Battles of the Nineteenth Century, Page 198

The Destruction of Cervera’s Fleet

            General Shafter having failed to take Santiago, and having his army reduced to such straits that he was talking to retreat, Admiral Cervera, to the astonishment of friends and foes alike, suddenly acted in a way that practically made a present of Santiago to the Americans, and hopelessly wrecked and destroyed the one fleet that Spain possessed in the west Indies.

            On the evening of July 2^nd, Consul Ramsden had written in his diary: “They say to night that the Manzanillo reinforcements, some 4,000 men, are at San Luis, and will be here tomorrow.  It seems incredible that the Americans with their large force have not yet taken the place.  The defence of the Spaniards has been really heroic, the more so when you consider they are half-starved and sick.  It was affirmed today that the squadron would leave this evening, but they have not done so, thought the pilots are on board.  I will believe it when I see them get out, and I wish they would.  If they do, they will fare badly outside.”  Preparations were actually in progress for the departure of the squadron.  The men who had been landed to aid in the defence of the trenches were embarked, and an opening was made through the obstacles at the harbour mouth.

            On Sunday morning the sky was clear and bright, the sea was smooth, and there was a light wind.  On board the blockading fleet no one suspected that the Spaniards were getting ready to come out.  The ships lying off the entrance to the harbour had all, with the exception of the Oregon and the Gloucester, let their furnace fires burn low, and there was very little pressure of steam in the boilers.  The admiral had gone away to the eastward, making for Siboney, where a cavalry escort was waiting to conduct him to General Shafter’s headquarters.  The general had sent for him in order to urge upon him the necessity of extricating the army from its difficult position by forcing the harbour mouth.  Several of the ships were absent from their usual stations.  The battle ship Massachusetts, the auxiliary cruiser Suwanee, and the dynamite cruiser Vesuvins, had gone to coal at Guantanamo.  The torpedo boat Porter was away on despatch duty.  The other torpedo boat, the Ericsson, was accompanying the flagship.

            Or the ships actually engaged in blockade duty, the Iowa due south of the harbour entrance, about five and a half miles from the land, under easy steam, with her bow towards the shore.  To the east of her, and somewhat nearer the land, lay the battleships Oregon and Indiana.  To the west of the Iowa was the battleship Texas, and beyond her the armoured cruiser Brooklyn, flying the flag of Commodore Schley.  The Brooklyn was almost exactly southwest of Morro Castle.  Closer still to the land laid two small-armed vessels, the Vixen west of the entrance and the Gloucester east of it, towards Aguadores Castle.  The New York and the Ericsson were a good seven miles away steaming towards Siboney.  At half past nine orders had been given on board of the Iowa and the other blockading ships for the crews to fall in for general inspection.  Unseen behind the hills of Morro and Socapa the Spanish squadron, led by Admiral Cervera on board the Maria Teresa, was just then steaming down the harbour, cleared for action.

            Why it was that he came out is likely to be for a long time to come a disputed point.  It is asserted that he left Santiago in obedience to imperative orders from Havana, that he remonstrated against them, and that they were repeated, leaving him no choice but to go to what was all but certain destruction.  But this had been denied, and according to some accounts, he acted on his own initiative.  Again, there are two different versions of the story about the orders from Havana.  According to one account they organised with Marshal Blanco, who believed the squadron could escape from Santiago and reinforce the defences of the island capital.  According to the other account, Blanco was merely the mouthpiece of the Madrid Government, and the orders for Cervera were cabled through Havana from the Spanish Admiralty.  However this may be, the captains of the squadron had no illusions as to the fate that awaited them.  The chance of war may indeed give victory under the most hopeless conditions, but practical men do not take such possibilities into their calculations.  They knew that the ships could not steam at anything like their nominal speed; that the armament was defective, the Colon being without her heavy guns, and some of the lighter guns and their mountings being unserviceable; that the ammunition was of inferior quality, and the coal supply scanty and bad.  The Cristobal Colon and the Vizcaya had their machinery in the best condition, and the most that was hoped for was that one or both of these ships might force the blockade.

            But what has never been explained is why Admiral Cervera, having decided to come out chose to make the attempt in broad daylight.  All was ready on the night between the Saturday and Sunday, yet he waited for the morning.  He would have done better still if he had waited till Sunday night, when he might have ran out through driving showers of rain in absolute darkness.  It has been suggested that the reason was because he doubted whether his ship could make their way through the narrow channel except at daylight.  But he had good local pilots on board, and it would require little ingenuity to place temporary marks in the channel, which his picket boats patrolled every night.  His ships would have had just a chance of escaping if their dash for the open sea had been preceded by an attack on the blockading squadron by the two destroyers, under the cover of darkness.

           But it is idle to discuss what might have been,.  Let us tell what happened.  At half past nine the squadron was under weigh.  Line of battle was formed as the ships steamed down the lower harbour.  First came Cervera’s flagship, the Infanta Maria Teresa.  The Admiral was in the forward conning tower, and with him was Miguel Lopez, a Santiago pilot.  Next came the Vizcaya, then the Cristobal Colon, and the Almirante Oquendo.  Then came the torpedo-boat destroyer Pluton, and, last of all, the Furor, with Captain Villamil, the commander of the destroyer squadron, on board of her.  At Smith Cay Villamil stopped his two destroyers for a few minutes in order to get more steam on their boilers.  This left a large gap between them and the cruisers, which bore steadily on for the opening of the harbour.  As they entered the narrows Cervera flew his last signal to his men, “I wish you a speedy victory!”

            Thanks to the bad coal they were burning, the funnels of the Spanish cruisers were sending up dense clouds of black smoke, and this, rising over the land, was what first attracted the attention of a lookout on the Iowa, a young naval apprentice.  He gave the alarm, and the next moment the bow of the Maria Teresa was seen gliding out from between the headlands of the port.

            At once an alarm gun was fired, the signal was hoisted “Enemy escaping,” and on every ship the call “Clear for action” rang out.  In two minutes every officer and man was at his post, and the ship were heading for the Spaniards.

            As the Maria Teresa passed the rocky point below Morro Castle Cervera stood beside the pilot.  He had told Miguel Lopez to let him know the moment when he could safely turn to the westward.  At the signal from the pilot the Admiral gave the order “Starboard,” and then, as the great cruiser swung round in answer to her helm, he called down the voice tubes that led to barbettes and batteries, “Fire!”  Lopez remarked that, as they ran out to sea, Cervera did not show the least excitement or agitation, and that he gave his orders calmly and deliberately.  “You have done your work well, pilot,” he said to Lopez: “I hope you will come out of this safe, and that you will be well rewarded.  You have earned it.”

            The other cruisers, steering in the wake o the Maria Teresa, came on with an interval of about 600 yards between each ship.  The speed had been ten knots through the narrows.  As they gained the sea the engines were put to full speed, and as each ship cleared the headlands she opened fire.  The guns of Socapa and Morro joined in the cannonade, but, unluckily for the Spaniards, their fire was as ineffective as it had been on previous occasions.  Between the Oquendo-the last of the cruisers-and the torpedo boats there was a gap of about three-quarters of a mile, or between four and five minutes in time at the rate at which the squadron ran out.  From the moment of the first alarm till the behind the Morro Point, less than a quarter of an hour had passed.

            These were busy, anxious minutes for the American fleet.  In the absence of Admiral Sampson and the New York, the Brooklyn was the flagship, and Scohley was in command of the actual fighting force.  The signal flags rose and fell fluttering on the Brooklyn’s halyards, but the captains of the blockading fleet had so fully thought out what was to be done in such an emergency that they were ready to act, where need be, each on his own initiative.  They showed ready resource and good seamanship.  Without these three might well have been disastrous results, as the huge ships rushed with all the speed they could gather to hang as closely as might be on the flank of the escaping enemy.  And most of them laboured under the serious disadvantage of having very little steam to work with.  They first headed for the opening of the harbour, the stokers below working like madmen to get their furnaces well ablaze, and the gunners in the barbettes and forward batteries sending their shells screaming towards the Spanish squadron.  Then as it was seen that the enemy’s course was westward, the Americans turned on the same course, this change bringing some of the battleships into dangerous proximity to each other.  The Texas and the Iowa had been running at first towards the land on a converging course.  Wrapped in the smoke of their big guns, their bows were perilously near, and as they sheered off from each other, the Oregon, which had been following the Iowa, but had now gathered more way than her consorts, came rushing in between the two battleships.  The Oregon held her fire as she drove past them, but as her big bow guns cleared the line of the Iowa’s upper works, she fired her starboard guns, the shells passing just over the forward deck of her neighbour.       

            The Brooklyn had, like the rest, headed for Morro.  She had very little steam up and moved slowly, and Schley saw that if he held on his course he ran a risk of being rammed by the Maria Teresa or the Cristobal Colon, both of which were rushing westward at a higher speed than he could yet command.  He star boarded his helm, turning first eastward, then south, and finally westward again.  While he swept round in this circle, the battleships came up between him and the land.  But till they masked his fire he kept every gun going that could be brought to bear on the Spaniards, then he joined in the chase, firing his forward guns.  The great speed of his fine armoured cruiser enabled him soon to range up abreast of the Oregon, which had at once got and kept the lead of the other battleships.

            The New York, seven miles away to the eastward, heard the roar of guns and turned to join in the fight, in which it was the Admiral’s misfortune to have a very small share.  The Ericsson ran back beside her.  But before they were even abreast of Morro Castle the fate of some of the enemy’s ships had been decided.  Close into the shore between Morro and Aguadores lay the gunboat Gloucester.  She was a small steel steamer, built for speed.  Before the war she had been a pleasure yacht, the Corsair, the property of Mr. Pierpont Morgan.  She had been bought by the United States Government, renamed, and fitted as a despatch boat, armed with some small quick-firers-six and three pounder guns.  Her captain was one of the smartest officers in the American navy, Commander W. Wainwright, who had been second in command of the Maine when she blew up in Havana Harbour.  He showed that day that a yacht, well handled, might prove herself a formidable fighting ship.  He had opened fire on the cruisers as they came out, but realising that his small guns could do them little harm, and rightly conjecturing that the torpedo boats would follow the larger craft, he kept his station, waiting for them to appear.  He almost stopped his engines, holding on towards Morro, reckless of the risk he ran of being sunk by the shore batteries.  The pressure on the boilers raised so rapidly that when the Furor and Pluton dashed out of the harbour the Gloucester was able to make for them with a speed of seventeen knots, sending a shower of well aimed shells into them-shells that, light as they were could do deadly damage to the torpedo boats.  How much of the injury the two boats received was due to the Gloucester, how much to the guns of the Indiana, which were also turned upon them, and to the New York, which sent them some long ranging shots as she came up, it is impossible to say.  Certain it is that yacht had a large share in their destruction, and, according to the narrative of the Spanish lieutenant who was second in command of the Furor, it was the Gloucester prevented her getting away, turning to the eastward outside Morro Point.  If the Furor could have got within torpedo range of Wainwright’s little steamer, a single torpedo might have blown the Gloucester out of the water.  But the Gloucester’s shells quickly crippled the torpedo boat.  One of the first shells that hit her destroyed the main ventilator of the Furor’s engine room and disorganised the forced draught, bringing the pressure of steam down rapidly.  Another cut the helmsman in two, a third shattered the steering gear.  Yey another penetrated into the engine-room, breaking several steam pipes.  The Furor, without propelling or steering power, enveloped in clouds of escaping steam, and with her narrow deck strewn with dead and wounded, drifted helplessly towards the shore.  Her consort, the Pluton, did not survive her many minutes.  The Furor sank under the rocky coast near Cabanas Bay, and the Pluton kept her engines going just long enough to run ashore beyond the west point the little inlet.

            Like the two smaller boats that were sunk by Dewey during the fight in Manila Bay, these fine torpedo craft had courted line destruction that thus overtook them by coming out in broad daylight to run the gauntlet of a fleet armed with quick-firing guns.  There was only one way in which Cervera and Villamil might perhaps have used them with affect.  They might have crept out close under the starboard side of two cruisers, reached the sea sheltered between them and the land, and then their protectors, only dashing out from under cover at the last moment, could perhaps have convoyed them into the midst of the enemy.  In this way they might have done something.  Fighting as they did was an act of self-destruction.   

            Within a few minutes of the loss of Villamil’s little vessels, Cervera’s flagship had shared their fate.  Coming out first, she had received the fire of the Brooklyn and the four battleships, a converging rush of shells of all calibres.  The Indiana, the Texas, and the Oregon then concentrated their fire upon her.  In the first dash the cruisers had gained a little on the American fleet, and at first the fire of the pursuers did little serious damage.  Mr. Mason, an Englishman, and the consul of China at Santiago, watched them from the lookout hill north of Morro.  He lost sight of the cruisers at ten o’clock as they went round the curve of the shore.  This was twenty minutes after they had cleared the headlands, and so far as he could judge none of them had yet been badly hit.  Signal masts and chimneys were all standing, and none of the ships were on fire.  He thought Cervera had made good his escape.  This was the impression in Santiago, and on this was based the report sent through Havana, which was ridiculed in England and America as a Spanish fiction.

            The Maria Teresa, although the first of the cruisers to succumb to the shower of shells poured into the squadron by the American fleet, got as far as a bought six miles to the westward of Santiago.  During the war the gunnery of the American Navy was spoken of as something very perfect, but in the running fight with the Spaniards outside Santiago, considering the enormous number of shots fired by the blockading squadron, the hits were remarkably few.  The Maria Teresa, though exposed to a converging storm of fire, was only hit twenty-nine times.  An 8-inch shell struck the shield of the second gun in the broadside, counting from the stern.  It went through it and exploded between decks, doing a lot of damage, and inflicting heavy loss of the crews working the guns of the secondary battery.  A 5-inch shell came through the side in the coalbunkers, forcing up the deck above and setting the ship on fire.  During the whole fight, the big barbette and turret guns of the American battleships (13-inch and 12-inch guns throwing projectiles of 1,100 and of 850 pounds) made only two hits.  Both of these were on the unfortunate Maria Teresa.  They look as if they came from a pir of guns mounted side by side in one of the blockading vessels, for they crashed through the Spanish cruiser’s side close together, making nearly the same hole.  They came in just aft of the stern turret and a little above the water line.  They burst in the after torpedo-operating room, blowing a jagged hole through the other side of the ship, and utterly wrecking everything in the compartment in which the explosion took place, killing and wounding all who were at work there and setting the ship on fire.  An 8-inch shell few feet forward of the point where these two giant projectiles had struck made another damaging hit.  The official report thus describes its deadly work: - “An 8-inch shell struck the gun deck just under the after barbette, passed through the side of the ship, and exploded ranging aft.  The damage done by this shell was very great.  All the men in the locality must have been killed or badly wounded.  The beams were torn and ripped.  The fragments of the shell passed across the deck and out through the starboard side.  The shell also cut the fire main.”  The other hits were mostly from the smaller 6-pounder quick firers.  They made three holes in one of the funnels, and cut up the deckhouses.

              Their explosions killed and wounded a good many of the crew, among them Admiral Cervera himself, who was slightly injured in the arm as he stood on the bridge outside the conning tower, watching the progress of the fight, and as some thought courting death.  But none of the damage done directly by the American shells was sufficient to put the Spanish flagship out of action.  She had her water line intact, her heavy guns absolutely untouched, and only one of the quick firers in her secondary battery was damaged.  But indirectly the few heavy shells that had come in had settled her fate.  She had been sufficiently stripped of wood and wooden fittings.  Below decks especially there seems to have been a lot of dry woodwork.  The Shells set this on fire, and the ship, with her fire main severed, was burning fiercely in two different places.  All attempts to keep the fire down proved useless.  The men were rapidly driven from the guns and the engine room, and the ship drifted towards the shore a helpless wreck, the black smoke pouring up from her lower decks.  Some of the crew swam to the land; the Americans took others off, the Gloucester especially doing good service.  Her light draught enabled her to go close in, and while the battle went roaring away to the westward, Commander Wainwright was busy saving the remains of the Spanish flagship’s crew from death by fire or water.  Among those he took on to his ship were Admiral Cervera and his soon, a lieutenant in the Spanish navy.  The two had thrown themselves into the water together as the fire crept forward to their station near the conning tower and bow barbette.  The admiral was taken to the shore, where a party of the Gloucester’s men having been launched, under Lieutenant Orton, to collect the prisoners and keep back the Cuban guerrillas, who were trooping down to the coast, firing on the Spaniards as they swam ashore, and knocking them on the head as they tried to land.  This murderous work was stopped by a threat to turn the Gloucester’s guns on the cowardly ruffians.  Cervera, as he stepped ashore, told Morton that he surrendered to him, and asked to be taken on board the gunboat.  He was rowed to the Gloucester.  As he came on board the ship, Commander Wainwright grasped his hand and said warmly: “I congratulate you, sir, on having made as gallant a fight as ever ws witnessed on the sea.”

               It was at a quarter past ten that the burning flagship drove ashore at Nimanima six and a half miles fro Morro Castle.  The Vizcaya and the Cristobal Colon were still in good condition, and seemed to be gaining on the Americans; but the other cruiser, the Almirante Oquendo, was in dire distress, and only survived the flagship a quarter of an hour, driving ashore near her consort, seven miles west of Santiago at half-past ten.  No ship in the whole squadron received such a terrible battering as she endured from the quick firers of the Texas, Brooklyn, Oregon, and Indiana.  The sides were riddled with shells and fragments of shells.  One gun of the quick firing battery was dismounted, another pierced by a shell.  Ammunition hoists were cut through, ventilators and fire mains smashed.  An 8-inch shell came through the roof of the bow barbette, killed everyone in the turret, ad disabled the forward heavy gun.  But, although her fighting power was thus seriously diminished it must be noted that, like the Maria Teresa, she had her water line belt and her engines intact, these being in the case of every cruiser in the fleet, perfectly protected by the under water armoured deck.  What put her out of action was the setting on fire of woodwork.  These fires broke out in several places, and it was impossible to keep them all under.  One of their first effects was to interfere with the draught to the furnaces and slow the engines.  The ship, hard pressed by the Indiana, was driven ashore to save life.  According to one account, her captain, Don Juan Lazaga, the son of a Spanish admiral, blew his brains out when h saw that h could not save his ship.  Stories of this kind must be received with caution.  It is far more likely that a bursting shell brained him.

               Her own magazines affected the complete destruction of the Oquendo.  She blew up on the beach, the explosion of the forward magazine nearly cutting her in two just ahead of the bow barbette.  As soon as she went ashore, Sampson, who had come up in the New York, signalled of the port.  Two auxiliary cruisers, the Harvard (formerly the Atlantic liner New York) and the Hist, had also come up from the eastward.  These assisted the Gloucester in rescuing the crew of the Oquendo.  The flagship New York, accompanied by the Ericsson, joined in the pursuit of the remaining ships, but Sampson was yet too far astern to take any share in the fighting.

            The Cristobal Colon had shot out well ahead of the Vizcaya.  The latter was hard pressed by the Iowa, and was evidently in trouble, for her fire was slackening, and she was losing speed.  Several shells had burst in her gun-deck, one raking it from the stern forward, and killing and wounding half the men on one side of the ship.  She was headed off by the Brooklyn, and the Spanish captain, Don Antonio Eulate, recognising that this was the quickest ship in the enemy’s fleet, and that if she were crippled it would be the means of saving his colleague, Captain Diaz Moreu, of the Colon, made a plucky attempt to close with Schley’s flagship, in order to ram or torpedo her.  The Brooklyn easily avoided this manoeuvre, and the torpedo, which Eulate had placed in his bow tube ready to be fired, proved the destruction of his fine ship.  It was exploded by the impact of a shell, and wrecked and set fire to the fore part of the vessel.  The ship was already on fire in the gun-decks and coalbunkers.  Headed off by the Brooklyn, close pressed by the Iowa and the Oregon, Eulate ran his burning ship ashore at Asseradores, fifteen miles from Santiago, and hailed down his flag.  As it fell a new explosion shook the unfortunate Vixcaya.  The American crews cheered wildly, but on board the Iowa Captain Evans checked the hurrahs of his men.  “Don’t cheer, boys,” he said; “those poor fellows are dying.”  It was about a quarter past eleven. Evans, with the Iowa, stood by the wreck of the Vizcaya, by the Admiral’s orders, to rescue the survivors of her crew.  Meanwhile the Brooklyn leading, then the Oregon, next the Texas and the cruiser Vixen, with the New York far astern, continued the chase of the Crisotbal Colon, which had got a lead of six miles, and seemed likely to escape.

            The rescue of the Spaniards from the burning Vizcaya and her colleagues was a work of danger and difficulty.  Loaded guns were going off with the heat.  Ammunition on deck and below was exploding, wreckage was coming down from above, and round the wreck the surf of the shore was breaking heavily.  There were ghastly sights to be seen by the rescuers, for men who had died in the attempt to escape hung here and three burning on the red-hot plates of the wrecked cruiser’s decks and sides.  The Cubans had to be kept at bay on the landside, where several men were landed.  Some of those who escaped swam ashore, got safely into the woods, and pluckily made their way into Santiago and reported themselves ready for duty.

            Wainwright, of the Gloucester, and Evans, of the Iowa, did all that brave and chivalrous men could do to rescue the survivors, many of them wounded, and to honour the desperate bravery shown by the Spanish officers in this forlorn rush against superior numbers.  A guard of marines, who presented arms as he stepped on board the Iowa, received Eulate and Evans, taking his hand, told him that he must not give up his sword.  “You have, surrendered,” he said, “to four ships, each heavier that your own.  You did not surrender to the Iowa only so her captain cannot take your sword.”  Eulate was deeply touched, and when Cervera was brought on board he told him what Evans had said, adding that the incident would be one of the treasured memories of his life.  Three of the Spaniards, who died soon after being taken on board the battleship, were laid under the red and golden flag under which they had fought, and as later on their bodies were committed to the wave, three volleys were fired as a last salute.

            While the survivors of the wretched cruisers were being saved, the Cristobal Colon was steaming westward, and the pursuers were gaining on her.  On the measured mile the Colon had made a trial speed of twenty-three knot.  If she had been able to do anything like that on the 3^rd of July, she would have got safe to Havana, but she averaged, on her run out from Santiago, a speed of only between thirteen and fourteen knots.

             At ten minutes to one the Brooklyn and the Oregon had got within range of the Colon and opened fire upon her with their heavy guns.  She had no weapons that could even attempt an effective reply to them.  In the earlier stage of the fight, when she was in action just outside, she had received practically no injury.  Her armour kept out all but one large shell, an 8-inch projectile that came through the side above the belt and wrecked her wardroom.  Unlike her consorts built in Spanish dockyards, this Italian-built cruiser never was on fire.  She was lost simply through lack of speed and through not having a proper armament, which might have enabled her to make a real fight.  As her pursuers closed in upon her she headed for the shore in the little bay into which the Tarquino river runs, forty-eight miles to the west of Santiago.  As the giant shells of the Oregon and Brooklyn roared through the air above her decks or sent geysers of water over her as they ricocheted alongside, it was clear that the American gunners had the range, and that the Colon would soon be a mere target for the heavy guns of four big ships, for the Texas and New York were now coming up to the help of Schley.  Captain Moreu therefore struck his flag, and the boats of the Oregon pulled alongside to take possession.

            When the American boarding officer came on deck the Spaniards were beginning to get their boats out, and a marked list to starboard showed that the Colon was sinking.  Men were sent below to try to discover where the leak was, and to close some of the watertight doors in the bulkheads, which were found open.  But nothing could save the ship; she was going down rapidly.  The wounded were got into the boats first, then the rest of the officers and crew were transferred to the American fleet.  The Colon heeled over towards the land and sank sideways, leaving her port side out of water and awash, her decks nearly vertical, the long muzzles of her quick-firers on the port side pointing skywards.  It is all but certain that her water-line belt was unpierced by the American fire, and that she was sunk by one of her own engineers, who was resolved that if he could help it the Colon should not float after her surrender and fly the Stars and Stripes.  Her therefore, without orders from his captain, opened the seacocks and let the water into the ship.

             Thus in less than four hours the Spanish fleet had been utterly destroyed.  The Colon was sunk.  The three other cruisers lay burning on the rocks nearer Santiago, columns of black smoke a thousand feet high curling up from their wrecks against the green hills and the blue sky.  One torpedo boat was a wreck on the shore; the other had gone to the bottom in deep water.  And this had gone to the bottom in deep water.  And this success had been won with practically no loss to the blockading fleet.  The total number of casualties from the fire of the Spaniards was two, one killed and one wounded, both on board the Brooklyn.  Besides these, having had more or less seriously injured nine men unwittingly placed themselves in the line of concussion of their own heavy guns.  The only ships actually hit were the Iowa and the Brooklyn; the former was struck several times, but no one was injured.  The hits on the Brooklyn numbered twenty, mostly on the armour, funnels, and ventilators, the projectiles being small shells that did very little damage.  The seaman killed was a signalman named Ellis, a well-educated young man who had joined the navy as a volunteer just before the war.  He came from Brooklyn, and by his own desire was posted to the ship named after his native city.  He was engaged in range-finding duty during the action, and was standing beside Commodore Schley and Captain Cook, who commanded the ship when he was killed.  The commodore thus described the incident: -“As I stood talking with Captain Cook while we finished the Vizcaya, it seemed that our shots were falling a little short.  I turned to Ellis, who stood near, and asked him what the range was.  He replied ‘Seventeen hundred yards.’  I have pretty keen eyesight, and it seldom deceives me as to distances, and I told him I thought it was slightly more than that.  ‘I just took it, sir, but I’ll try it again,’ he said, and stepped off to one side, about eight feet, to get the range.  He had just struck him full in the face and carried away all of his head about the mouth.”

             As the Colon surrendered, there was a striking scene on board the Texas.  Captain Phillips, her commander, called his crew on deck, and speaking in a clear, ringing voice, told them he had not called them up to join in the cheers that hailed the surrender of the last of the Spaniards, but he asked every man to take off his hat and offer silent thanks to God for the great victory, and for their own personal safety during the fight.  All hats were off for a brief interval, and then the men threw them in the air, cheering their captains.

            All the ships were soon crowded with Spanish prisoners, most of them more or less seriously wounded.  The total number of Spaniards who surrendered was 1,600.  About 150 of those who swam ashore made their way to the city of Santiago.  The Cubans killed many others on land.  The total loss of Cervera’s fleet was about 350 killed and 160 wounded, out of a total complement of some 2,300 men.

           During the action the American ships had fired in all 6,500 shells.  A careful examination of the Spanish wrecks was afterwards made, and all the hits counted.  There were probably some others not included in this enumeration, as on the three cruisers that were burned much of the upper works had disappeared, and a good deal of the Colon’s side that had been exposed to fire was under water.  For the number of guns in action and the damage done the total of hits was surprisingly small, amounting to only about 3 per cent of the shots fired.  The 13-inch guns, of which there were eight in action, did not make a single hit; the 12-inch guns, of which there were six, made only two.  The medium calibred guns and the heavier quick-firers did the real work.  It must be remembered, however that in the chase much of the firing was at longs ranges, and all of it in the midst of dense smoke clouds; for, though the Americans were still without it. 

            Of individual deeds of gallantry on the American side, many might be recorded, both during the running fight and in the subsequent rescue of the defeated Spaniards.  On board the Brooklyn, when the fight was hottest, a shell jammed in one of the quick firers.  Three men in succession volunteered to try to get it clear with the rammer, though for this purpose it was necessary to climb out over the ship’s side and hang on with one hand, using the heavy rammer with the other, exposed, not only to the Spanish fire, but to the blast from the fire of the heavy guns further aft.  The third of these plucky fellows got the shell out.  One of the Iowa’s crew climbed thrice into the burning Vizcaya, at the risk of his own life, to help out the wounded Spaniards.  It would be easy to multiply such examples.