Battles of the Nineteenth Century, Page 145.

Hobson and the Merrimac

            The first impulse of sailors placed in the position of Sampson and Schley must have been to use the enormous force now concentrated before Santiago in order to force the entrance and destroy the enemy’s fleet inside the harbour.  But this apparently obvious course presented very serious difficulties.  If there had been a broad deep channel such as that through which Dewey steered his fleet past Corredidor to Manila and victory, doubtless Sampson would not have hesitated a moment about following his splendid example.  But here the path lay through a narrow rift in the rocks, where the leading ship, whichever she might be, would have to face, alone and unsupported, the plunging fire of high batteries on the cliffs, the horizontal converging fire of the Spanish cruisers moored just inside the dangerous pass, the attacks of the destroyers lurking under the rocks, and the explosion of the submarine mines which Cervera had fixed in the passage.  He might face all this if there was a fair chance that the destruction of the leading battleship would clear the way for her consorts, but the difficulty of the problem was that not only would the first ship be very likely to be sunk, but if she sunk or got around she would hopelessly block the way for all that followed.  Cervera’s fleet would be bottled up by such a result, though not destroyed, and a young officer in the fleet, Lieutenant Hobson, a skilled naval constructor, suggested to the Admiral that it would be better to attempt the bottling up process at a cheaper cost by sending in and sinking a large unarmed steamer in the entrance.  He suggested a detailed plan of operations, and volunteered to carry plan of operations, and volunteered to carry it through himself, with the help of a few brave men.

            His plan was accepted, and on this very first of June he began his preparations.  But before telling the story of his gallant exploit it will be well to say something of the personal career and character of the man.  Richmond Pearson Hobson came from Alabama, and was a son of one of the old planter families of the South.  Born in 1870, he had graduated at the Southern University at the age of seventeen, and then passed into the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis.  As a boy, he had been remarkable for quiet, reversed and studious ways; but he was good at all games in which he took part, though he always seemed to care for books more than games.  Making ship models and sailing them was chief recreation as a boy, and local tradition in his home at Greenboro tells of one of his few juvenile battles, when “Master Rich” fairly thrashed a bigger boy who had interfered with and badly damaged one of his little fleet.  This was Hobson’s first naval engagement.  With such antecedents no wonder as a student at Annapolis, he showed a marked predilection for the subject of naval architecture, in which he later on became a specialist.  His time at Annapolis was, in some respects, unhappy.  He had a strong, almost a stern sense of duty, and when he was appointed monitor, at the beginning of his second year, he paid no attention to a kind of unwritten traditional law among the young men that various breaches of discipline were not to be mentioned in the monitor’s report.  Hobson sent in a complete record, and was promptly boycotted by his aggrieved comrades.  But he managed to pass his lonely hours of recreation comfortably enough with his books favourite problems in ship construction, and at the end of the course passed out first of his year.  He was sent to France to make a special study of naval architecture, and returned to be a popular professor at Annapolis.  The directors of Cramps Shipbuilding Company, who are among the chief builders of warships in America, offered him a post on their staff, with a salary of 10,000 dollars (£2,000) to start with; but he determined to stick to his naval career, and on the declaration of war he was posted to Sampson’s fleet, where it was expected that his special professional skill would enable him to do good service in dealing with the accidents and injuries to the ships that could be repaired on the spot, without sending them back to the navy yards.  Brave without ostentation, determined self-possessed, he was certain to do some splendid work if the chance offered.  The spirit in which he embarked for the war is reflected in the words he wrote to his old home; “For my near and distant future, I leave myself, without anxiety, in the hands off Almighty God.”

           Such was the man who now offered to venture himself upon an enterprise that meant all but certain dash to those engaged in it.  His plan was to take the Merrimac into the harbour entrance, lay her across its narrowest part, and sink her there so as to close the pass with an iron gate.  To use his own more familiar phrase, the harbour of Santiago was bottle shaped, and he meant to put a cork in the neck of the bottle.  To do this he had to face the fire of the enemy’s fleet and batteries, and run the risk of the exploding mines, and he and his comrades had to chance being shot, blown up, or drowned during and after their exploit, for to get away would be no easy matter.  He arranged that, in order to minimise the risks, very few men should go with him: that they should all be lightly dressed, ready for a swim; that s small boat should be towed behind the Merrimac, on which they might take refuge and that a torpedo boat ot steam launch should try to run in and bring them out.

            He fitted a row of ten small torpedoes, each charged with 82 pounds of gunpowder, along the port side of the steamer.  These were wired and connected electrically with a battery on the deck.  He was to have six assistants, four on deck and two below.  He had chosen a point just beyond the Estrella battery as the place where the ship was to be sunk.  The rest of the plan may best be told as Hobson explained before he started from the flagship.

            “I shall go right into the harbour until about four hundred yards past the Estrella battery which is behind Morro Castle.  I do not think they can sink me before I reach somewhere near that point.  The Merrimac has seven thousand tons buoyancy, and I shall keep her full speed ahead.  She can make about ten knots.  When the narrowest part of the channel is reached I shall put her helm hard a port, stop the engines drop the anchors, open the sea connections, touch off the torpedoes, and leave the Merrimac a wreck lying athwart the channel, which is not as broad as the Merrimac is long.  On deck there will be four men and myself.  In the engine room there will be two other men.  This is the total crew, and all of us will be in our underclothing, with revolvers and ammunition in the watertight packing strapped around our waists.  Forward there will be a man on deck and around his waist will be a line, the other end of the line being made fast to the bridge where I will stand.

            “By that man’s side will be an axe.  When I stop the engines I shall jerk this cord, and he will thus get the signal to cut the lashing, which will behold the forward anchor.  He will then jump overboard and swim to the four oared dingy which we shall tow astern.  The dingy is full of life buoys and is unsinkable.  In it is rifles.  It is to be held by two ropes, one made fast at her bow and one at her stern.  The first man to reach her will haul in the towline and pull the dingy out to starboard.  The next to leave the ship are the rest of the crew.  The quartermaster at the wheel will not leave until after having put it hard a port and lashed it so; he will then jump overboard.  Down below, the man at the reversing gear will stop the engines, scramble on deck, and get over the side as quickly as possible.  The man in the engine room will break open the sea connections with a sledgehammer and will follow his leader into the water.  The last step insures the sinking of the Merrimac whether the torpedoes work or not.  By this time I calculate the six men will be in the dingy and the Merrimac will have swung athwart the channel to the full length of her three hundred yards of cable, which will have been paid out before the anchors were cut loose.  Then all that is left for me is to touch the button-I shall stand on the starboard side of the bridge.  The explosion will throw the Merrimac on her starboard side.  Nothing on this side of New York City will be able to raise her after that.”

            Such was the daring programme.  When volunteers were called for the execute it they presented themselves in hundreds.  Hobson shoes the six, but there was a seventh.  Almost at the last5 moment one of the men of the New York, seamen H. Clausen, though rejected in the first choice of volunteers, was taken on as an additional hand.

            It is only right to put on record the names of the entire little band.  The list is interesting in many ways.  For one thing it brings out very forcibly the international character of the personnel of the United States Navy.  We are somewhat too apt to think of its successes as victories of the Anglo-Saxon.  Irish, French, and German names figure on the brief glorious roll call of the Merrimac.  Thus runs the list: -

             Lieutenant Richmond P. Hobson (in command), George Charette, John Kelly, H. Clausen, Daniel Montague, Oscar Deignan, J. E. Murphy, John P. Phillips.

            Cadet J. W. Powell of the New York and four men manned the steam aunch that was to follow them in.  they carried with them bandages, splints and restoratives for giving first aid to wounded or exhausted men. 

            All through Wednesday, June 1^st, Hobson had been hard at work getting the Merrimac ready.  She lay near the flagship, and towards evening he paid a visit to the Admiral to discuss final details.  Just before sunset he went on board the steamer with his little crew.  The men of the other ships in the neighbourhood crowded decks and rigging, and cheered their devoted comrades frantically again and again.  There was still a lot to be done on board, and for this purpose some of the artificers of the fleet remained on the steamer till the middle of the night.  They left with stokers and the surplus engine room hands as the Merrimac got under weigh and headed for Morro.

            But there had been a miscalculation as to the time.  The dawn was coming quicker than had been anticipated, and the steamer had not gone far when the Admiral hastily ordered the torpedo boat Porter to head off and bring her back.  In the growing light the attempt would have been desperate.  The Porter overtook the slow tramp steamer, and Hobson stopped his engines, but he sent back word that if the Admiral would give him permission he though he could even yet do all he wanted.  The reply was a peremptory order to return and put off the venture till the next night.  So Hobson steamed back to the fleet, and he and his comrades had to endure the strain of twenty-four hours of the idle waiting for the desperate venture.

            A second start was made at three o’clock on the Friday morning.  This, it was calculated would give Hobson a full hour of darkness for the accomplishment of his task.  The sky was cloudy and the moonlight uncertain-everything was favourable for the enterprise.  Followed by the steam launch, the Merrimac slipped in below Morro Castle, with all her lights screened a great black mass gliding silently though the water.  But the Spaniards were on the alert.  The Pluton, one of the destroyers, was patrolling the upper part of the channel, and several picket boats were growing about.  The look out at Morro was the first to see the American ship, and took her for one of the fleet trying to force the entrance.  The guns of the battery below the Castle opened fire.  The battery of quick firers below the point near Socapa promptly came into action.  The Reina Mercedes then brought her battery to bear, and fired two torpedoes; two more were discharged by the Pluton, which also opened with her light quick firers.  Some of the submarine mines were exploded.  The Merrimac had thus to move in through a wild storm of fire.  The steam launch fell astern, unable to follow her, and took shelter under the steep shore on the Morro side.

            Hit repeatedly, but still afloat, the Merrimac reached the appointed spot, and Hobson put the helm hard a port; but, to his dismay, the ship did not answer it.  The quick firer shells of the Pluton had destroyed her rudder.  There was nothing for it but to sink her as she lay, and trust to luck.  So he gave the signal and exploded the torpedoes.  But several of them failed to act.  A strong tide was running, and anchors would not hold, and after taking ground near Estrella Point, the Merrimac, slowly sinking, drifted into the deep water near Smith Cay.  Here she was struck by one of the Whitehead torpedoes discharged from the Reina Mercedes, and went down rapidly by the head, her little crew being swept overboard in the rush of water.  As she sank, the Spaniards on the forts and ships cheered enthusiastically.  They thought they had sent one of Sampson’s fighting ships to the bottom.

            The Spaniards had shattered the boat towed astern, but there was a raft, or float secured by a long line to the deck, which remained on the surface of the water.  It was by means of this raft that Hobson and his companions made their marvellous escape from death.  How they did it had best be related in the lieutenant’s own words, as he told the story after his release from a Spanish prison: -

            “I swam away from the ship as soon as I struck the water, but I could feel the eddies drawing me back in spite of all I could do.  That did not last very long, however, and as soon as I felt the tugging cease I turned and struck out for the float, which I could see dimly bobbing up and down over the sunken hull.  The Merrimac’s masts were plainly visible, and I could see the heads of my seven men as they followed my example and made for the float also.  We had expected, of course, that the Spaniards would investigate the wreck, but we had no idea that they would be at it as quickly as they were before we could get to the float several row boats and launches came around the bluff from inside the harbour.  They had officers on board, and armed marines as well, and they searched that passage, rowing backwards and forwards, until next morning.  It was only by good luck that we got to the float at all, for they were upon us so quickly that we had barely concealed ourselves when a boat, with quite a large party on board, was right beside us.

            “Unfortunately as we thought then-but it turned out afterwards that nothing more fortunate could have happened to us-the rope with which we had secured the float to the ship was too short to allow it to swing free, and when we reached it we found that one of the pontoons was entirely out of water and the other one was submerged.  Had the raft laid flat on the water we could not have got under it, and would have had to climb upon it, to be an excellent target for the first party of marines that arrived.  As it was, we could get under the raft, and by putting our hands through the crevices between the slats, which formed its deck we could hold our heads out of water and still be unseen. That is what we did, and all night long we stayed there with our noses and mouths barely out of the water.”  So runs the narrative; but it must be noted that, long as the time must have seemed to the eight men, there was at most an hour of the night left when the Merrimac went down.

            “None of us,” he continues, “expected to get out of the affair alive, but luckily the Spaniards did not think of the apparently damaged, half sunken raft floating about beside the wreck.  They came to within a cable’s length of us at intervals of only a few minutes all night.  We could hear their words distinctly, and even in the darkness could distinguish an occasional glint on the rifle barrels of the marines and on the lace of the officer’s uniforms.  We were afraid to speak above a whisper, and for a good while, in fact, whenever they were near us, we breathe as easily as we could.  I ordered my men not to speak unless to address me, and with one exception they obeyed.  After we had been there an hour or two the water, which we found rather warm at first, began to get cold, and my fingers ached where the wood was pressing into them.  The clouds, which were running before a pretty brisk breeze when we went in, blew over, and then by the starlight we could see the boats when they came out of the shadows of the cliffs on either side, and even when we could not see them we knew that they were still near, because we could hear very plainly the splash of the oars and the grinding of the oarlocks.

            “We all knew we would be shot if discovered by an ordinary seaman or marine, and I ordered my men not to sir, as the boats having officers on board kept well in the distance.  One of my men disobeyed orders and started to swim ashore, and I had to call him back.  He obeyed at once, but my voice seemed to create some commotion among the boats, and several of them appeared close beside us before the disturbance in the water made by the man swimming had disappeared.  We thought it was all up with us then, but the boats went away into the shadows again.

             “When daylight came a steam launch full of officers and marines came out from behind the cliff that hid the fleet an harbour and advanced towards us.  All the men on board were looking curiously in our direction.  They did not see us.  Knowing that someone of rank must be on board, I waited until the launch was quite close and hailed her.  My voice produced the utmost consternation on board.  Everyone sprang up.  The marines crowded to the bow, and the launches engines were reversed.  She not only stopped, but she backed off until nearly a quarter of a mile away, where she stayed.  The marines stood ready to fire at the word of command, when we clambered out from under the float.  There were ten of the marines, and they would have fired in a minute if they had not been restrained.  I swam towards the launch, and then she started towards me.  I called out in Spanish, ‘Is there an officer on board?’  An officer answered in the affirmative, and then I shouted in Spanish again, I have seven men to surrender.  I continued swimming, and was seized and pulled out of the water.

            “As I looked up when they were dragging me into the launch I saw that it was Admiral Cervera himself who had hold of me. He looked at me rather dubiously at first, because I had been down in the engine room of the Merrimac, where I got covered in oil, and that with the soot and coal dust made my appearance most disreputable.  I had put on my officer’s belt before sinking the Merrimac, as a means of identification, no matter what happened to me, and when I pointed to it in the launch the admiral understood and seemed satisfied.  The first words he said to me when he learned who I was were ‘Bienvenido sea usted,’ which means, ‘You are welcome.’”  

             Hobson and his en were taken on board of the Reina Mercedes, and the Spaniards in their chivalrous admiration for their bravery treated them more like comrades than prisoners.  Consul Ramsden noted in his diary for the day: “The prisoners are treated well, and I know hat the officer was bathing himself and getting into clothes of the first lieutenant of the Mercedes when a friend of mine went on board.  The sailors of the Mercedes were feasting the other men with coffee and biscuits, while they got into cloths of the former on the deck of the Mercedes.  In fact, although they had been doing their best to kill them before, they did not know how to do enough for them.”

            On board the American fleet nothing was known for some hours as to the fate of Hobson and his crew.  Young Powell kept his steam launch under the Morro shore till after daylight.  All he could make out was that the Merrimac had sunk.  He could see, as the dawn came here masts sticking out of the water, and Spanish boats near them.  As there was no hope of picking up any of the wrecked ship’s crew he ran back to the flagship soon after five o’clock the Morro sending some shots after the launch, but failing to stop her.  In the afternoon a tug was steaming out of the harbour with a white flag of truce flying from her mast.  She stopped near the New York and sent on board the flagship Captain Oviedo, Cervera’s chief of the staff.  He bought a courteous message from the admiral, saying that Lieutenant Hobson and his seven companions were prisoners in Morro Castle, and what they were all well, though two of the men he admired their courageous deed so much that he was anxious that their friends should know that they were well, and that they should have the best of treatment.

            Admiral Sampson sent his thanks to his chivalrous opponent, giving Captain Oviedo some money for the prisoners, and expressing a hope that an early exchange would be arranged so as to set them at liberty.  Everyone in the fleet was charmed with Cervera’s courteous act, and delighted at the news that Hobson and his comrades were safe.  The only unsatisfactory point in the situation was that the news had been brought by a fairly large steamer it was there fore clear that the Merrimac had not completely blocked the channel where she sank.  Still it was showed that even though there was room for a tugboat, thee was not enough for a cruiser to get past the wreck, and the newspapers confidently announced that the Spanish fleet was successfully bottled up.  As a pain matter of fact, the enterprise had failed.  From Ramsden’s diary we get a precise description of the position of the wreck.  Under date of Sunday June 12^th, he writes: -

            “I have now ascertained that the Merrimac is sunk twelve fathoms, halfway between Smith Cay and Soldados Point, which latter is the one just opposite to Churruca Point, just across the entrance of Nipero Bay.  Between the ship and the shoal on the Smith Cay side there are 45 metres of channel, and 35 between her and the shoal on the other side; therefore there is plenty of room for a vessel to pass on either side of her.  Again, there are six fathoms of water over her bridge and round house or chart room roof, and therefore blowing away her chimney and masts the channel will be right over her.”