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Within the harbor were four large Spanish ships and two new, fast torpedo-boat destroyers, all commanded by Admiral Cervera. The ships were the Infanta Maria Teresa, named for a Spanish princess; the Vizcaya, named for a province in Spain; the Cristóbol Colón, which is the Spanish name for Christopher Columbus; and the Almirante Oquendo.
Ahead, on either flank and at the rear, the torpedo-boat destroyers were scouting vigilantly, with gunners standing by ready to fire promptly at any periscope or conning tower of an enemy craft that might be sighted. "I don't suppose there'll be any band concert this afternoon," said Greg Holmes suddenly and ruefully. "And we have a mighty good band, too.
Take an entirely fresh man: a battleship can be built and put in commission before he becomes a trained man-of-war's man, and a torpedo-boat can be built and ready for service before, to use the old sea phrase, "the hay seed is out of his hair." Further, in a voluntary service, you cannot keep your trained men as you can your completed ship or gun.
When the cloud thinned there was nothing to be seen but heads of swimming men, who swam for a time and sank. The flag-ship had been torpedoed. But the torpedo-boat followed her. Pursued by the mouse-colored destroyer, she circled around and headed back in the endeavor to reach her consorts; but she had not time.
Leaving Curaçao on the 16th, he crossed the Caribbean Sea, and at daybreak on the morning of Thursday, May 19, he entered the harbor of Santiago de Cuba for the purpose of obtaining a fresh supply of coal. His fleet then consisted of the second-class battle-ship Cristobal Colon, the armored cruisers Vizcaya, Almirante Oquendo, and Maria Teresa, and the torpedo-boat destroyers Furor and Pluton.
To-day it was his ship that sank two Spanish torpedo-boat destroyers and afterward received the Spanish Admiral aboard as a prisoner of war.
They were protected by the battleships Baden, Wurttemberg, Bayern, and Sachsen, the large cruisers Kaiser and Deutschland, the small cruisers Gazelle, Prinzess Wilhelm, Irene, Komet, and Meteor, and the torpedo divisions D 5 and D 6, accompanied by their torpedo-boat divisions.
One such, after repeated failures, was employed by the Confederates, with equal gallantry and success, in sinking a Union sloop of war off Charleston harbor, the torpedo-boat itself going down to the bottom with its victim, all on board being drowned. The other type of torpedo-boat was simply a swift, ordinary steam-launch, operated above water.
Then the gunboat lifted her anchor and steamed eastward, her officers watching through glasses a small, low torpedo-boat, far to the southeast, too far to be reached by gun fire, which was steering a parallel course, and presumably watching the gunboat.
We should substitute for comparatively inefficient types the old third-class battleship Texas, the single-turreted monitors above mentioned, and, indeed, all the monitors and some of the old cruisers efficient, modern seagoing vessels. Seagoing torpedo-boat destroyers should be substituted for some of the smaller torpedo boats.
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