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Updated: May 26, 2025
Several other boats went along, carrying, beside the regular crews, commissioned and chief petty officers. As we watched the boats bobbing in the short billows on their way, we, who were left behind, could not help comparing these battered hulks before us with our magnificent ships in Guantanamo Bay. All hail to the American seamen, "the men behind the guns"!
When we reached Guantanamo in the State of Texas, Captain McCalla's boats and launches had thoroughly explored and dragged the lower bay, and had taken out safely no less than thirteen contact mines, each containing about one hundred pounds of guncotton. The upper bay was still in the possession of the Spaniards; but its control was not a matter of any particular importance.
It would be cheaper, for instance, to protect a base on Culebra than one at Guantanamo, or even Samana, if the enemy commanded the sea; and cheaper to protect a base on the forbidding rocks of Polillo or Guam than on the large and fertile island of Luzon, with its extensive gulfs and bays, in many of which a fleet in command of the sea could land its force; because protecting a base on a large island would require covering a very large area, and perhaps a long extent of coast.
During the brief action a shell burst over the American ship, its fragments wounding one man. June 14. The American marines at Guantanamo Bay again attacked by the Spaniards. The heroes of Santiago Bay, who sank the Merrimac, rewarded by the Navy Department. First trial of the dynamite cruiser Vesuvius. The war tax on beer, ale, tobacco, cigars, and cigarettes went into effect on this date.
The exertion brought out a profuse perspiration on our half-naked bodies, to which the coal-dust stuck, thick and black. The black rubbed off in spots, showing the white skin beneath, the result being a most ludicrous mottled effect. A dime museum manager would make a fortune if he could have exhibited some of us as the piebald wild men from Guantanamo.
Attack upon American marines in Guantanamo Bay by Spanish regulars and guerillas. June 11. The British steamer Twickenham, laden with coal for Admiral Cervera’s fleet, was captured off San Juan de Porto Rico by the U. S. S. St. Louis. June 12.
The two vessels then moved away to Guantanamo Bay, having been off Santiago nearly forty-eight hours. It may certainly be charged as good luck to Cervera that their departure before his arrival kept our Government long in uncertainty as to the fact, which we needed to know in the most positive manner before stripping the Havana blockade in order to concentrate at Santiago.
A prominent Parisian thus summed up these misgivings: "The young American giant," he said, "is only trying his strength on Spain, but what if he should use it against us?" Now to turn from the navy to the army, and see what the latter achieved in Porto Rico. On July 21, 1898, General Miles sailed from Guantanamo Bay with a force of 3,415 men.
For perhaps three days he paced the yard with it, without being able to see where it concerned him; but he was very fond of puzzling things out, and thinking he saw a way out of this, he forwarded it to the old commander of the Savannah, who now had a battleship, the Texarkhoma, which was in winter quarters with the battle fleet at Guantanamo, Cuba, from where he figured on getting an answer in three weeks at least.
Governor Tanner, General Grosvenor, and Secretary Alger may declare that the wrecking of the army by disease was inevitable, that Northern soldiers cannot maintain their health in the tropics, and that "when troops come home sick and worn, it is a part of war"; but, in view of the record made at Guantanamo Bay, we may say to them, seriously and respectfully, rather than flippantly: "Tell that to the marines!"
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