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Updated: June 13, 2025
On June 22 the advance of the invading army under Major-General Shafter landed at Daiquiri, about 15 miles east of Santiago. This was accomplished under great difficulties, but with marvelous dispatch. On June 23 the movement against Santiago was begun.
They were also reminded of their own keen appetites, for, amid the excitement of that day's landing and their forced march from Daiquiri, they had eaten nothing since a daylight breakfast. But each man carried three days' rations, and camp-fires were quickly ablaze in every direction.
“Daiquiri, June 23.—Had very fine voyage; lost less than fifty animals, six or eight to-day; lost more putting them through the surf to land, than on transports. “Command as healthy as when we left; eighty men sick; only deaths, two men drowned in landing; landings difficult; coast quite similar to that in vicinity of San Francisco, and covered with dense growth of bushes.
Daiquiri was chosen as the point of debarkation by General Shafter, and its only fortifications were a blockhouse on a high cliff to the right of an iron pier, together with a small fort and earthworks in the rear. From this town extends a good road to Santiago, and in the immediate vicinity of the port the water-supply is plentiful. June 22.
At Daiquiri, for example, where the American troops landed in the late war, a native reported to the wondering community that while walking through the wood he met a tall, shaggy stranger, who looked as though he might have been one of the fisherman disciples, and who pointed to the earth with an imperious gesture. So soon as the Cuban had looked down the tall man melted into air.
As I have already said with regard to the unopposed landing at Daiquiri and Siboney, it was great luck for General Shafter, but it was not war.
I'd stay here, at La Quinta, if you could find something for me to do like picking the limes fresh for the Daiquiri cocktails. Do you think your company would carry me on its rolls for that? I could gather them in the morning and evening, when it was cooler. Thank God, I haven't any material ambition. I like the clothes, the life, of that nigger, the capataz, who rode by, as well as most.
The points selected for debarkation were Siboney, a small village about ten miles east of Morro Castle, and Daiquiri, another similar village five miles farther away, which, before the war, was the shipping-port of the Spanish-American Iron Company.
The plan of attack by way of Aguadores and Morro was regarded by the foreign residents of Santiago as the one most likely to succeed; and a gentleman who lived eight years at Daiquiri, as manager of the Spanish-American Iron Company, and who is familiar with the topography of the whole region, writes me: "I have always thought that the great mistake of the Santiago campaign was that they assaulted the city at its most impregnable point, instead of taking possession of the heights at Aguadores, which would have been tantamount to the fall of Morro, the possession of the harbor entrance and of the harbor itself.
The sun was just rising over the foot-hills beyond Daiquiri, and on the higher slopes of the Cobre range it was already day; but the deep notch at Siboney was still in dark-blue shadow, and out of it a faint land-breeze was blowing a thin, hazy cloud of smoke from the recently kindled camp-fires of the troops on the beach.
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