lading. The war correspondents crowded the veranda of the great resort hotel waiting for something to happen, and describing the confusion of a planless mobilization as incisively as they dared. General Adna R. Chaffee, later chief of staff, but then lieutenant-colonel of the Third Cavalry, in charge of a division, witnessed at Tampa "the complete breaking down of the quartermaster and commissary departments." The medical department did not break down until it reached the field. The immediate objective of the army of invasion remained to be determined as events developed. There were plans for raiding the Cuban coast, and for an invasion of the Havana district the following winter, after the new recruits had received their training; but before the end of May the activities of the navy had revealed a special need for cooperation by the army. Sampson Atlantic Before the outbreak of the war the navy had mobilized in the Chesapeake. Captain W. T. Sampson had been elevated to command of the North Atlantic fleet, and a portion of his force had been grouped as a flying squadron for patrol work under the command of Commodore Winfield S. Schley. On paper the Spanish fleet excelled the American fleet in major units, tonnage, and broadside strength. It was known that no considerable naval force was in the Caribbean, and that Admiral Cervera was gathering his fleet at the Cape Verde Islands, with a destination unannounced but certain. As Mahan had pointed out a decade earlier, the effective radius of a modern fleet was the bunker capacity of its units, while its speed was determined by that of its slowest member. The strategy board on which Mahan was now sitting was rightly convinced that Cervera could have no destination except some Spanish port in Cuba or Porto Rico, with the former more probable since he carried supplies for the army in Havana. No fleet could cross the Atlantic and be ready for immediate maneuver against the enemy, and the Spanish fleet could not hope to find the facilities for recoaling and repair except at the Spanish ports of San Juan, in Porto Rico, or Havana, Cienfuegos, or Santiago, in Cuba. With entire certainty the Navy Department prepared to intercept the Spanish fleet which sailed on April 29, and to destroy it at sea before it reached shelter in a Spanish colonial port. Patrol of coasts Under the command of Sampson, the North Atlantic fleet maintained the blockade of Cuban waters, where the Oregon joined it after her thrilling trip on May 24; the flying squadron under Schley was detailed to patrol the southern coast of Cuba, and left Key West for that duty on May 19. The rest of Sampson's command, under his immediate control, watched the passages leading to Cuba from the north between Porto Rico and the Florida channel. The strategic certainty of the Navy Department was disturbed by the nervousness of the seaboard cities. From Savannah to Portland there was apprehension of a Spanish bombardment. Mythical Spanish warships were daily reported in the newspapers, and nearly as often delegations of Congressmen waited upon the Secretary of the Navy to remind him of his duty to protect their constituents. The political pressure was so great that at least apparent compliance had to follow, and various unseaworthy gunboats, manned with little more than minimum crews for navigation alone, were dispatched to lie offshore and give comfort to the nervous souls of seaboard citizens. The patrol of the Cuban coast from May 19 until June 1 became at a later date the occasion for a naval investigation which made public many of the facts of the naval war. Its chief intent was frustrated by the fact that on May 19, as Schley set sail from Key West, Cervera steamed into the landlocked harbor of Santiago. The news of his safe arrival in Cuba remained a secret for some hours, and even when rumor of it had leaked into the United States it was impossible at once to establish communication with the ships at sea. Scout cruisers were hurried out, carrying first the rumor, then news when the rumor was confirmed, then specific orders to Schley to proceed at top speed to Santiago and blockade the port. Yet it was not until the morning of May 29 that any obstruction to the emergence of Cervera's fleet was consciously established. In these ten days there was nothing to prevent a coaling of the fleet and a raid, perhaps successful, against the North Atlantic coast―nothing except the fact, then unknown, that the Spanish fleet was in no condition either to raid or fight. The cruise of the flying squadron from Key West proceeded leisurely around the western end of Cuba with the idea of visiting first the port of Cienfuegos, Blockade which was one of the conceivable objectives of of Santiago the Spanish fleet. As the cruiser Brooklyn approached port, flying the flag of the squadron commander, noises were heard that were interpreted as gun-fire in honor of Cervera's safe arrival there. Even Sampson believed at this time that Cienfuegos would bear watching. For two days, from May 22 to May 24, the flying squadron kept up its blockade of Cienfuegos without learning whether the enemy was there or not. The harbor was landlocked and no methods were devised to explore its recesses. On the 24th, on receipt of orders indicating that Santiago might be the place, Schley resumed his cruise toward the east. He arrived off Santiago on the evening of the 26th, perhaps in sight of the anchorage at which the Spanish warships had lain for seven days. Neither Schley's force, nor scout cruisers from Sampson's fleet, confirmed by observation the rumor that Cervera was in Santiago. The next day with his bunkers running low of coal, and with a heavy sea interfering with recoaling from the colliers, Schley decided to return to Key West, sending a message to the Navy Department of his inability to remain on station. When the weather moderated, he changed his mind and remained off Santiago. On the 28th he coaled his ships there, while at Washington an agonized Navy Department, knowing that Cervera's fleet was unwatched, was uncertain as to Schley's station or intention. Sampson, learning of the confusion upon one of his returns to Key West from a patrolling dash along the north shore of Cuba, hurried off to Santiago, where meanwhile Schley had on May 29 sighted the Spanish fleet. Admiral Sampson arrived off Santiago June 1, and on the next day issued a general order for the maintenance of a blockade, assigning each vessel to its station with directions as to its course in case Cervera should bring his squadron out, and invite a fleet engagement by turning to the east or to the west. From this date Schley had no duties in command. By day the larger warships lay offshore in a wide are watching the opening between the cliffs that command and conceal the harbor. At night the line drew farther in toward shore, and the battleships took turns in occupying a position directly in front of the entrance and focusing their new naval weapon, the searchlight, upon the cliffs. In the intervals between the battleships and cruisers that were stationed from east to west, in the order New York, Indiana, Oregon, Iowa, Texas, and Brooklyn, were the smaller units of the fleet, cruisers, converted yachts, and other irregular warships. On June 7, Guantanamo Bay, some forty miles east of Santiago, was occupied by Marines in anticipation of its possible use as an invading point. Thereafter while the blockade lasted, the various warships in their turn left their stations and steamed to Guantanamo to coal. No attempt was made to force the channel at Santiago and engage the Spanish fleet at anchor as Dewey had done at Manila. Dewey, indeed, had received the high rewards for heroic disregard of danger, and was finally given the rank of Admiral of the Navy for life. But specific orders were issued after his engagement that there should be no more of its type. Sampson was under instructions not to risk the loss of any of his irreplaceable battleships in "the bombardment of fortifications." The doctrine of "Damn the torpedoes. Go ahead!" was Farragut's at Mobile and Dewey's at Manila, but was not a doctrine for a weak navy in the face of a superior adversary. As soon as Sampson established his effective blockade at Santiago, he appealed to Washington for a military force to occupy the land fortifications of the harbor, and either Army and navy cooperation to enable the American fleet to enter in safety or to drive the Spanish out. On May 30 orders were issued to General Shafter to proceed on transports to Cuba and to join the fleet off Santiago. The first week in June was occupied by a scurrying aboard transports at Tampa, and on the 7th the convoy was ready to set sail. The rumor of the presence of a mythical Spanish warship cruising in the Gulf delayed the sailing until June 14. Six days later, after an uneventful voyage, a junction of the forces took place, and Sampson and Shafter entered into conference upon the line of action. The plan of Sampson, which he believed to have been accepted at the conference, involved a landing of troops near the entrance to the harbor, after which the Spanish forces were to be expelled from the hills and fortifications overlooking the channel. This would make it possible to proceed later with a joint attack upon the fleet and the Spanish land forces. On the 3d of June an attempt had been made to prevent the egress of the Spanish fleet by sinking a collier, the Merrimac, across the narrows of the channel. The effort partially failed, but the cool young commander who attempted it, Richmond P. Hobson, became one of the popular heroes of the war. It is uncertain what the effect of success would have been upon the strategy of the combined forces. General Shafter left the conference of June 20 believing that he had made it clear that his intention was to make a landing east of the harbor "and march on Santiago." He proceeded, to the dismay of Sampson, to act upon this intention. Battle of After the conference with his commanders on June 21, Shafter published brief orders which were to govern the landing the following day. With negligible resistance from the Spanish forces, and with the Las Guaassistance of the boats from the fleet (which Long had offered and Alger had curtly declined a few days earlier), a disembarkation was made along a mining railroad from Siboney to Daiquiri several miles east of the simas |