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Elijah B. Tunnell was employed as cabin cook on the Winslow. The boat, under a severe fire from masked batteries of the Spanish on shore, was disabled. The Wilmington came to her rescue, the enemy meanwhile still pouring on a heavy fire. It was difficult to get the "line" fastened so that the Winslow could be towed off out of range of the Spanish guns.
Michall, and describes "a way to prevent and cure the smoakeing of Chimneys, either by stopping the tunnell towards the top, and altering the former course of the smoake, or by setting tunnells with checke within the chimneyes." I wish they may do good thereof, but fear it will prove but a poor project. This day the King and Queen are to come to Oxford.
Michall, and describes "a way to prevent and cure the smoakeing of Chimneys, either by stopping the tunnell towards the top, and altering the former course of the smoake, or by setting tunnells with checke within the chimneyes." I wish they may do good thereof, but fear it will prove but a poor project. This day the King and Queen are to come to Oxford.
Realizing the danger the boat and crew were in, and anxious to be of service, Tunnell left his regular work and went on deck to assist in "making fast" the two boats, and while thus engaged a shell came, which, bursting over the group of workers, killed him and three others.
All honor to the memory of Elijah B. Tunnell, who, if not the first, certainly simultaneous with the first, martyr of the Spanish-American war. While our white fellow-citizens justly herald the fame of Ensign Bagley, who was known to the author from his youth, let our colored patriots proclaim the heroism of Tunnell of Accomac.
History records the Negro as the first man to fall in three wars of America Crispus Attacks in the Boston massacre, March 5, 1770; an unknown Negro in Baltimore when the Federal troops were mobbed in that city en route to the front, and Elijah B. Tunnell, of Accomac county, Virginia, who fell simultaneously with or a second before Ensign Bagley, of the torpedo boat Winslow, in the harbor of Cardenas May 11, 1898, in the Spanish-American war.
It has been stated in newspaper reports of this incident that it was an ill-aimed shell of one of the American boats that killed Tunnell and Bagley. Tunnell was taken on board the Wilmington with both legs blown off, and fearfully mutilated. Turning to those about him he asked, "Did we win in the fight boys?" The reply was, "Yes." He said, "Then I die happy."
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