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If officers of the navy had directed the loading of stores on the transports at Tampa, and the unloading and landing of them at Daiquiri and Siboney, there would have been a properly equipped hospital at the latter place five days sooner than there was; there would have been forty or fifty more mules in the army's pack-train; the beach would not have been strewn with the wrecks of mismanaged boats and lighters; and the transport-steamers Alamo, Breakwater, Iroquois, Vigilancia, and La Grande Duchesse would not have brought back to the United States hundreds of tons of supplies intended for, and urgently needed by, our soldiers at the front.
There were hundreds of these cots, he says, on one of the transports off Siboney, but it proved to be utterly impossible to get any of them landed. Whether they were all carried back to the United States or not I do not know; but large quantities of supplies, intended for General Shafter's army, were carried back on the transports Alamo, Breakwater, Vigilancia, and La Grande Duchesse.
Four days later, March 16, 1917, the steamer Vigilancia went down with a loss of fifteen men. On March 17, 1917, the City of Memphis was torpedoed, and on March 18, 1917, the Illinois, both without loss of life. The sinking of the steamer Healdon in the North Sea on March 21, 1917, however, brought about the loss of twenty-one members of her crew, seven of whom were Americans.
"I take the liberty of requesting you to hand the inclosed order on the Treasury of the Quinquinambo Confederate States to Don Miguel Briones, in payment of certain stores and provisions, and of a piece of ordnance known as the saluting cannon of the Presidio of Todos Santos. Vigilancia! "Your obedient servant, "Generalissimo Commanding Land and Sea Forces, Quinquinambo Independent States."
"The Senor Perkins," he said, with an apologetic gesture of his hand to his hatless head. "You want ME, my good man?" asked Senor Perkins paternally. "Si, Senor; the mate wishes to see the Patrono," he said in Spanish. "I will come presently." The sailor hesitated. Senor Perkins took a step nearer to him benignantly. The man raised his eyes to Senor Perkins, and said, "Vigilancia."
On March 12, 1917, the unarmed steamer Algonquin, with a crew of twenty-seven, of whom ten were Americans, was shelled and sunk without warning by a German submarine. The crew succeeded in escaping. A few days later the sinking of three unarmed American vessels, the City of Memphis, Illinois, and Vigilancia, was announced.
DOÑA MATILDE. Pues lo demás déjelo a mi cargo, que Bruno y yo dispondremos el cómo burlar la vigilancia de mi padre. DON EDUARDO. No hay más que hablar. Adiós bien mío. DOÑA MATILDE. Adiós. DON EDUARDO. Ah, se me pasaba el recomendar a usted que no traiga consigo alhaja alguna, ni dinero ni cosa que lo valga, porque dirían que yo....
When finally on the 17th of March news came of the torpedoing of the Vigilancia without warning, America was prepared and calmly eager for the President's demand that Congress recognize the existence of a state of war. The demand was made by Wilson in an extraordinary joint session of Congress, held on the 2d of April.
The Illinois was torpedoed the next day. The Vigilancia was similarly sunk on March 16, 1917, by a submarine which did not appear on the surface. Fifteen of the crew, including five Americans, were lost. These sinkings occasioned gratification in Germany.
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