The Spanish Fleet Comes Out to Die
By Walter Millis
A Big, Bad Battleships Web Exclusive
The Naval Battle of Santiago - July 3, 1898
BBB.Com Presents the Classic Account by Historian Walter Millis
From The Martial Spirit: A Study of our War with Spain (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1931)
With Illustrations Selected From Contemporary Sources
The Spanish Fleet Comes Out to Die
It was a beautiful day; the early mist burned off to leave a hot and glass-like calm, with the columns of smoke standing in graceful pillars upon the still and lovely air. It was "one of those summer days when not the slightest breath of air stirs the leaves of the trees, when not the smallest cloud is visible in the skies, when not the slightest vapor fills the atmosphere, which was wonderfully transparent." Amid this placid beauty the fleet resumed the usual small businesses of the day. It was lying, as always, in a wide semicircle around the harbor entrance; Morro Castle formed its center and the radius was about four or five miles.
Commodore Winfield Scott Schley [left] in his armored cruiser Brooklyn lay nearest to the shore upon the west, but rather farther out than usual. Then came the battleships Texas and Iowa, so placed that both of them could look up the narrow gut which formed the harbor mouth. Then came the battleship Oregon, already famous for her long run around Cape Horn; then Admiral William T. Sampson's flagship, the armored cruiser New York, well around upon the eastern side of the arc; and finally, the battleship Indiana. Two converted yachts, the Vixen and the Gloucester (formerly Mr. J. P. Morgan's [luxury yacht] Corsair), were stationed close inshore at the western and eastern ends of the semicircle.
Presently the flagship New York made ready to depart upon her mission to Siboney, seven or eight miles away to the eastward. Shortly before nine, her engines were rung ahead; the customary signal "Disregard motions of commander-in-chief"was hoisted, and she left the line. Commodore Schley was informed of her departure; it may have induced a bitter thought. The Commodore had been smarting for a month under the orders of a former junior. Sampson had first been promoted Admiral over his head and then had been placed directly in command over him. For one who had begun the war as the commander of an independent squadron, this was rather pointed. But as the flagship departed on her errand, the Commodore could at least reflect that he was temporarily the senior officer present.
The crews of the other ships watched the New York growing smaller in the distance, and then turned to the customary Sunday morning muster. Officers and men had put on their clean white uniforms, and in the captain's cabin of the Iowa "Fighting Bob" Evans was just finishing his after-breakfast cigar. It was at this moment that a general alarm rang through the ship.
Souvenir print of the Iowa with inset of Capt. Robley "Fighting Bob" Evans.
Captain Evans leapt to his feet and dashed for the companion ladder. Just as his head came even with the deck, he heard his own ship fire a signal gun; looking out, he saw, coming down the channel bow on under a full head of steam, the Maria Teresa, flagship of Admiral Cervera. Resplendent in the brilliant sunshine, with a new coat of paint, with the smoke pouring from her funnels, a "bone in her teeth," and the great blood-and-gold battle-flags of Spain at her mastheads, she was heading directly for the American fleet and the open sea. Behind her, in the narrow passage between the gray heights of the Morro on the one hand and the Socapa Hill upon the other, there swung successively into view the Vizcaya, the Cristóbal Colón, and the Almirante Oquendo. And behind them in turn were the Furor and Plutón, Cervera's much-dreaded torpedo-boat destroyers. The Spanish fleet was coming out.
Before Captain Evans reached the bridge the signal that the enemy was emerging -- in all the American ships it had been kept bent on and ready for the past month -- had been hoisted and the Iowa's engines had been rung full speed ahead. Similar signals were fluttering from the mastheads of the other vessels; while all, acting upon the curiously simple standing orders of Admiral Sampson, were preparing to rush forward in a converging "charge" upon the harbor mouth. Throughout the fleet the men were tumbling down the ladders to their battle stations; the fireroom crews were outdoing themselves in their efforts to crowd steam upon the boilers, while, as the ships slowly gathered headway, impatient navigating officers took notes to see who was leading in the rush.
But amid all the hurry and excitement a wonderful, an incredible truth was dawning rapidly upon a martial figure on the bridge of the Brooklyn: The supreme moment had come at last, and Admiral Sampson, by a just irony of fate, had gone to Siboney! Commodore Schley was, clearly, in command.
. . . About 9:35 the Maria Teresa opened fire at long range. Some miles away, near Siboney, the people in the New York heard it. Admiral Sampson looked back, and plainly saw the distant silhouette of the Spanish flagship emerging from the entrance. Admiral Sampson, too, perceived that the great moment had arrived and that he was not there.
The heroic solution of a sortie had not been adopted by Admiral Cervera upon his own judgment. With the debarkation of General William R. Shafter's army he had come to the conclusion that it was already "absolutely impossible for squadron to escape," and, considering its naval role at an end, had put ashore his crews to assist in the land defense of the city.
From the safe distances of Havana and Madrid, however, the idea of simply sitting down and permitting the squadron to fall into [U.S.] hands by capture had no attractions. Even before the assault on San Juan, the Captain-General of the island was exerting pressure upon Admiral Cervera to attempt an escape-less for any military reason, since once the squadron got out it would be as helpless as before, than because "if we should lose the squadron without fighting the moral effect would be terrible, both in Spain and abroad." The Admiral convened a board of officers, took their views, and made a gloomy and remarkable reply:
The absolutely certain result will be the ruin of each and all of the ships and the death of the greater part of their crews... I, who am a man without ambitions, without mad passions, state most emphatically that I shall never be the one to decree the horrible and useless hecatomb which will be the only possible result of the sortie from here by main force, for I should consider myself responsible before God and history for the lives sacrificed on the altar of vanity and not in the true defense of the country.
It was a realism which did not appeal to political superiors who had their own reputations to take care of.
Finally, on June 28, Cervera was explicitly ordered to watch for an opportunity to go out; and should none offer, he was commanded to go out anyway, when the fall of the city seemed imminent.
In a few minutes the flagship had rounded Smith Key and [entered] the upper end of the long, narrow entrance channel. Some miles away, framed between the twin bluffs which had for so long protected them, they saw at last the gray hulls of the waiting battleships. The Teresa held her course; her consorts followed steadily in her wake. A few minutes more and the flagship had passed out between the hills into the open sea. Already the smoke was pouring in startled clouds from the funnels of the American vessels; already they were gathering way in their charge upon the emerging squadron. But the Teresa held onward -- they could not turn west until they had cleared El Diamante, a hidden shoal lying well offshore. An absolute silence reigned, save for the pounding of the engines and the throbbing of their hearts. Presently the pilot spoke.
"Admiral, the helm may be shifted now." Cervera gave the order; the wheel was put over and the Teresa's bow swung to the westward. A moment later Captain Concas asked permission to open fire; the Admiral assented, and the clear notes of the bugles rang through the ship.
My bugles [said the captain afterward] were the last echo of those which history tells were sounded in the taking of Granada; it was the signal that the history of four centuries of greatness was ended.
'Poor Spain!' I said to my beloved and noble Admiral, and he answered by an expressive motion, as though to say he had done everything to avoid it, and that his conscience was clear.
The second gun of the deck battery was the first to open fire, and brought us back to this reality, too dreadful to allow us to think of other things. Giving the cruiser all her speed, we poured out a frantic fire.
Pandemonium ensued. One by one the three other cruisers came up to the Diamond Bank in her wake and swung to the westward. Each, with an astounding punctilio, slowed at the turn -- the most dangerous point -- to drop her pilot, for the pilots were civilians.
Then the American gunners began to hit; there was a mêlée of rushing ships and powder-smoke, and a few minutes later pursuers and pursued alike were racing westward under the lofty Cuban coast line, the sea and the inland valleys reverberating to the thunders of the cannonade. Cervera had got out.
It [was] clear that Admiral Sampson's naïve plan of action -- to rush in and sink the Spaniards in the channel mouth -- had failed. Exactly what happened in the next few minutes was obscured at the time by the powder-smoke and has been clouded ever since in the darker fogs of a famous controversy. Admiral Sampson was not present to alter his dispositions; but in the tensity of the moment it apparently did not occur to Commodore Schley to do so. Our joyously converging ships were already in danger from each other's cross-fire; while the Brooklyn, charging up in a northeasterly direction, found herself almost head on to the Teresa, and the closest of all our vessels to the Spanish fleet. The Teresa swung to ram, but then fell off and broke westward with her consorts.
Flying the signal "Follow the flag", Commodore Schley's flagship, the USS Brooklyn, leads the pack in a hard-hitting assault on the stampeding Spaniards. Texas, Iowa and Oregon are right behind, their starboard guns blazing. Caught in a steel trap, the Spanish fought with courage born of desperation. Painting from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library. Enlarge.
However, the American fleet eventually got itself more or less disentangled and streaming down the coast, while Commodore Schley, once more remembering that he was in command, hoisted the signal "Follow the flag," an order which was already being obeyed to the best of our captains' ability, since the flagship happened to be the nearest to the Spaniards. For a few bad moments it seemed rather doubtful whether we should overtake them. Most of our battleships had been four or five miles to the southeast of the entrance at the beginning of the action, and were being left behind. Even the Brooklyn was well astern of the leading Spanish ship, and the Brooklyn had only half her power available. Behind her the battleship Oregon was forging up (her commander had kept all his boilers lighted against such an emergency); but the Texas was already out of it, and the rest of the squadron was spread out behind, the press boats tearing along in a frenzy of excitement on the wings while far in the rear Admiral Sampson's New York was laboring to catch up with the fast-vanishing battle.
And in spite of everything Admiral Cervera might conceivably have got away had it not been for one fatal weakness in his own ships. Their decks were of wood. In the whole course of the action not one of the four was vitally injured in hull or machinery, but our first hits set them on fire. The wind of their own motion quickly converted their upper works into so many furnaces, and their devoted gunners found themselves serving their almost useless batteries with the deck-planking burning away under their feet.
The Teresa, receiving the brunt of the American attack as she led the squadron out, must have been on fire a very few minutes after she had started westward. A shell cut an auxiliary steam line; the ship was suddenly filled with live steam, and lost speed. Another wrecked her water mains and it became impossible to fight the fire.
Captain Concas was wounded. Some of their own light-caliber ammunition stored on deck began to explode in their faces; the whole center of the ship was a mass of flames and they found they could not reach the magazines to flood them. To avoid further loss of life the Admiral soon ordered her beached and abandoned.
A few minutes later, the Oquendo brought up just beyond her. The Oquendo was the fourth ship in the column; as the Teresa had received the fire from our leading vessels, the Oquendo had received the weight of it from those rushing up in pursuit. Her decks and cabins were soon blazing fore and aft; there was fire in the after torpedo room and in the ammunition-handling rooms, where some seamen were struggling valiantly to save the magazines by putting wet bedding over the hatches. One of her own guns burst, demolished the crew and blinded the gunner; the ammunition hoists were shot away, and a shell landed on her fore turret, putting it out of action.
Fighting Bob Evans in the Iowa was helping to pound her to pieces. "She rolled and staggered like a drunken thing," he remembered, "and finally seemed to stop her engines," but presently went ahead again. "As I looked at her, I could see the shot holes come in her sides and our shells explode inside of her." Her interior was a furnace; most of the gun crews were dead or wounded and it was useless to continue. As she took the beach, the flames burned away the flag halliards and the ensign came down.
The two destroyers -- uncertain quantities which had caused some trepidation in our fleet -- had emerged at about ten o'clock in the wake of the Oquendo. They met an even quicker death. They came out just in time to receive the concentrated fire of the fleet rushing past in pursuit of the cruisers, and it "simply overwhelmed them."
A large shell was seen to land in the Furor; there was a cloud of smoke and steam, but the frail boat kept on. The converted yacht Gloucester had been posted especially to deal with the destroyers; presently she got a signal to go in and she tore them to pieces with her light guns while the rest of our fleet passed on. The destroyer crews stuck to their batteries gallantly, but they had so little training, or were so much shaken, that they did not land a single hit even though the Gloucester closed to six hundred yards. About four miles west of the Morro, the Plutón was run upon the rocks and blew up; the Furor went out of control and began to steam in circles. Her fire ceased entirely and some one was seen to be waving a white rag on board. The Gloucester sent off a boat to investigate. "They found a horrible state of affairs. . . . The vessel was a perfect shambles. As she was on fire and burning rapidly, they took off the living." Presently there was a series of explosions; the Furor flung up her bows and disappeared.
But two of the cruisers were still alive. The Vizcaya, the second ship in the column, had been covered by the Teresa and had taken little injury at the commencement of the action. But her bottom was badly fouled and she could not make speed. The Brooklyn soon overhauled her, and presently the Oregon and the Iowa were within range. They failed to stop her, but they smothered her batteries and set her on fire. It was enough. She could make no effective reply. The guns jammed; often they could not get the breech-blocks to close, the firing mechanism would not work or the ammunition would not go off. Fires were breaking out everywhere, and the water mains had been shot away. Yet it was not until nearly noon [when] they were some fifteen miles west of the Morro that their last gun was put out of action. Captain Eulate made a final effort to ram the Brooklyn, but it was useless. Then a steampipe burst. Then something else happened-they thought it was one of the forward boilers going up, but it was probably the explosion of one of their own torpedoes, which broke up the whole bow of the ship.
Captain Eulate summoned the inevitable council of war. It was agreed that they had done all they could, and she was run in and grounded upon the rocks near Aserraderos.
So the Vizcaya, also, died. But not without one triumph. It was a shell from one of her guns which, passing across the Brooklyn's forecastle, decapitated a seaman standing on the deck. Save for one other man who was wounded, this was the sole casualty in the whole American fleet. Some men standing near by made to give him an immediate burial in the sea, but Commodore Schley from the bridge stayed them with a splendid gesture. "No!" he exclaimed, according to his own account, "do not throw that body overboard. One who has fallen so gallantly deserves the honors of Christian burial!" In the Spanish squadron there was less chance to be heroic. "Don't cheer, boys," cried Captain Philip of the Texas [left] as his ship went by the burning wreck of the Vizcaya, "the poor devils are dying!"
When the Iowa came up, Fighting Bob observed that it was useless to try to overtake the Colón; he stopped his engines and sent off his boats to rescue the Vizcaya's crew alive from the fire and from the insurgents who were probably behind the beach. Captain Eulate was hoisted over side in a chair, "covered with blood, from three wounds, with a bloodstained handkerchief about his bare head."
[Evans continued:] "As the chair was placed on the quarter-deck, he slowly raised himself to his feet, unbuckled his sword belt, kissed the hilt of his sword, and bowing low gracefully presented it to me as a token of surrender. I instantly handed it back to Captain Eulate. As I supported the Captain toward my cabin, he stopped for a moment just as we reached the hatch and drawing himself up to his full height, with his right arm extended above his head, exclaimed, 'Adios, Vizcaya!' Just as the words passed his lips the forward magazine of his late command, as if arranged for the purpose, exploded with magnificent effect."
[Ed. Note: For Eulate and the other Spanish prisoners, their capture would mean but a few months' incarceration in the Portsmouth Naval Station until the terms of the peace treaty were enacted. The peace commissioners began negotiations at Paris Sept. 29, some 11 weeks after the Santiago action. The treaty was formally inked on Dec. 10, 1898. -- P. Poppycock, ed.]
Eulate's Surrender
On the quarterdeck of the Iowa, Capt. Robley "Fighting Bob" Evans and the Vizcaya's Capt. Eulate seal the surrender with a handshake in a dramatic contemporary illustration.
The Colón had gone inshore of her consorts, concealed by their smoke, and had cleared the action almost untouched. It was past noon, and to her officers it seemed that the pursuers were falling astern and the race nearly won, when she suddenly came to the end of her scanty stock of good fuel and the engine-room force had to turn to the inferior coal making up the rest of her supply. Steam began to go down, and the speed fell. About one o'clock the Oregon tried a ranging shot with her thirteen-inch guns; it fell short, but she tried again and presently a column of water sprang into the air beyond the Colón's bows. She was within range.
The Colón's own heavy guns were in Genoa, and even her secondary battery could not be trained far enough aft to bear. Her disheartened commander gave up the fight on the spot. The helm was put up and the Colón headed for the shore. The Americans held their fire, and a few minutes later the last of Cervera's squadron ran hard and fast aground.
The naval battle of Santiago was at an end. But an almost equally famous battle was just beginning. It was perhaps half an hour after the Colón had grounded and after the Brooklyn's captain had gone aboard to receive her surrender that Sampson in the New York finally caught up with his action. He was greeted by a significant signal from Commodore Schley's flagship: "We have gained a great victory. Details will be communicated." It apparently took some minutes for the full import of this message to sink into the Admiral's mind, but when it did, the reply was curt: "Report your casualties."
"It is to be regretted," as the Commodore afterward wrote, "that no word of congratulation, so much valued by men and officers on such occasions, issued from the flagship."
After a pause the Commodore tried again with a hopeful "This is a great day for our country." The only reply from the outraged flagship was the hoisting of an answering pennant. The Brooklyn's captain, now observed to be coming away from the surrendered Spaniard, was summarily ordered to report aboard the New York instead of to the Commodore. The Commodore recalled that when he himself presently went to make report, the crews of all the ships there, except the New York, "manned the rail, shouting in tumultuous huzzas that fairly shook the air. It was a tribute of confidence, an expression of approval in the very smoke of battle that cannot be dimmed or diminished by envious disappointments shown afterwards." But on board the flagship the atmosphere of envious disappointment was already only too manifest; for his egregious subordinate's effort to take the credit on a technicality must have seemed to the Admiral an act of unparalleled impudence. Admiral Sampson received the Commodore with a chill formality, and the tension was only relieved when a sudden report that another Spanish ship had been discovered off Santiago made it possible to despatch the Commodore in pursuit.
The report, of course, turned out to be a mistake. There was a stranger, but she was a sight-seeing Austrian man-of-war; and although the enthusiasm of our victorious ships, combined with the similarity of the Austrian to the Spanish flag, nearly resulted in her destruction, the Commodore perceived in time that he had been sent off on a false alarm. But it had brought him within reach of the cable station; the Commodore saw a golden opportunity, and he hastened to prepare a telegram to Washington, reporting the victory and carrying the delicate implication that he had won it. Even here, however, the Admiral forestalled him; the officer bearing the telegram reached the cable station just behind one of Sampson's officers, and the Commodore's telegram was not sent. In the Admiral's, the Commodore was not even mentioned.
That Sunday evening had fallen in Washington upon a city exhausted by the heat and the intense anxiety. A nervous little group was still waiting at the White House when at seven o'clock it was thrown into dismay by a dreadful telegram from General Shafter, detailing the first reports of the naval action, but implying that Cervera had escaped. They hung over the wires.
A homey view of the White House War Room with President McKinley reading a telegram -- perhaps the telegram -- from the front. Man on right is moving pins on the wall map -- he could be removing the six markers for Cervera's lost ships.
Three quarters of an hour later, there was another despatch from the Army; it was more hopeful, but the wording was ambiguous. Still later in the evening, General Shafter remembered to inform his superiors that he had demanded the surrender of the city-on top of the morning's telegram about withdrawing, it left them in a state of considerable mystification, but "the curtain of gloom was rising." It was not until one o'clock in the morning that another telegram from Shafter fully confirmed the destruction of Cervera's fleet, and fifteen minutes later that still another came, containing the single triumphant sentence: "I shall hold my present position."
As yet there was no word from the Navy, but the curtain had lifted. At two o'clock on the morning of the Fourth of July, [Secretary of War Russell A.] Alger walked homeward "with the newsboys crying in my ears the joyful tidings of 'Full account of the destruction of Spanish fleet!'"
At about noon next day. Admiral Sampson's message arrived: "The fleet under my command offers the nation as a Fourth of July present the whole of Cervera's fleet. It attempted to escape at 9:30 this morning. At 2 the last ship, the Cristóbal Colón, had run ashore seventy-five miles west of Santiago and hauled down her colors."
It was splendid, it was unbelievable, it was magnificent. And as the nation turned to celebrate its greatest Fourth of July since the moment, thirty-five years before, when the news of Vicksburg and of Gettysburg had arrived simultaneously upon the national holiday, the earnest statesmen perceived that the war, now, really was over.
They had only to hurry to collect "the outlying things," as Senator [Henry Cabot] Lodge had called them, before Spain should cave in.
