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Updated: May 13, 2025
The fight lasted till four P.M., when the Spanish admiral took refuge in the Downs. Tromp determined to engage if they should come out; but Oquendo with his powerful fleet, many of which carried from sixty to a hundred guns, suffered himself to be blockaded; and the English admiral told Tromp he was ordered to join the Spaniards if hostilities began.
The 'Brooklyn' and 'Oregon, after a few parting shots, also left her contemptuously and made all steam and shell after the foremost two of the Spanish ships, the 'Almirante Oquendo' and the 'Cristobal Colon. "Just then the two torpedo-boat destroyers 'Pluton' and 'Furor' were discovered. They had come out after the cruisers without being seen, and were boldly heading west down the coast.
They signalled for help, but none came, and they dropped away to leeward to Bilbao. Oquendo had fallen off still farther to Santander, and the rest of the sixty arrived in the following days at one or other of the Biscay ports.
The Almirante Oquendo, equally punished, followed the same example, a mass of flames shrouding her as she rushed for the beach. The Vizcaya was the next to succumb, after a futile effort to ram the Brooklyn. One shell from the cruiser went the entire length of her gun-deck, killing or wounding all the men on it.
Recalde, with Alonzo de Leyva and Oquendo, who came to his help, tried desperately to close; but they could make nothing of it. They were out-sailed and out-cannoned. The English fired five shots to one of theirs, and the effect was the more destructive because, as with Rodney's action at Dominica, the galleons were crowded with troops, and shot and splinters told terribly among them.
“When about ten miles west of Santiago the Indiana had been signalled to go back to the harbour entrance, and at Acerraderos the Iowa was signalled to ‘resume blockading station.’ The Iowa, assisted by the Ericsson and the Hist, took off the crew of the Vizcaya, while the Harvard and the Gloucester rescued those of the Infanta Maria Teresa and the Almirante Oquendo.
The Captain-General himself, Admiral Recalde, Alonzo de Leyva, Oquendo, Diego Flores de Valdez, Bertendona, Don Francisco de Toledo, Don Diego de Pimentel, Telles Enriquez, Alonzo de Luzon, Garibay, with most of the great galleons and galeasses, were in the thickest of the fight, and one after the other each of those huge ships was disabled.
As the wind stood there was still room for them to wear and thus escape the banks, but they would then have to face the enemy, who seemed only refraining from attacking them because while they continued on their present course the winds and waves would finish the work without help from man. Recalde, De Leyva, Oquendo, and other officers were sent for to the San Martin to consult.
A cheer came from the men in the turret, and the veteran glanced triumphantly toward the younger gunner. "The latter's turn soon came. The Oquendo, battered and helpless, drifted ashore in flames. The Oregon accompanied by the Brooklyn, sped on after the fleet-footed Colón. The rapid-fire batteries of both American ships rattled and shrieked after the fugitive.
Leaving Curaçao on the 16th, he crossed the Caribbean Sea, and at daybreak on the morning of Thursday, May 19, he entered the harbor of Santiago de Cuba for the purpose of obtaining a fresh supply of coal. His fleet then consisted of the second-class battle-ship Cristobal Colon, the armored cruisers Vizcaya, Almirante Oquendo, and Maria Teresa, and the torpedo-boat destroyers Furor and Pluton.
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