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Updated: June 28, 2025
The destruction of the Spanish fleet at Santiago was as complete as the destruction of the Spanish fleet at Manila. Commodore Schley was the senior officer in command, and it was fitting that the man who "bottled-up" Cervera's fleet should be the one to destroy it.
"I thus reluctantly gave up the project against San Juan and stood westward for Havana." Several telegrams are here presented, based on reports that Cervera's squadron had returned to Cadiz and they had in view "to return and capture San Juan, the desire to do so and occupy the place being assured in the event of Admiral Cervera's failure to cross the Atlantic."
But the same objection applies to the destruction of Cervera's fleet when he ran away from Santiago. General Jackson's battle at New Orleans showed a marvelously small loss to Americans; but it was a good deal of a victory, and held good, though won after peace with England had been agreed upon. The capture of Manila is valid, too. Spain surrendered before the town did.
If this semi-official statement of Admiral Cervera's case is an accurate one, the Santiago campaign, which ended in the destruction of Cervera's fleet and the capture of the city, was the direct result of General Blanco's interference.
The general conclusion of the present writer, from this consideration of Cervera's position, and of that of our own Government, is that the course of the Spanish Admiral was opportunist, solely and simply.
The matter is of no particular importance now, except in so far as the information given me by Colonel Babcock indicates the views and intentions of the War Department two weeks before Admiral Cervera's fleet took refuge in Santiago harbor. I left Port Tampa for Key West on the Plant-line steamer Mascotte at half-past ten o'clock Saturday evening, May 7.
The object was a box nearly filled with parlor matches one of the most dangerous and treacherous creations of man's inventive genius. Like a sudden revelation, or a bolt out of the blue, there leaped up in Nick's mind a possible way of escape. He thought of Cervera's garments, of the fluffy lace skirts beneath her gown, to which a single flash of fire would instantly prove fatal.
If the proposed canal had been in existence in '98, the Oregon could have come more quickly through to the Atlantic; but this fact would have been far outweighed by the fact that Cervera's fleet would have had open to it the chance of itself going through the canal, and thence sailing to attack Dewey or to menace our stripped Pacific Coast.
This new plan contemplated the reduction of Santiago by a combined military and naval attack. Cervera's choice of Santiago therefore practically determined the direction of the first American overseas military expedition, which had been in preparation since the war began.
It is not too much to say that the conduct of every individual in Cervera's fleet at Santiago de Cuba showed that the Spaniard's magnificent courage, his absolute devotion to duty, and his disregard of death are no whit less to-day than when those two thousand naked men stood in the breach to be slain in the name of their country's honour.
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