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Updated: May 8, 2025
Do not risk or cripple your vessels against fortifications as to prevent from soon afterwards successfully fighting Spanish fleet, composed of Pelayo, Carlos V., Oquendo, Vizcaya, Maria Teresa, Cristobal Colon, four deep sea torpedo boats, if they should appear on this side. Long.
The Spanish ship was already burning. At 11.05 o'clock down came a yellow and red flag at her stern. Just as the 'Texas' got abeam of her she was shaken by a mighty explosion. "The crew of the 'Texas' started to cheer. 'Don't cheer, because the poor devils are dying, called Captain Philip, and the 'Texas' left the 'Almirante Oquendo' to her fate to join in the chase of the 'Cristobal Colon.
The first Spanish cruiser to show itself was the Infanta Maria Teresa, followed by the Vizcaya, the Almirante Oquendo and the Cristobal Colon, with the torpedo boats Pluton and Furor bringing up the rear. The Infanta Maria Teresa, leading the procession, was the flagship of Admiral Cervera. He sent a shell toward the American vessels, but, in accordance with the rule, it went wide of the mark.
It is almost impossible to us who can look back on the long records, almost always sad and disastrous, not to doubt whether in giving a new world "to Castile and Aragon," Cristobal Colon did not impose a burden on the country of his adoption which she was unable to bear, and which became, in the hands of the successors of her muy Españoles y muy Católicos kings, a curse instead of a blessing.
He had slunk from his storm-battered caravel and into his house without saying a word to any one. His wife, overjoyed at seeing him, threw her arms around him. "Oh, my good Martin!" she exclaimed, "we were mourning you as dead! Cristobal Colon believed that you and your Pinta had gone to the bottom off the Azores!" "I only wish I had!" groaned Martin, dejectedly. "I only wish I had!"
First among them came the men of the Cristobal Colon, and these were the best looking of all the captives. From their pretty fair average the others varied to worse and worse, till a very scrub lot, said to be ex-convicts, brought up the rear. They were nearly all little fellows, and very dark, though here and there a six-footer towered up, or a blond showed among them.
Housewives were making ready their choicest dishes for the great Christmas-supper; fathers were slyly peeping into shop-windows, and children hoarding their sous and centimes for bonbons and comfits. Everybody was merry but Cristobal; or so thought the lad. He had no money to spend, and little but pain for his holiday-cheer.
There lay the Cristobal Colon, latest product of Italian skill; the splendid Vizcaya, that had recently attracted the admiration of all who saw her in New York Harbor; the Almirante Oquendo, that had been received with such wild enthusiasm in Havana; the Maria Teresa, famed for the richness of her interior fittings; the Reina Mercedes, used as a hospital-ship; the Pluton and the Furor, low, black, and ugly to look upon, both holding records for enormous speed, and more dreaded as engines of destruction than all the others put together.
But no risk deterred our officers and men until their work of humanity was complete. There remained now of the Spanish ships only the Cristobal Colon, but she was their best and fastest vessel. Forced by the situation to hug the Cuban coast, her only chance of escape was by superior and sustained speed.
The Spaniards returned the fire and thus "the action resolved itself into a series of magnificent duels between powerful ironclads." One by one the enemy's vessels were sunk or forced to run ashore the Cristobal Colon last, at two o'clock in the afternoon. The Spanish losses, besides the fleet, were 323 killed and 151 wounded; the Americans lost one killed and one wounded.
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