Spanish-American War: War at Sea

By Paul Neumann

It has been a splendid little war, begun with the highest motives, carried on with magnificent intelligence and spirit, favoured by that fortune which loves the brave. (John Hay)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Former Naval Person
• Release date: Dec 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9788383513768

Book preview

Paul Neumann

Spanish-American War

The Fall of the Spanish Sea Power

© Paul Neumann, 2023

It has been a splendid little war, begun with the highest motives, carried on with magnificent intelligence and spirit, favoured by that fortune which loves the brave. (John Hay)

Front cover: The Battle of Cavite by Ildefonso Sanz Doménech.

ISBN 978-83-8351-376-8

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

Contents

Spanish-American War

Uprising

Remember the Maine!

Battle of Manila Bay

War preparations

At Daiquiri and Las Guasimas

Battle for the San Juan Heights

Battle of Santiago

Capitulation

End of the war

Landmarks

Cover

It has been a splendid little war, begun with the highest motives, carried on with magnificent intelligence and spirit, favoured by that fortune which loves the brave.

John Hay

Christopher Columbus was the first European to set foot on Cuban soil on 28 October 1492. From the deck of the Santa Maria caravel, he had a fabulous view of the Caribbean island in the sea, inviting him to stay forever in this charming place. However, no gold was discovered in Cuba, which led to a rather long period from its discovery to full colonization. However, the island had other qualities that gave it value in the eyes of the Spanish rulers. Convenient bays became such an asset, as it was possible to build there moorings for transport ships and warships of Philip II. Therefore, the ports of Havana and Cienfuegos were soon founded in the north of Cuba, and Santiago in the south. From there, convoys of ships with the cargo of New World treasures sailed to Europe.

In the 18th century, the British tried to take control of Cuba twice. In 1741 they unsuccessfully tried to capture Santiago. During the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) the British attacked the island again. This time with greater success – in 1762 they took Havana; yet, according to the Treaty of Paris, which ended that war in 1763, the Spaniards regained the city and significantly fortified it.

In the 18th century, the economy of the island was dominated by the plantation economy. Latifundia brought huge profits, especially due to cheap slave labour. Gradually, Negroes brought from Africa made up a third of the population of Cuba. The island quickly gained fame as the Pearl of the Antilles. With the collapse of the Spanish colonial empire at the beginning of the 19th century, Cuba was one of the few colonies that chose to preserve links with Spain. However, foreign powers, and especially the United States of America, began to show more and more interest in the legacy of the Spanish empire.

The territorial expansion of the young American empire went primarily to the west, but the island located opposite the newly annexed Florida attracted the eyes of Washington politicians. Already in April 1823, the US Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, formulated the rules of American policy towards European colonies in the Western Hemisphere, which later became known as the ripe fruit theory:

There are laws of political as well as physical gravitation; and if an apple severed by its native tree cannot choose but fall to the ground, Cuba, forcibly disjoined from its own unnatural connection with Spain, and incapable of self-support, can gravitate only towards the North American Union which by the same law of nature, cannot cast her off its bosom.

[1]

Adams was the first American politician to voice the political and economic importance of Cuba and the concern about its likely subordination to the interests of Great Britain as incompatible with the interests of the United States:

The transfer of Cuba to Great Britain would be an event unpropitious to the interests of this Union. This opinion is so generally entertained, that even the groundless rumors that it was about to be accomplished, which have spread abroad, and are still teeming, may be traced to the deep and almost universal feeling of aversion to it, and to the alarm which the mere probability of its occurrence has stimulated.

[2]

Adams concluded from this that

The question both of our right and our power to prevent it, if necessary, by force, already obtrudes itself upon our councils, and the administration is called upon, in the performance of its duties to the nation, at least to use all the means with the competency to guard against and forefend it.

[3]

Adams was the first to express confidence that within the next 50 years Cuba would become one of the American states, and called for consideration of the possibility of buying it from Spain. In 1848, President James Polk did make such a formal offer to Spain; the Americans offered $100 million, but Madrid’s response was negative. The Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs replied that the Spaniards would rather see the island sinking into the ocean than passing into the hands of a foreign power.

[4]

Three years later, a group of American adventurers, led by Venezuelan Narciso Lopez and unemployed after the end of the Mexican War, West Point Academy graduate, Colonel William Crittenden, tried to capture Cuba. They gathered 500 volunteers in New Orleans and went to Cuba in anticipation of an anti-Spanish uprising. But there they were harshly disappointed; no one sought to fight the Spanish troops, and they quickly defeated the uninvited liberators. Fifty people, including Crittenden, were shot, and Lopez was sent to garrote. The rest were sent to forced labour in Africa. On the news of the execution of the Americans, riots broke out in New Orleans, during which the Spanish consulate was looted. However, president (since 1850) Millard Fillmore did not seek to aggravate the situation and quickly settled the conflict with Spain.

However, already in 1854, Fillmore’s successor, Franklin Pierce, made a new, more serious attempt to seize Cuba. During the conference of American ambassadors to England, France, and Spain in the Belgian city of Ostend, it was proposed to buy the island for $120 million. According to the ambassadors, if the Spaniards refused to negotiate an appropriate agreement, Cuba should have been seized by force. The Ostend Manifesto substantiated the need to seize control of Cuba by questions not so much of the international as of the internal situation. In particular, its authors emphasized the danger of a Negro uprising and the seizure of power in Cuba by former slaves, and this could become a dangerous example and incentive for black slaves in the southern states of America.

It is still unknown under what circumstances the text of the Ostend Manifesto got into the press, but it produced the effect of an exploding bomb. In the northern states and Europe, it was met with fierce criticism. The Spanish government had unequivocally abandoned the idea of selling Cuba and had spearheaded an anti-American campaign in European newspapers. The US State Department was forced to declare that the Ostend Manifesto did not reflect the position of the American government, but only the private opinion of some American citizens.

The growing domestic conflict in the United States itself, as well as the military and political events in Europe, for some time, diverted the attention of American and international politics from the Cuban issue, but separatist sentiments began to grow on the island itself. The political struggle and civil war in Spain, the economic decline that followed it, and the increase in taxes caused discontent among the broad masses of the population of Cuba. In October 1868, armed clashes took place in the province of Oriente. They gave rise to a civil war, which later became known as the Ten Years’ War.

The rebel forces quickly grew to 12 thousand, and in November they managed to capture the cities of Bayamo and Holguin in the southern part of the island. At that time, the Spanish forces in Cuba numbered only 21,000 soldiers, of which only 7,000 were in active service. It quickly turned out that neither side was able to decide the outcome of the war in its favour. The rebels waged a successful guerrilla war in the mountains in the south and in the centre of the island, but were not able to transfer the fighting to the flat, rich north-western regions, where the political and economic life of Cuba was concentrated. On the other hand, the Spaniards did not have enough forces to achieve a radical turning point in the war and suppress the uprising. There was no point in counting on reinforcements from Spain engulfed in civil war.

From the American point of view, the issue of arms smuggling to Cuba was particularly acute. Small ships scurrying around the Caribbean Sea freely supplied contraband to the island. The Spaniards managed to intercept on 1 November 1873, one such vessel – the steamer Virginius – which was taken to Santiago, where the governor of the province, General Juan Burriel, pronounced the death sentence on the skipper, Joseph Fry, the commanders of the rebel detachment, and several members of the crew. When reports of their execution reached Washington, America was gripped by war psychosis. President Ulysses Grant sent a very strong note of protest to the Spaniards demanding an apology and monetary compensation, as well as the punishment of Burriel. After lengthy negotiations, Spain agreed to release the ship from Santiago and pay $80,000 in compensation to the families of the executed; the question of the criminality of the Governor’s order was resolved on its own in 1877, when Burriel died without waiting for the trial.

The restoration of the monarchy in Spain in 1874 and the coming to power of king Alfonso XII of the Bourbon dynasty gradually put an end to internal strife, and returned the country to a peaceful course. The government was taken over by the energetic conservative politician Antonio Cánovas del Castillo. He was well aware that the continuation of the war in Cuba could eventually provoke an American armed intervention, which would entail the inevitable loss of the colony. Therefore, he first sent 25,000 soldiers to Cuba under the command of the young and talented general Arsenio Martínez de Campos. Such a show of force quickly persuaded the leaders of the uprising to negotiate. They ceased on 10 February 1878 with the signing of the Pact of Zanjon, which decreed that the participants in the uprising would receive an amnesty; its leaders were able to leave the island without hindrance, and the rebellious slaves were freed. The inhabitants of Cuba received the right to elect their representatives to the Spanish Cortes in exchange for abandoning the fight for the complete independence of the colony.

The end of the Ten Years’ War revived the Cuban economy, but did not bring the expected reforms. Madrid did not establish the promised internal self-government; only in 1886 was slavery completely abolished. Worse, the almost annual change of governors had led to chaos in the administration and corruption unprecedented even in Latin America.

However, in the late 1880’s, Cuba experienced an economic boom associated with the export of sugar and tobacco to the United States, and their high prices on the American exchanges. But hopes for an economic miracle were dashed in 1893 with the stock market crash, which led to a general economic decline. The following year, the US Congress imposed a 40% duty on sugar (the Wilson-Gorman tariff), causing its price to drop to its lowest level in decades. That meant a sharp collapse of the Cuban economy, the bankruptcy of numerous enterprises, and what followed – massive unemployment.

This state of affairs created an excellent environment for the growth of national consciousness and the resumption of the struggle for independence. Already in 1892, in New York, the former leaders of the 1868 uprising and American friends who joined them founded a revolutionary Cuban junta. It was led by the charismatic politician José Martí and the professional revolutionary Máximo Gómez. Tomás Estrada Palma, one of the former commanders of the Ten Years’ War, also joined the new movement. They created a network of their agents both in Cuba and in the United States. Agents began secretly buying weapons, and collecting ammunition and other equipment. Gómez made contacts with many veterans of the Ten Years’ War, inviting them to join the conspiracy. It was decided that the uprising would begin on the night of 24 February 1895, simultaneously throughout the whole Cuba.

Unfortunately for the conspirators, the Spaniards caught two of Martí's envoys in Havana and crushed the rebel organization in the northern provinces, while American customs officers intercepted part of the cargo of weapons intended for the rebel forces. But despite those setbacks, the uprising began as planned. The first clashes took place in the village of Baire, just 80 kilometres from Santiago.

[1] J. Q. Adams and W. C. Ford. Writings of John Quincy Adams. Macmillan, 1913.

[2] Ibidem.

[3] Ibidem.

[4] G. J. A. O’Toole. The Spanish War: An American Epic 1898. W. W. Norton & Company, 1986.

Uprising

On 10 April 1895, a boat with two passengers approached the coast of Cuba: José Martí and Máximo Gómez returned to their homeland to take part in the revolution. The first one died two months later in a random skirmish with Spanish troops. But his death did not affect the course of events. Gómez managed to subjugate the more or less disparate Cuban groups and direct the fights into the mainstream of the revolutionary struggle according to the plan that he developed while in exile. Its provisions stipulated that the main hostilities should be transferred to the western part of the island and paralyze the economic life of the country so that the Spaniards would not only lose their profits, but, moreover, would be forced to import all the supplies from Spain. Gómez issued detailed orders, in which he described in detail how to act in the territories under his control. All plantations and industrial enterprises that could not be used for the benefit of the revolution were ordered to be destroyed. The task of the Cuban forces was also to isolate the Spanish cities and garrisons in order to force them to surrender.

When the fighting began, there were only 16,000 Spanish soldiers in Cuba. Concentrated in large cities, they were unable to prevent the spread of the uprising. At the end of the year, Gómez’s troops launched an offensive to the west. The armed forces of the revolution never numbered more than 40,000 rebels throughout the island. Cubans rarely organized large groups. However, in November 1895, they captured large areas of the province of Matanzas in the northern part of the island. In January 1896, they penetrated into the province of Habana, and in February into the province of Pinar del Rio on the western end of Cuba; on 22 February 1896, the black General Antonio Maceo, at the head of a detachment of 1,500 men, occupied the village of Mantua at the westernmost point of Cuba.

Cuban war for independence. A band of mounted Cuban rebels.

The reaction of the Spanish authorities to the outbreak of the uprising was very slow. From Madrid to Cuba there was sent General Arsenio Martínez Campos, the same one who succeeded in putting an end to the Ten Years’ War for Cuban independence. However, seventeen years later, he was no longer the same brave general who was able to take risks. Martínez Campos came to Cuba with the conviction that the only way to resolve the conflict was through negotiations that would lead to full autonomy for the island. He wanted to repeat his diplomatic success of 1878, not really believing in the possibility of victory on the battlefield. The general illusorily assessed the aspirations of the rebels. He did not take into account that the failure to fulfill the promises of autonomy contained in the Pact of Zanjon had alienated even the most loyal supporters of the agreement.

Martínez Campos arrived on the island with only 9,000 recruits. This was not enough to limit the advance of the rebels. New forces gradually arrived from the mother country, but never in sufficient numbers to gain an operational advantage. The problem of the Spanish commanders was the tropical climate of Cuba and the diseases associated with it. Malaria and yellow fever were destroying fresh troops from Europe at an alarming rate. It had become the norm for the Spanish army when more than 50 percent of the military personnel were in hospitals or recuperating. News from Cuba of poor sanitary conditions effectively discouraged the volunteers, and since the officers received assignments on a voluntary basis, a paradoxical situation quickly arose, with Spain having many unassigned officers and Cuba lacking commanders. To save the situation, officer schools’ cadets, who were automatically awarded the rank of Lieutenant, were sent to the island after one year of training. It also happened that the companies were commanded by 17- or 18-year-old officers.

Relatively large Spanish forces were forced to stay constantly in the main cities. Because of that, only small detachments, sometimes inferior in number to the Cubans, could conduct military operations on the battlefield. The best units at the disposal of Madrid turned out to be detachments of Cuban loyalists, but they became infamous for cruelty and abuses against the civilians of the island, unprecedented even for the battered nineteenth century.

Pursuing political decisions, Martínez Campos was unable to delay the advance of the rebels to the west, and their successes caused a nervous reaction in Spain. Madrid demanded the resignation of the unsuccessful peacemaker and his replacement by General Valeriano Weyler Nicolau, known for his energy, perseverance, and ruthlessness. Soon, he first earned himself the nickname The Butcher – first, courtesy of Winston Churchill, in the British press, and then throughout America and Europe.

Immediately after arriving in Cuba, Weyler decided to completely change the tactics of the war. Realizing that the main danger to the Spanish rule on the island was a long campaign in the central and western provinces, he decided to oust the rebels from there first, and only then transfer the fighting to the mountainous, rainforest-covered eastern and southern regions. The main condition for the success of that plan was to prevent the free movement of insurgent forces. By Weyler’s orders, two lines of fortifications, the so-called trochas, were erected across the island. A technical innovation was their night lighting with electric light at night. The garrison consisted of 14,000 soldiers. The system of trochas effectively paralyzed the insurgents’ freedom of movement.

Another Weyler’s innovation was the introduction of the forced concentration of the rural population in specially designated areas or camps under the protection of troops – reconcentrados. The Spanish plans suggested that in this way it would be possible to cut off the supplies of the rebels and force them into open battle against the Spanish troops. According to those plans, all food supplies that could fall into the hands of the rebels were to be destroyed. And since Gómez’s troops did the same, the supplies ran out very quickly, and famine began on the island. Moreover, the reconcentrados deprived the Cuban revolutionaries of mobilization resources.

Weyler believed that the population of the camps would be fed with supplies from Spain. However, if in 1896 the supplies were still relatively regular, then in 1897 they collapsed. The famine that raged in the camps, combined with the spread of diseases, led to tragic consequences. Historians still give different estimates of the number of victims of the reconcentrados system: from 100 to 400 thousand dead; a tragic number anyway, especially when one considers that according to the 1887 census, the entire population of Cuba numbered a little more than 1.6 million inhabitants.

Yet, the Spanish government, determined to put an end to the Cuban revolution, continued to send more and more troops to Cuba. Between November 1895 and May 1897, 181,000 soldiers and 6,300 officers were sent to Cuba. That allowed Weyler to engage in more active operations. The greatest success was the death of General Maceo in an accidental skirmish on 7 December 1896. The death of the charismatic leader disorganized the rebel forces in the province of Pinar del Rio. Moreover, the Spaniards made progress in the provinces of Habana and Matanzas. However, despite the efforts and inexhaustible energy of Weyler, who more than once personally led the files of troops pursuing and attacking the rebels, the Spaniards failed to take control of the situation in the central provinces, not to mention the east and south of the island. The absence of a turning point in hostilities aggravated the repression and persecution of the civilian population. In reports to Madrid, Weyler assured that the suppression of resistance and revolution was only a matter of time. But the real situation called into question his optimism and put Spain in a very disadvantageous international position.

Developments in Cuba were followed very closely in the United States. From the very beginning of the Cuban revolution, the American press covered its course extensively. Unfortunately for Spain, two of New York’s most influential tabloid newspapers had just begun a sharp fight to reshape the readership market. The New York World, owned by Joseph Pulitzer, and the New York Journal by William Randolph Hearst, rivalled each other in describing the horrors of the Cuban war. Both newspapers sent to the island their journalists, who were supposed not so much to cover the events, as to render respectability by their presence in Cuba to the materials prepared in New York. A comfortable hotel in Havana became their headquarters, and entertainment establishments in the neighbourhood became observation posts, as a result of which newspaper columns were filled with the most fantastic information that had only a relative reflection of reality. Worse, those fabrications had taken on a life of their own, and American politicians had repeatedly referred to them during congressional debates. They were already reprinted by such respected publications as the New York Times or the New York Herald, giving them authority and weight. Attempts by the Spanish embassy