The Alfonso Duodécimo Class (1887)
The name ship Alfonso XII early in her career. This class were steel cruisers with a 3-masted barque rig, typical of Spain's unprotected steam cruisers of the 1880s: smallish and behind the times, and mechanically weak. As a class they suffered from dreadful boilers, a major handicap to mobility. They could manage a 10-knot crawl but little more by the time they were called to war in 1898. Their 6.4" Hontoria artillery was sponson-mounted. These ships, and ships like them, formed the day-to-day sinews of the tottering Spanish Empire.
Specifications for the Alfonso XII class: 278'3" long x 43'4" beam x 20' draft. Displacement: 3,042 tons. Crew: 370. Armament: (6) 6.4" (160mm) Hontoria BLR, (8) 6-pdr, (6) 3-pdr Hotchkiss guns; (5) 14" torpedo tubes. Armor: None. Watertight Subdivision: 12 watertight compartments in French cellular arrangement. Fuel capacity: 500/720 tons. Propulsion: 8 coal-fired boilers, 4400-HP compound engine; single screw. Sail rig: 3-mast barque. Speed: 10-12 kts. (Design speed: 17 kts., never achieved.)
Alfonso XII visited New York early in her career. Thereafter she was stationed at Havana. She provided naval support to suppressing contraband shipments to the rebels, but by 1898 her engine troubles had made her effectively a floating battery, without motive power. She was anchored across from the Maine at the mouth of the harbor, under the frowning walls of the Morro, when the American ship blew up. Boats from the Alfonso were among the first on the scene and most successful in a rescue effort which saved more than 45% of the Maine's crew. During the war, the cruiser's main guns were removed and remounted as part of the city's fortifications. With her steam plant partly repaired, the ship ran the blockade, but was headed off and overtaken by U.S. auxiliary cruisers off Mariel. Set afire by the QF weapons mounted on the gunboat Castine and auxiliary cruisers Hawk, Prairie, and Badger, the Alfonso XII was grounded deliberately off Mariel on July 6; her crew escaped ashore. In the peace treaty inked Dec. 10 at Paris, she was returned to Spain. The ship was refloated, removed, and scrapped in 1900.
S.N.S. Reina Cristina
Montojo's Flagship at Manila Bay
Reina Cristina, an Alfonso XII class cruiser built at Ferrol Dockyard in 1887, was an unprotected cruiser of the Spanish navy. Placed in a hopeless situation, she provided an example of courage and gallantry worthy of old Spain. Specifications
Stationed in home waters until 1894, she was transferred in that year to the Asiatic Squadron, headquartered at Cavite near Manila. Beginning in 1896, she was actively engaged in stamping out the insurgency of the Filipinos against colonial rule (known in Spain as the Tagalog Revolt). She assisted the army in making landings and bombarding insurgent positions from offshore. In 1898 she became the flagship of Don Patricio Montojo de Pasarón, naval commandant, Asia -- a command consisting of four obsolete and unprotected cruisers and a dozen, mostly small, gunboats. Given the condition of colonial cruisers' engines, it was no wonder the ships retained their sail rig in the Spanish navy. With hostilities with the U.S. becoming imminent, the squadron moved from Subic to Cavite on Manila Bay, whose combination of heavy forts on land and shallow waters offered a degree of protection to the unarmored and wooden ships.
There the squadron of Commodore George Dewey found them at dawn on May 1, 1898 in the breathtaking first battle of the Spanish-American War. The 6-ship American squadron was composed of 4 protected cruisers and 2 gunboats; but its modest protection and medium firepower were more than equal to Montojo's forces. Reina Cristina raised steam and went out to meet the American ships; her flotilla mates, some with complete engine failure, remained at their moorings. The Spanish forts and flagship opened fire at 5:20 a.m., when the Americans were well out of range; the Americans opened up 20 minutes later and began a deliberate and deadly fire, steaming back and forth along the Cavite waterfront, engaging forts, batteries, and ships.
The wooden Spanish ships -- the Castilla and Don Antonio de Ulloa -- were set ablaze and sunk at their moorings while the flagship attempted to draw fire away from them. By the end of Dewey's second pass she was afire, with many a hole 'twixt wind and water; the admiral ordered the aft magazines flooded to prevent explosion. In this condition, the flagship steamed slowly out to close the range, approaching within 1200 yards of the USS Olympia and successfully drawing fire away from the other Spaniards. By the end of the Americans' fourth run-by, most of her guns were knocked out, her steering was disabled, and she was blazing from stem to stern. Montojo ordered her scuttled. Under continuing fire, the two biggest gunboats came alongside to take off her crew (at left in illustration -- the Americans are in right background firing).
The Cristina's commander, Capitán Luís Cadarso y Rey, remained with the ship to oversee her evacuation and was killed by shellfire in the process. A flaming derelict, the Cristina sank by the stern in the shallow waters, her masts shot away and her her entrails consumed by fire, but with two well-perforated funnels still standing, one of them crashed drunkenly over the burnt-out bridge. The U.S. had devastated the entire Spanish squadron, sinking 3 cruisers but capturing in salvageable condition one old cruiser, 4 gunboats, a transport, and 4 tugs. The Spanish surrendered the position at half-past noon. With their morning's work, the U.S. Navy had launched the Conquista Americana.
On August 13 of that same summer, after landing an American army of 12,500, Dewey again fired the opening gun from USS Olympia, with an augmented fleet ranged before the forts of Manila. The bombardment that followed was in the way of a demonstration, to appease Spanish honor. The 80-minute cannonade ceased at 10:50 a.m., and the formal surrender of the city was signaled to the combat command center aboard Olympia at 2:30. By then, Dewey was reckoned an authentic American hero, promoted to admiral and mulling a run for the presidency.
Another view of the Battle of Manila Bay, by J.G. Tyler; the Americans are on the right.The U.S. Asiatic Squadron at the Battle of Manila Bay consisted of the USS Olympia (flag), Baltimore, Boston, and Raleigh, protected cruisers; and the gunboats Concord and Petrel -- the last nicknamed "The Baby Battle-ship" by an adoring pro-war press. In this entire heterogeneous squadron, no two were alike.
S.N.S. Reina Mercedes (1887)
America's Trophy Ship
Reina Mercedes and her sister ships of the Alfonso Duodécimo class (including the Reina Cristina) were steel cruisers with a 3-masted barque rig, typical of Spain's unprotected steam cruisers of the 1880s: smallish and behind the times. They resembled cruisers of the 1860s and early 1870s in other navies, and were quite obsolete by the time they were called to war in 1898. Their 6.4" Hontoria artillery was sponson-mounted. These ships nevertheless formed the day-to-day sinews of the remnant Spanish Empire.
Beginning in 1895 the ship was posted as guardship at Santiago de Cuba -- the second largest city on the island, with 50,000 inhabitants -- during the insurgency. When war broke out with the United States in 1898, her boilers were in sorry shape and she was unfit for service with the squadron of Adm. Ernesto Pascual Cervera, which scooted into Santiago on May 19. By late June, the American army had advanced so far as to threaten Santiago, and the old cruiser's 6.4" guns were landed and remounted in the Socapa Batteries on the west side of the channel.
Soon afterwards Cervera sortied, only to be obliterated by the American fleet. So the Mercedes was selected to be sunk as a block-ship at the entrance to the harbor -- unsuccessfully as it turned out. She provided 4th of July fireworks aplenty when the U.S. battleships Massachusetts and Texas detected and fired upon her at night, hitting her 5 times from 5 miles' distance, but the crew managed to explode their scuttling charges. As so often happens, she took a while to sink and meanwhile drifted out of the channel, grounding and sinking on the east side but failing to block the harbor entrance. On July 10 the U.S. fleet bombarded the city, hitting it with more than 100 shells. The devastating effects persuaded commanding Gen. Toral to surrender to U.S. Gen. Nelson Miles. Negotiations consumed another 9 days but in the end both sides were spared the horrors of a siege or frontal assault, the surrender being signed on the 21st.
The young U.S. Navy badly wanted a trophy ship to commemorate its victory over Spain, but the two they tried to salvage from the wrecks of Cervera's flotilla disdained their attentions. As in love so in naval matters, perseverance often wins the day; and the third try was the charm. During the first 3 months of 1899 Reina Mercedes was patched, refloated, and towed from Cuba to the States to be converted into a training ship. Her engines and seaworthiness were so suspect that she was instead made an inanimate hulk, spit and polish and varnished teak but no engines. As such she became the USS Reina Mercedes (IX-25), serving as a receiving ship at Newport from 1905-1912 and thereafter as an accommodation ship at Annapolis until 1957, when the costs of upkeep finally outweighed her freight of sentiment. She was broken up at Baltimore in 1958.
The USS Reina Mercedes, roofed over, with her hull refurbished but her engines demolished, was a floating dormitory for enlisted employees of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis for many years. She remained a commissioned ship and flew the pennant of the commanding admiral, Quantico Division.
A good view of the hull of the Reina Mercedes in later years. In her elegant stern were the only live-aboard quarters for a commanding officer's family in the entire U.S. Navy. The ram bow is well seen from this angle. Sister ship Reina Cristina attempted to ram at Manila Bay, but at 10 kts top speed, posed no threat to the newer, more maneuverable American ships.