Guantánamo (16 page)
Authors: Jonathan M. Hansen
After three and a half weeks at anchor aboard the
Panther
, the marines received orders to disembark to a nearby campground, their relief at escaping the
Panther
's crew tempered by the drudgery of having to unload (and later reload) the thousands of pounds of guns, ammunition, lumber, and other equipment that would accompany them to Cuba. Never mind the nuisance of mosquitoes and flies. Outside the clutches of the
Panther
's captain, the marines turned out to be unruly. “I hope I get a hold on the men,” Huntington wrote Bobby. “They have little idea of obeying orders and perhaps they may improve some.”
Though they worked hard, “they stole lots out of the ship”; some “steal anything they can lay [their] hands upon.”
45
Panther
, the marines received orders to disembark to a nearby campground, their relief at escaping the
Panther
's crew tempered by the drudgery of having to unload (and later reload) the thousands of pounds of guns, ammunition, lumber, and other equipment that would accompany them to Cuba. Never mind the nuisance of mosquitoes and flies. Outside the clutches of the
Panther
's captain, the marines turned out to be unruly. “I hope I get a hold on the men,” Huntington wrote Bobby. “They have little idea of obeying orders and perhaps they may improve some.”
Though they worked hard, “they stole lots out of the ship”; some “steal anything they can lay [their] hands upon.”
45
Four weeks of these appalling conditions did not sit well with the marines. Like Keeler, many had enlisted in the war in a pique of patriotism. Unflattering, often racialized images of Spanish troops abounded in newspaper and periodical cartoons, depicting Spaniards as dark, almost black, and barbarous. Desperate for a fight, the marines settled for the nearest thing they could find to the diabolical Spaniard. When “a nigro shot and killed a sailor” in the town of Key West, Keeler reported, the marines greeted it as the opening salvo of the Spanish-American War. Refusing to leave the matter to the local sheriff, “75 Marines on liberty ⦠armed themselves with ropes, clubs, knives, and revolvers” and marched on the jail where the suspect sat in custody. Only an official guard dispatched from the marines' camp managed to prevent a lynching. It was past time to sail for Cuba.
46
46
Â
Clearing Key West on the afternoon of June 7, 1898, Colonel Huntington could not be sure exactly where in Cuba he and his marines were headed. But Spain's new captain-general, Ramón Blanco, thought he had a good idea. In April that year, Blanco warned his commander in eastern Cuba, Arsenio Linares y Pombo, to expect the Americans to come ashore along the southeast coast. Blanco ordered Linares to fortify Guantánamo Bay and to reinforce Santiago. The calls of Spanish officials to fortify Guantánamo Bay had not ended with the populating of the basin at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Before Blanco's, the latest warning to be ignored had been that of Captain-General Arsenio MartÃnez Campos y Antón, who had dispatched a team of engineers and artillery experts to Guantánamo in the wake of the USS
Columbia
's visit in February 1895. By the late nineteenth century, Guantánamo Bay had strategic value as more than a potential staging ground for an attack on Santiago. French telegraph lines connecting Cuba to Jamaica and Haiti stretched across the mouth of the bay, and a French telegraph station sat atop Fisherman's Point, just inside the southeastern entrance to the harbor. To Campos, as to a long line of Spanish officials before him, Guantánamo presented an obvious, and vulnerable, target.
47
Columbia
's visit in February 1895. By the late nineteenth century, Guantánamo Bay had strategic value as more than a potential staging ground for an attack on Santiago. French telegraph lines connecting Cuba to Jamaica and Haiti stretched across the mouth of the bay, and a French telegraph station sat atop Fisherman's Point, just inside the southeastern entrance to the harbor. To Campos, as to a long line of Spanish officials before him, Guantánamo presented an obvious, and vulnerable, target.
47
Predictably, Campos's plans went unheeded, leaving Linares to fortify Guantánamo virtually from scratch while holding back increasingly confident Cuban forces. The best Campos could do that spring was to refurbish an old battery of smooth-bore guns on Toro Cay, at the center top of the outer harbor, and erect two blockhouses, one on Windward Point, at the southeast corner of the bay, the other at the port of Caimanera, at the western entrance to the inner harbor. Conceding the outer harbor, Linares mined the mouth of the inner harbor.
48
As for the rest of the bay's defenses, that fell to the gunship
Sandoval
and its plucky commander, Lieutenant Teniente de Navio Scandella, who for over two months played cat and mouse with the largest ships in the U.S. Navy.
48
As for the rest of the bay's defenses, that fell to the gunship
Sandoval
and its plucky commander, Lieutenant Teniente de Navio Scandella, who for over two months played cat and mouse with the largest ships in the U.S. Navy.
By early June 1898, Spain had nearly 200,000 troops in Cuba, though these were by no means fresh. Roughly 36,500 Spanish troops were dispersed throughout Santiago province, with about 6,000 stationed at Guantánamo City, under the command of General Felix Pareja. Some 300 patrolled the immediate perimeter of Guantánamo Bay. At the bay, Spain had established headquarters at Cuzco Well, near Windward Point, site of the only known source of freshwater at the outer harbor. Meanwhile, confronting Pareja and his 6,000 troops at Guantánamo City was Cuba's First Division, 1,000 strong, under the command of General Pedro A. Pérez.
49
49
On the night of June 9, 1898, the
Panther
rounded Punto MaisÃ, the southeastern tip of Cuba, and entered the Windward Passage. There it collided with a U.S. transport named
Scorpion
, nearly cutting the
Scorpion
in half. Despite this hiccup, by midmorning of the next day, the
Panther
arrived at a rendezvous with the U.S. fleet off Santiago, where it reported to Rear Admiral William T. Sampson. Charles L. McCawley, a captain in Huntington's command, remembered the rendezvous as “most picturesque. In front of the harbor, lying one inside the other in two half circles, were assembled the two splendid squadrons of Admiral Sampson and Commodore Schley, comprising the flower of the navy.” Meanwhile, “Morro Castle and Socapa Battery loomed up before us four miles away, and the dark green hills of Cuba were spread out before us to the east and the west as far as the eye could see.”
Panther
rounded Punto MaisÃ, the southeastern tip of Cuba, and entered the Windward Passage. There it collided with a U.S. transport named
Scorpion
, nearly cutting the
Scorpion
in half. Despite this hiccup, by midmorning of the next day, the
Panther
arrived at a rendezvous with the U.S. fleet off Santiago, where it reported to Rear Admiral William T. Sampson. Charles L. McCawley, a captain in Huntington's command, remembered the rendezvous as “most picturesque. In front of the harbor, lying one inside the other in two half circles, were assembled the two splendid squadrons of Admiral Sampson and Commodore Schley, comprising the flower of the navy.” Meanwhile, “Morro Castle and Socapa Battery loomed up before us four miles away, and the dark green hills of Cuba were spread out before us to the east and the west as far as the eye could see.”
This proved to be the extent of the marines' sightseeing. The sailors
whom the marines joined that day off Santiago had long since ceased to regard the Cuban coastline as picturesque. They had been blockading the island since April 21, two days after the U.S. Congress passed its war resolution. That day, U.S. Navy secretary John D. Long named Sampson commander in chief of the U.S. naval fleet on the North Atlantic Station, promoting him to rear admiral and ordering him to Cuba. Long also charged Sampson with locating and observing the Spanish fleet under the command of Pascual Cervera y Topete, last seen off Cape Verde and known to be headed for the Caribbean Sea.
whom the marines joined that day off Santiago had long since ceased to regard the Cuban coastline as picturesque. They had been blockading the island since April 21, two days after the U.S. Congress passed its war resolution. That day, U.S. Navy secretary John D. Long named Sampson commander in chief of the U.S. naval fleet on the North Atlantic Station, promoting him to rear admiral and ordering him to Cuba. Long also charged Sampson with locating and observing the Spanish fleet under the command of Pascual Cervera y Topete, last seen off Cape Verde and known to be headed for the Caribbean Sea.
On May 12 one of Sampson's cruisers spotted the Spaniards leaving the French port of Martinique, where they had tried unsuccessfully to recoal (the French policy of neutrality prohibited the fueling of warships). Three days later, they were reported to be at Curaçao, the Dutch colony off the coast of today's Venezuela. There Cervera met a slightly warmer reception and attained coal sufficient to carry him to Cuba. A week later, May 19, Cervera stole unobserved into Santiago Harbor, where Cuban informants caught up to him the following day. Still, conflicting reports had Cervera in other harbors along Cuba's southern coast, and for over a week U.S. naval officials bickered about his exact whereabouts while Sampson searched frantically to find him. Cervera, all the while, stayed put in Santiago, creating confusion about his ultimate destination.
The very day Cervera arrived at Santiago, the U.S. Navy fought its first engagement in the Cuba campaign, just down the coast, at Guantánamo Bay. Since long before the war broke out, Sampson had been eyeing the telegraph cables at Santiago and Guantánamo Bay. Amid the confusion over Cervera's whereabouts, Secretary Long ordered the USS
St. Louis
, under the command of Casper F. Goodrich, to Guantánamo to cut the French cable and thus sever communications between Cuba and the outside world.
50
The
St. Louis
was greeted by the Spanish gunship
Sandoval
, which boasted heavier guns than the converted passenger liner. Rather than risk his ship, Goodrich withdrew, vowing to return to Guantánamo with proper equipment and protection. If less than auspicious, this debut in Cuba nonetheless provided crucial information about Spanish defenses in the region. Notwithstanding the presence of the gallant
Sandoval
, Goodrich reported, Guantánamo Bay was exposed and vulnerable.
51
St. Louis
, under the command of Casper F. Goodrich, to Guantánamo to cut the French cable and thus sever communications between Cuba and the outside world.
50
The
St. Louis
was greeted by the Spanish gunship
Sandoval
, which boasted heavier guns than the converted passenger liner. Rather than risk his ship, Goodrich withdrew, vowing to return to Guantánamo with proper equipment and protection. If less than auspicious, this debut in Cuba nonetheless provided crucial information about Spanish defenses in the region. Notwithstanding the presence of the gallant
Sandoval
, Goodrich reported, Guantánamo Bay was exposed and vulnerable.
51
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The Spanish fleet that tucked into Santiago on May 19 was nearly out of coal. Nothing so confirms the demise of the Spanish Empire in the New World than the fact of Cervera's having to throw himself upon the French (in vain) and the Dutch (nearly so) for fuel upon arriving in what had once been a Spanish sea. “Fuel is the life of modern naval warfare,” Admiral Mahan wrote just the previous year. “Without it the modern monsters of the deep die of inanition. Around it, therefore, cluster some of the most important considerations of naval strategy.”
52
For Mahan, as no doubt for Cervera, fuel was synonymous with naval bases. Any navy that expected to operate overseas needed secure bases and a ready supply of coal.
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For Mahan, as no doubt for Cervera, fuel was synonymous with naval bases. Any navy that expected to operate overseas needed secure bases and a ready supply of coal.
The U.S. fleet did not venture far from home before testing Mahan's thesis. Havana lies a mere ninety miles off Key West, Santiago de Cuba a little farther. The problem of getting coal to the U.S. ships blockading the coast of Cuba gave fits to the Navy Department as early as the first week. “Get colliers to Sampson as soon as possible,” Secretary Long ordered Commodore Winfield Scott Schley, Sampson's second in command, on April 28, 1898. But transferring coal from colliers to naval vessels is difficult work in calm seas. In rough seas, the giant steel hulls clang together like oversized chimes, making the work dangerous, often impossible. The seas around Cuba are seldom calm. That April and May, Cuban waters were particularly unsettled, lending the challenge of coaling decided urgency.
“Expect difficulty here will be to coal from colliers in the constant heavy swell,” Schley wired Long off Cienfuegos at the end of May; the presence of Spanish mines “is easy compared with this one, so far from base.” If Schley was unusually cautious about coaling in rough water, he was not alone. One commander after another was forced to abandon the blockade and return home for coal. Ships forced to abandon the blockade for fuel could not simply pop back to Key West. After the
St. Louis
failed in its attempt to cut the cable at Guantánamo, Captain Goodrich requested permission to make a quick run to New York Harbor “to coal and refit.” He promised to be back “in ten days or so from the date of leaving St. Thomas,” ready for “three or four weeks' duty with the fleet.”
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St. Louis
failed in its attempt to cut the cable at Guantánamo, Captain Goodrich requested permission to make a quick run to New York Harbor “to coal and refit.” He promised to be back “in ten days or so from the date of leaving St. Thomas,” ready for “three or four weeks' duty with the fleet.”
53
The problem of coaling, combined with the navy's failure to locate the Spanish fleet, left Long exasperated by the end of May. He ordered Schley to tap his reserves of “ingenuity and perseverance” to “surmount difficulties regarding coaling.” This was, after all, a crucial time, “and the Department relies upon you to give quick information as to Cervera's presence and to be all ready for concerted action with the army.” It was inconceivable to Long that this was happening just off the U.S. coastline. Finally fed up with Schley's lack of ingenuity, and certain now that Cervera was indeed at Santiago, Long asked Schley whether he couldn't “take possession of Guantánamo” and “occupy [it] as a coaling station?”
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Long repeated the question to Sampson that same day. “Consider if you could seize Guantánamo and occupy [it] as a coaling station.” Guantánamo would be far preferable for this purpose, Long realized, than any of the other optionsâ“Gonaives Channel, Mole, Haiti, Porto Nipe, Cuba, or elsewhere.” While Schley took advantage of a break in the weather to coal several of his gunboats at sea, hardly a long-term solution, Sampson and Long exchanged a very different pair of cables. “Think I can occupy Guantánamo,” Sampson wrote confidently. “Captain Goodrich reports Guantánamo very weak,” Long replied; “the seizure of, immediately, is recommended.”
55
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Long repeated the question to Sampson that same day. “Consider if you could seize Guantánamo and occupy [it] as a coaling station.” Guantánamo would be far preferable for this purpose, Long realized, than any of the other optionsâ“Gonaives Channel, Mole, Haiti, Porto Nipe, Cuba, or elsewhere.” While Schley took advantage of a break in the weather to coal several of his gunboats at sea, hardly a long-term solution, Sampson and Long exchanged a very different pair of cables. “Think I can occupy Guantánamo,” Sampson wrote confidently. “Captain Goodrich reports Guantánamo very weak,” Long replied; “the seizure of, immediately, is recommended.”
55
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On June 7, 1898, Captain Goodrich returned to Guantánamo Bay to deliver on his vow to cut the cable between Santiago, Guantánamo, Jamaica, and Haiti. This time the Spanish gunboat
Sandoval
proved no match for Goodrich's escorts, the
Marblehead
and the
Yankee
. As the
Sandoval
steamed out of Caimanera to meet the
St. Louis
, the
Marblehead
and the
Yankee
opened fire, sending the intrepid Spanish gunboat scurrying back to its nest. This left the single blockhouse above Fisherman's Point to face the U.S. cannon on its own. Within minutes, the Spanish guards at Fisherman's Point were driven off and the blockhouse destroyed, leaving the U.S. vessels in sole possession of the outer harbor. Goodrich succeeded in cutting the telegraph cable. By doing so, he interrupted communication between the six thousand Spanish troops around Guantánamo City and the regional command in Santiago. Troops of the Cuban general Pedro Pérez's First Regiment controlled
all ground traffic between the eastern cities. So light was Spain's presence in the area that Captain B. H. McCalla, commander of the
Marblehead
, dismissed the
Yankee
to rejoin the blockade down the coast.
56
Sandoval
proved no match for Goodrich's escorts, the
Marblehead
and the
Yankee
. As the
Sandoval
steamed out of Caimanera to meet the
St. Louis
, the
Marblehead
and the
Yankee
opened fire, sending the intrepid Spanish gunboat scurrying back to its nest. This left the single blockhouse above Fisherman's Point to face the U.S. cannon on its own. Within minutes, the Spanish guards at Fisherman's Point were driven off and the blockhouse destroyed, leaving the U.S. vessels in sole possession of the outer harbor. Goodrich succeeded in cutting the telegraph cable. By doing so, he interrupted communication between the six thousand Spanish troops around Guantánamo City and the regional command in Santiago. Troops of the Cuban general Pedro Pérez's First Regiment controlled
all ground traffic between the eastern cities. So light was Spain's presence in the area that Captain B. H. McCalla, commander of the
Marblehead
, dismissed the
Yankee
to rejoin the blockade down the coast.
56
With the navy in command of the outer harbor at Guantánamo, and with Spain's defenses in the vicinity apparently so light, Admiral Sampson worried that a protracted deployment of the U.S. Army would result in a missed opportunity. His messages to Washington recall Admiral Vernon's letters to the British Admiralty back in the summer of 1741. “Again, I urge the [Navy] department to expedite the arrival of troops for Santiago de Cuba,” Sampson wrote in early June. “Army should be here now.” In lieu of the army came the next best thing: Huntington's marines, with 22 marine officers, 623 enlisted men, 645 troops in all. On the morning of June 10, as the
Panther
pulled up to the blockade off Santiago, Sampson redirected it immediately to join Captain McCalla at Guantánamo Bay.
Panther
pulled up to the blockade off Santiago, Sampson redirected it immediately to join Captain McCalla at Guantánamo Bay.
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