THESE were stirring times for the regiment. It was the period of
rumors—of rumors that at any time might develop into realities. In order
to obtain an adequate idea of the atmosphere in which the command then
lived, it would be necessary to turn to the files of the newspapers for
the early spring of 1898, and make a classified list of the Spanish
naval bugaboos daily appearing in their columns. One odd coincidence is
well worth recalling, as showing that all the misapprehensions were not
confined to our own cities. On the evening of April 26th, the day on
which the regiment reported at Fort Warren, mass meetings were held at
Portsmouth and New Bedford, to protest against the utter disregard shown
by the Government for the defenses at those points—and on that very
night there was given in Havana a public banquet to celebrate the
bombardment of Boston, of which rumors had spread in that city! Spook
fleets were common in those days, and the men of the First, happily
forgetful of the fact that they were manning obsolete works, armed for
the most part with obsolete ordnance, and, worst of all, wofully short
of ammunition, daily hoped that the spook cruisers might materialize
into ships of steel. What little time was left from their duties they
employed in pitying their less fortunate comrades in inland camps, whom
they considered hopelessly out of the game of coastwise attack and
defence which was expected to begin at any time.
And all this speculation, as a matter of fact, was not so wild as it now
may seem. It was known that the Spanish torpedo flotilla had
rendezvoused at the Cape Verde Islands on March 24th, where it was
joined on April 14th by the _Infanta Maria Teresa_ and _Cristobal
Colon_, and later, on the 20th, by the _Vizcaya_ and _Almirante
Oquendo_. On the 22d of April this formidable squadron was ordered to
sea, and on the 29th it sailed—to a destination then unknown to any one
on this side of the Atlantic. During the four anxious weeks that
followed, this threatening fleet was lost to sight; and throughout this
month of uncertainty, as Spears, the historian of the Navy in its latest
war, rightly says, "Not only was it a mysterious squadron in its
movements: to a large part of our along-shore population it was
positively fearsome. And there was good reason, when the makeup of the
squadron only is considered, for vigilance, if not for alarm, in our
more weakly fortified harbors. Where it would make a landfall was a
question, for the whole United States coast was, in a way, open to
attack."
An added element of uncertainty was to be found in the announcement made
by Sagasta, on April 24th: "The Spanish Government, reserving its right
to grant letters of marque, will at present confine itself to
organizing, with the vessels of the mercantile marine, a force of
auxiliary cruisers, which will coöperate with the navy, according to the
needs of the campaign, and will be under naval control." It was believed
that Spain, in accordance with this policy, had taken and armed a number
of able, sea-going steamers, and the legitimate inference was that they
were to be employed in attacks on our commerce, or in sudden descents
upon our open ports, rather than in fights with our own cruisers.
As a matter of fact, during the months of May and June, the people
dwelling along the coast were much in the condition of the small boy who
is troubled by "seein' things at night," and apparently the masters of
incoming vessels were laboring under a like affliction. A very careful
record of the Spanish apparitions by which the coast was haunted at this
time was kept by an officer of the First, and to read it at this late
day is to become convinced that the newspaper buyers of 1898 most
certainly got their money's worth. It is a weird catalogue of rumors,
from the tale of the mysterious cannonading heard at Eastport to the
reported sighting of the "three long, low, rakish craft, sailing in
column formation, and signalling by masthead lights as they steadily
held their course in the darkness"—which might have fitted a Spanish
squadron, but yet was equally applicable to the case of a tow of
coal-barges on its way around the Cape to Boston.
[Illustration:
Photograph by W. H. Caldwell, Brockton.