the marines were comparatively few in number, they finally plucked up courage, and about five o'clock Saturday afternoon began a desultory, skirmishing attack which lasted the greater part of that day and night, and, indeed, continued, with an occasional intermission, for three or four days and nights. Major Cochrane, who described the fight to me, said that he slept only an hour and a half in four days, and that many of his men became so exhausted that they fell asleep standing on their feet with their guns in their hands.
The strength of the marine battalion at that time was between five and six hundred men. They were armed with rifles of the Lee or Lee-Metford pattern, and had, in addition, two automatic Colt machine-guns and three rapid-fire Hotchkiss cannon of three-inch caliber. The greatestdisadvantage under which they labored was that due to the tangled, almost impenetrable nature of the chaparral that surrounded the camp, and the facilities which it afforded the enemy for concealment and stealthy approach. The gunboats shelled the woods from time to time, drove the hidden Spaniards back, and silenced their fire; but as soon as night fell they would creep silently up through the bushes until they were so near to the camp that the pickets of the marines could smell the smoke of their cigarettes, and yet could neither see them nor hear them. Then the nocturnal skirmishing would begin again. There were six successive attacks from different directions on the night of the 11th, and a still greater number on the night of the 12th, with more or less desultory skirmishing during the day, so that for a period of forty-eight hours the gallant marines had no rest or sleep at all.
There was some danger, at first, that the enemy, reinforced from Caimanera or Guantanamo city, would assemble in force on the slopes of the eastern hills, creep up through the scrub until they were within a short distance of the camp, and then overwhelm the marines in a sudden rush-assault. They were known to have six thousand regulars at Guantanamo city, only about fifteen miles away, and it was quite within the bounds of possibility that they might detach a large part of this force for offensive operations on the eastern side of the lower bay. To provide for this contingency, and to strengthen his defensive position, Lieutenant-Colonel Huntington withdrew his men from the eastern slope of the hill, where they had first been stationed, and posted them on the crest and upper part of the western slope, where they would be nearer the fleet and better protected by its guns. At the same time our small force, in the intervals of fighting, dug a trench and erected a barricade around the crest of the hill on the land side, so as to enlarge the clearing, give more play to the automatic and rapid-fire guns, and make it more difficult for the enemy to approach unseen. When this had been done, there was little probability that a rush-assault would succeed. The best troops in the world, unless they were in overwhelming force, could hardly hope to cross a clearing that was swept by the fire of six hundred rifles, two machine-guns, and three Hotchkiss cannon hurling canister or shrapnel.
In the course of the first three days' engagement the marines were joined by eighty or a hundred Cuban insurgents; but opinions differ as to the value of the latter's coöperation. Some officers with whom I talked spoke favorably of them, while others said that they became wildly excited, fired recklessly and at random, and were of little use except as guides and scouts. Captain Elliott, who saw them under fire, reported that they were brave enough, but that their efficiency as fighting men was on a par with that of the enemy; while Captain McCalla called attention officially to their devotion to freedom, and said that one of them, who had been shot through the heart, died on the field, crying with his last breath: "Viva Cuba libre!"
At the end of the third day's fighting, all attacks of the Spaniards having been repulsed, Lieutenant-Colonel Huntington determined to take the offensive himself. About six miles southeast of the camp, at a place called Cuzco, there was a well from which the Spanish troops were said to obtain all their drinking-water, and a heliograph signal-station by means of which they maintained communication with Caimanera. On the morning of June 14 Captain Elliott, with two companies of marines and about fifty Cuban volunteers, was sent to attack this place, drive the Spaniards away, and destroy the well and signal-station. The expeditionary force engaged the enemy, five hundred strong, about eleven o'clock in the morning, and fought with them until three inthe afternoon, driving them from their position and inflicting upon them a loss of sixty men killed and one hundred and fifty wounded. Then, after capturing the heliograph outfit, burning the station, and filling up the well, the heroic little detachment returned, exhausted but triumphant, to its camp, with a loss of only two men killed, six wounded, and twenty or thirty overcome by heat.
On the fourth day of the long struggle for the possession of Guantanamo Bay, the Spaniards virtually gave up the contest and abandoned the field. A few guerrillas still remained in the chaparral, firing occasionally at long range either into the camp or at the vessels of the fleet; but, finally, even this desultory, long-range target practice ceased, and the last of the enemy fled, either to the fort at Caimanera or to Guantanamo city, leaving the plucky marines in undisputed control of the whole eastern coast of the lower bay. Our total loss in the series of engagements was only six men killed and twelve or fifteen wounded; but among the killed was the lamented Dr. Gibbs, acting assistant surgeon, United States navy, who was shot at one o'clock on the night of the 11th.
After the four days of fighting were over, Captain McCalla, with theMarblehead, the auxiliary cruiserSt. Louis, and the battle-shipTexas, steamed up the bay to the little village of Caimanera, demolished the fort there with a few well-directed shots, and drove the garrison back into the woods. In the course of this expedition theMarbleheadand theTexasran into a number of submarine contact mines, or fouled them with their screws; but, fortunately, none of them exploded. The firing-pins had become so incrusted with barnacles and other marine growths during their long immersion that the force of the blow when the ships struck them did not drive them in far enough to explode the charges. When we reached Guantanamo in theState ofTexas, Captain McCalla's boats and launches had thoroughly explored and dragged the lower bay, and had taken out safely no less than thirteen contact mines, each containing about one hundred pounds of guncotton. The upper bay was still in the possession of the Spaniards; but its control was not a matter of any particular importance. What Admiral Sampson wanted was a safe and sheltered coaling-and repairing-station for the vessels of his fleet, and this he obtained when his war-ships and marines, after four days of almost incessant fighting, drove the Spanish troops from the whole eastern coast of the lower bay.