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Updated: May 31, 2025
In the vicinity of Cienfuegos, Santiago, and Trinidad, in the mountain regions of the eastern district, there are many lawless people, banditti, in fact, who make war for plunder both upon native and foreign travelers, even resorting in some cases to holding prisoners for ransoms. Several aggravating instances of the latter character came to our knowledge while we were on the spot.
It was safer to do so than to keep one at Hampton Roads; for offence is a safer course than defence. Consider the conditions. The Spaniards, after crossing the Atlantic, would have to coal. There were four principal ports at which they might do so, Havana, Cienfuegos, Santiago, and San Juan de Puerto Rico.
The Oregon may properly be regarded as one of the three principal detachments into which the United States fleet was divided at the opening of the eventful week, May 12th-19th, and which, however they might afterwards be distributed around the strategic centre, which we had chosen should be about Havana and Cienfuegos, needed to be brought to it as rapidly as possible. No time was avoidably lost.
Cervera would have preferred to be at San Juan, where there was a navy yard and where his position would have obliged the American fleet either to split into two divisions separated by eight hundred miles or to leave him free range of action. Next to San Juan he would have preferred Havana or, Cienfuegos, which were connected by railroad and near which lay the bulk of the Spanish Army.
For while there was yet light to see, he read another name that he used to know the name of RAMIREZ ... Nacio en Cienfuegos, isla de Cuba ... Wherefore born? for what eternal purpose, Ramirez, in the City of a Hundred Fires?
On the following day, May 21, Sampson sent the Marblehead to the southern coast of Cuba with an order directing Commodore Schley to proceed at once to Santiago unless he had good reason to believe that the Spanish fleet was really in Cienfuegos.
Sampson was given the choice either of the command of the blockading squadron off Havana or at Cienfuegos, Schley in either case to remain with his own squadron.
Consequently, the extremely important port of Cienfuegos, a back door to Havana, was blockaded only by a few light cruisers; and when the Spanish squadron was reported at Curaçao, these had to be withdrawn. One only was left to maintain in form the blockade which had been declared; and she had instructions to clear out quickly if the enemy appeared.
Sampson at the same time cabled Remey at Key West to warn the blockaders off Cienfuegos none of which were armored of the possible appearance of the enemy at that port.
These, mixed with vegetables, bits of fish, and sometimes meat and bones when they can be procured, are boiled into a soup, thus keeping soul and body together in the poor creatures during the week. Cienfuegos is situated in the midst of a sugar-producing district, where soil and climate are both favorable, and over twenty large plantations are to be seen within a radius of two or three leagues.
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