Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 16, 2025
At night, when the danger from the Spanish torpedo-boats was greatest and when Cervera's fleet was most likely to escape, a powerful and piercing search-light was held constantly on the mouth of the narrow cañon between Morro and Socapa; the battle-ships closed in so as to diminish the radius of their semicircle by nearly one half; the cruisers and gunboats, under cover of the blinding radiance of the search-light, moved a mile nearer to the mouth of the harbor; and three steam-launches patrolled the coast all night within pistol-shot of the enemy's batteries.
“Instantly the great guns of the Morro, 180 feet above the water, and those of the Socapa battery, lying higher still, with all the batteries beneath those two, began to belch and roar as their crews strove with frantic energy to aid the flying squadron. “Now, it was about three minutes from the appearance of the first Spaniard to the firing of the first American gun.
The damage inflicted upon the batteries of La Socapa and Morro Castle were unimportant. The barracks at Morro Castle suffered damage. “The enemy had noticeable losses.” June 8. Nearly, if not quite, twenty-seven thousand men were embarked at Tampa for Santiago on the eighth of June, under the command of Maj.-Gen. William R. Shafter.
All the maps of Santiago harbor that I have seen show another castle, called Socapa, nearly opposite Morro on the western side of the channel; but I have never been able to discover it. If it still exists, it must be in ruins and so overgrown with vegetation as to be completely hidden.
On the 6th of June Admiral Sampson bombarded the shore batteries and the mouth of the harbor for two hours and a half, destroying a number of houses on Smith Cay, setting fire to the Spanish cruiser Reina Mercedes, which was moored near the end of the Socapa promontory, and killing or wounding twenty-five or thirty officers and men on the cruiser, in the batteries, and in Morro Castle.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking