UNDER THE RED CROSS
When Miss Barton joined the _State of Texas_ at Key West on April 29
there seemed to be no immediate prospect of an invasion of Cuba by the
United States army, and, consequently, no prospect of an opportunity to
relieve the distress of the starving Cuban people. Knowing that such
distress must necessarily have been greatly intensified by the blockade,
and anxious to do something to mitigate it,--or, at least, to show the
readiness of the Red Cross to undertake its mitigation,--Miss Barton
wrote and sent to Admiral Sampson, commander of the naval forces on the
North Atlantic Station, the following letter:
S. S. "STATE OF TEXAS," May 2, 1898.
_Admiral W. T. Sampson, U. S. N., Commanding Fleet before
Havana._
ADMIRAL: But for the introduction kindly proffered by our mutual
acquaintance Captain Harrington, I should scarcely presume to
address you. He will have made known to you the subject which I
desire to bring to your gracious consideration.
Papers forwarded by direction of our government will have shown the
charge intrusted to me, viz., to get food to the starving people of
Cuba. I have with me a cargo of fourteen hundred tons, under the
flag of the Red Cross, the one international emblem of neutrality
and humanity known to civilization. Spain knows and regards it.
Fourteen months ago the entire Spanish government at Madrid cabled
me permission to take and distribute food to the suffering people
in Cuba. This official permission was broadly published. If read by
our people, no response was made and no action taken until two
months ago, when, under the humane and gracious call of our honored
President, I did go and distribute food, unmolested anywhere on the
island, until arrangements were made by our government for all
American citizens to leave Cuba. Persons must now be dying there by
hundreds, if not thousands, daily, for want of the food we are
shutting out. Will not the world hold us accountable? Will history
write us blameless? Will it not be said of us that we completed the
scheme of extermination commenced by Weyler?
Fortunately, I know the Spanish authorities in Cuba,
Captain-General Blanco and his assistants. We parted with perfect
friendliness. They do not regard me as an American merely, but as
the national representative of an international treaty to which
they themselves are signatory and under which they act. I believe
they would receive and confer with me if such a thing were made
possible.
I should like to ask Spanish permission and protection to land and
distribute food now on the _State of Texas_. Could I be permitted
to ask to see them under flag of truce? If we make the effort and
are refused, the blame rests with them; if we fail to make it, it
rests with us. I hold it good statesmanship at least to divide the
responsibility. I am told that some days must elapse before our
troops can be in position to reach and feed these starving people.
Our food and our forces are here, ready to commence at once.
With assurances of highest regard,
I am, Admiral, very respectfully yours,
[Signed] CLARA BARTON.
At the time when the above letter was written, the American National Red
Cross was acting under the advice and direction of the State and Navy
departments, the War Department having no force in the field.
Admiral Sampson replied as follows:
U. S. FLAGSHIP "NEW YORK," FIRST-RATE,
KEY WEST, FLORIDA, May 2, 1898.
_Miss Clara Barton, President American National Red Cross:_
1. I have received through the senior naval officer present a copy
of a letter from the State Department to the Secretary of the Navy;
a copy of a letter from the Secretary of the Navy to the
commander-in-chief of the naval force on this station; and also a
copy of a letter from the Secretary of the Navy to the commandant
of the naval station at Key West.
2. From these communications it appears that the destination of the
steamship _State of Texas_, loaded with supplies for the starving
reconcentrados in Cuba, is left, in a measure, to my judgment.
3. At present I am acting under instructions from the Navy
Department to blockade the coast of Cuba for the purpose of
preventing, among other things, any food-supply from reaching the
Spanish forces in Cuba. Under these circumstances it seems to me
unwise to let a ship-load of such supplies be sent to the
reconcentrados, for, in my opinion, they would be distributed to
the Spanish army. Until some point be occupied in Cuba by our
forces, from which such distribution can be made to those for whom
the supplies are intended, I am unwilling that they should be
landed on Cuban soil.
Yours very respectfully,
[Signed] W. T. SAMPSON,
Rear-Admiral U. S. N.,
Commander-in-Chief U. S. Naval Force, North Atlantic Station.
After this exchange of letters Miss Barton had a conference with Admiral
Sampson, in the course of which the latter explained more fully his
reasons for declining to allow the _State of Texas_ to enter any Cuban
port until such port had been occupied by American troops.
On May 3 Miss Barton sent the following telegram to Stephen E. Barton,
chairman of the Central Cuban Relief Committee in New York:
KEY WEST, May 3, 1898.
_Stephen E. Barton, Chairman, etc._:
Herewith I transmit copies of letters passed between Admiral
Sampson and myself. I think it important that you should present
immediately this correspondence personally to the government, as it
will place before them the exact situation here. The utmost
cordiality exists between Admiral Sampson and myself. The admiral
feels it his duty, as chief of the blockading squadron, to keep
food out of Cuba, but recognizes that, from my standpoint, my duty
is to try to get food into Cuba. If I insist, Admiral Sampson will
try to open communication under a flag of truce; but his letter
expresses his opinion regarding the best method. Advices from the
government would enable us to reach a decision. Unless there is
objection at Washington, you are at liberty to publish this
correspondence if you wish.
[Signed] CLARA BARTON.
On May 6 the chairman of the Central Cuban Relief Committee replied as
follows:
WASHINGTON, D. C., May 6, 1898.
_Clara Barton, Key West, Florida_:
Submitted your message to President and cabinet, and it was read
with moistened eyes. Considered serious and pathetic. Admiral
Sampson's views regarded as wisest at present. Hope to land you
soon. President, Long, and Moore send highest regards.
[Signed] BARTON.
Under these circumstances, of course, there was nothing for the Red
Cross steamer to do but wait patiently in Key West until the army of
invasion should leave Tampa for the Cuban coast.
Meanwhile, however, Miss Barton had discovered a field of beneficent
activity for the Red Cross nearer home. In Tampa, on her way south, she
learned that in that city, and at various other points on the coast of
southern Florida, there were large numbers of destitute Cuban refugees
and escaped reconcentrados, who were in urgent need of help. A local
committee in Tampa, composed of representatives from the various
churches, had been doing everything in its power to relieve the distress
of these unfortunate people, but the burden was getting to be beyond its
strength, and it asked the Red Cross for assistance. The desired aid was
promptly given, and the committee was supplied with provisions enough to
support the Cuban refugees in Tampa until the middle of June.
Upon her arrival at Key West Miss Barton found a similar, but even
worse, state of affairs, inasmuch as the number of destitute refugees
and reconcentrados there exceeded fifteen hundred. A local Cuban relief
society had established a soup-kitchen in which they were feeding about
three hundred, and Mr. G. W. Hyatt, chairman of the Key West Red Cross
Committee, was trying to take care of the rest; but both organizations
were nearly at the end of their resources, and the local committee had
nothing left in the shape of food-stuffs except corn-meal. Miss Barton
at once telegraphed the Central Red Cross Committee in New York to
forward thirty tons of assorted stores by first steamer, and pending the
arrival of these stores she fed the Key West refugees from the _State of
Texas_ and from such local sources of food-supply as were available.
But Cuban refugees and reconcentrados were not the only hungry and
destitute victims of the war to be found in Key West. On May 9 Miss
Barton received the following letter from the United States marshal for
the southern district of Florida:
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, OFFICE OF U. S. MARSHAL,
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA,
KEY WEST, FLORIDA, May 9, 1898.
_Miss Clara Barton, President American National Red Cross._
DEAR MISS BARTON: On board the captured vessels we find quite a
number of aliens among the crews, mostly Cubans, and some American
citizens, and their detention here and inability to get away for
want of funds has exhausted their supply of food, and some of them
will soon be entirely out. As there is no appropriation available
from which food could be purchased, would you kindly provide for
them until I can get definite instructions from the department at
Washington?
Very respectfully yours,
[Signed] JOHN F. HORR,
U. S. Marshal.
Appended to the above letter was a list of fifteen Spanish vessels whose
crews were believed by the marshal to be in need of food.
In less than three hours after the receipt of this communication two
large ships' boats, loaded with provisions for the sailors on the
Spanish prizes, left the _State of Texas_ in tow of the steam-launch of
the troop-ship _Panther_. Before dark that night, Mr. Cobb and Dr. Egan,
of Miss Barton's staff, who were in charge of the relief-boats, had
visited every captured Spanish vessel in the harbor. Two or three of
them, including the great liners _Miguel Jover_ and _Argonauta_, had
provisions enough, and were not in need of relief, but most of the
others--particularly the fishing-smacks--were in even worse straits than
the marshal supposed. The large transatlantic steamer _Pedro_, of
Bilbao, had no flour, bread, coffee, tea, sugar, beans, rice,
vegetables, or lard for cooking, and her crew had lived for fifteen days
exclusively upon fish. The schooner _Severito_ had wholly exhausted her
supplies, and had on board nothing to eat of any kind. Of the others,
some had no matches or oil for lights, some were nearly out of water,
and all were reduced to an unrelieved fish diet, of which the men were
beginning to sicken. The Red Cross relief-boats made a complete and
accurate list of the Spanish prizes in the harbor,--twenty-two in
all,--with the numerical strength of every crew, the amount of
provisions, if any, on every vessel, and the quantity and kind of food
that each would require.
Finding that one of the prizes had a cargo of plantains and bananas, and
that most of the fishing-smacks were provided with salt-water tanks in
which they had thousands of pounds of living fish, Miss Barton and her
staff determined to purchase from them such quantities of these
perishable commodities as they were willing to sell at a low nominal
price, and use such food to increase and diversify the rations furnished
to the fifteen hundred Cuban refugees and reconcentrados on shore. This
would give the latter a change of diet, and at the same time lessen the
amount of more expensive food-stuffs to be taken from the cargo of the
Red Cross steamer or brought from New York. With the approval of the
United States marshal, this plan was immediately carried into effect,
and it worked admirably. The captains of the Spanish prizes were glad to
give to the Red Cross perishable commodities for which they had no
accessible market, and ten thousand pounds of fish and large quantities
of plantains and bananas were soon obtained for distribution among the
Cuban refugees and reconcentrados in Key West. I refer to this incident
of the relief-work, not because it has, intrinsically, any particular
importance, but because it shows that the means adopted by the Red Cross
to relieve distress in Key West were intelligent and businesslike.
On the day after our arrival Mr. Cobb, of Miss Barton's staff, called at
the hotel to tell us that the Red Cross relief-boats were about to make
another visit to the Spanish prizes in the harbor, and to ask us if we
would like to go with them and see the work.
In half an hour Miss Barton and her staff, Mrs. Kennan and I, started in
the steam-launch of the monitor _Puritan_ to make the round of the
captured Spanish ships, towing behind us two large boats loaded with
assorted stores for the destitute crews. The first vessel we visited was
a small black brigantine from Barcelona, named _Frascito_, which had
been captured eight miles off Havana by the United States cruiser
_Montgomery_. The swarthy, scantily clad Spanish sailors crowded to the
bulwarks with beaming faces as we approached, and the hurried, almost
frenzied eagerness with which they threw us a line, hung a ladder over
the side, and helped us on board, showed that although we were
incidentally Americans, and therefore enemies, we were primarily Red
Cross people, and consequently friends to be greeted and welcomed with
every possible manifestation of respect, gratitude, and affection.
The interior of the little brigantine presented an appearance of
slovenly but picturesque dirt, confusion, and disorder, as if the crew,
overwhelmed by the misfortune that had come upon them, had abandoned the
routine of daily duty and given themselves up to apathy and despair. The
main-deck, between the low after-cabin and the high forecastle, had not
been washed down, apparently, in a week; piles of dirty dishes and
cooking-utensils of strange, unfamiliar shapes lay here and there around
the little galley forward; coils of running rigging were kicking about
under-foot instead of hanging on the belaying-pins; a pig-pen, which had
apparently gone adrift in a gale, blocked up the gangway to the
forecastle on the port side between the high bulwark and a big boat
which had been lashed in V-shaped supports amidships; and a large part
of the space between the cabin and the forecastle on the starboard side
was a chaos of chain-cable, lumber, spare spars, pots, pans, earthen
water-jars, and chicken-coops.
The captain of the little vessel was a round-faced, boyish-looking man,
of an English rather than a Spanish type, with clear gray honest eyes
and a winning expression of friendliness and rustic bonhomie, like that
of an amiable, intelligent young peasant. He greeted us cordially, but
with a slight trace of shy awkwardness, and invited us into the small,
dark cabin, where we drank one another's health in a bottle of sweet,
strong liqueur, and he told us the rather pathetic story of his
misfortune. The brigantine _Frascito_ ("Little Flask"), he said,
belonged in part to him and in part to a company in Barcelona. The
cargo, consisting chiefly of South American jerked beef, was owned by
his father and himself, and ship and cargo represented all that he and
his family had in the world. He left Montevideo for Havana about the
middle of March, and had no intimation whatever that Spain and the
United States were at war, until a round shot was fired across his bow
by the cruiser _Montgomery_, about eight miles off Morro Castle. The
officers of the cruiser treated him very kindly--"I couldn't; and below]
have done it better," he said, with simple sincerity, "if I had done it
myself; but it was very hard to lose everything just because I didn't
know. Of course I shouldn't have tried to get into Havana if I had known
there was war; but I left Montevideo in March, and had no thought of
such a thing." We tried to cheer him up by telling him that the
prize-court would hardly condemn and confiscate his vessel under such
circumstances, but he was still sad and troubled. He thanked us with
simple, unaffected earnestness for the provisions we had put on board
his ship, and said that the unexpected kindness of the Red Cross to him
and his crew had cheered and encouraged them all. He seemed anxious to
do something to show us his gratitude and appreciation, and when a
member of our party manifested interest in a large cage of red-crested
tropical birds which hung beside the cabin door, he promptly took it
down and presented it "to the senorita for the Red Cross steamer, with
the compliments and thanks of the _Frascito_."
After putting on board the little brigantine such supplies, in the shape
of bread, beans, rice, canned meats, etc., as the crew required, we bade
the captain and mate good-by, and left them apparently somewhat cheered
up by our visit.
From the _Frascito_ we went successively to the _Oriente_, the _Espana_,
the _Santiago Apostol_, the _Poder de Dios_, and fifteen or sixteen
other vessels of the prize-fleet, ascertaining their wants, furnishing
them with such food-supplies as they needed, and listening to the
stories of their captains.
Among the sailors on the fishing-smacks were many unfamiliar and
wild-looking Cuban and Spanish types--men with hard, dark faces, lighted
up by fierce, brilliant black eyes, who looked as if they would have
been in their proper sphere fighting under a black flag, on the Spanish
Main, in the good old days of the bucaneers. But hard and fierce as many
of them looked, they were not wholly insensible to kindness. On the
schooner _Power of God_, where there seemed to be more wild, cruel,
piratical types than on any other vessel except, perhaps, _St. James the
Apostle_, I noticed a sailor with a stern, hard, almost black face and
fierce, dark eyes, who--had such a thing been possible--might have
stepped, just as he stood, out of the pages of "Amyas Leigh." He was
regarding me with an expression in which, if there was no actual
malevolence, there was at least not the slightest indication of
friendliness or good will. Taking from my haversack a box of the
cigarettes with which I had provided myself in anticipation of a tobacco
famine among the Spanish sailors, I sprang over the bulwark, and, with
as cordial a smile of comradeship as I could give him, I placed it in
his hand. For an instant he stared at it as if stupefied with amazement.
Then his hard, set face relaxed a little, and, throwing his head forward
and raising his fierce black eyes to mine, he gave me a long look of
surprise and intense, passionate gratitude, which seemed to say, "I
don't know your language, and I can't _tell_ you how grateful I am, but
I can _look_ it"--and he did. He had evidently been out of tobacco many
days, and in a moment he went below where he could light a match out of
the wind, and presently reappeared, breathing smoke and exhaling it
through his nostrils with infinite satisfaction and pleasure.
Nearly all the sailors on the fishing-smacks were barefooted, many were
bareheaded, and all had been tanned a dark mahogany color by weeks of
exposure to the rays of a tropical sun. Their dress consisted,
generally, of a shirt and a pair of loose trousers of coarse gray
cotton, like the dress worn in summer by Siberian convicts. Dr. Egan
prescribed and furnished medicines for the sick wherever they were
found, and on one vessel performed a rather difficult and delicate
surgical operation for the relief of a man who was suffering from a
badly swollen neck, with necrosis of the lower jawbone.
At half-past six o'clock we returned to the _State of Texas_, having
attended to all the sick that were found, relieved all the distress that
was brought to our attention, and furnished food enough for a week's
consumption to the crews of nineteen vessels.
Two days later, at the suggestion of Miss Barton, Mr. Cobb purchased a
quantity of smoking-and chewing-tobacco for the Spanish sailors, and we
made another double round of the prize-ships, in the steam-launch of the
New York "Sun," which was courteously placed at the disposal of the Red
Cross for the whole afternoon. On our outward trip we left on every
vessel tobacco and matches enough to last the crew for a week, and Mr.
Cobb notified all the captains that if they or their crews wished to
write open letters to their relatives and friends in Cuba or Spain, the
Red Cross would collect them, submit them to the United States
prize-court for approval, and undertake to forward them.
The tobacco and the offer to forward letters seemed to excite more
enthusiastic gratitude in the hearts of the Spanish prisoners than even
the distribution of food. On one schooner my attention was attracted to
a ragged sailor who was saying something very earnestly in Spanish, and
pointing, in a rather dramatic manner, to the sky. "What is he saying?"
I inquired of Mr. Cobb. "He says," replied the latter, with a smile,
"that if they were prisoners up in heaven, they couldn't be better
treated than they have been here."
I was touched and gratified to see the interest and sympathy excited by
the work of the Red Cross in all who came in contact with it, from the
commodore of the fleet to the poorest fisherman. The captains of the
monitor _Puritan_ and the auxiliary cruiser _Panther_ offered us the use
of their swift steam-launches in the work of distributing food; the
representative of the New York "Sun" followed their example; the marines
on the _Panther_ doffed their caps to our boats as we passed, and even a
poor Key West fisherman pulled over to us in his skiff, as we lay
alongside a Spanish vessel, and gave us two large, lobster-like
crawfish, merely to show us, in the only way he could, his affectionate
sympathy and good will. Mr. Cobb offered him some of the tobacco that we
were distributing among the Spanish sailors, but he refused to take it,
saying: "I didn't bring the fish to you to beg tobacco, or for money,
but just because I wanted to help a little. I hoped to get more, but
these were all I could catch."
One touch of kindness makes all the world kin. Even the engineer of the
New York "Sun's" naphtha-launch gave his cherished pipe to a sailor on a
Spanish vessel who had none, and when one of his mates remonstrated with
him, saying, "You're not going to give him your own brier-wood pipe!" he
replied, with a shamefaced smile: "Yes, poor devil! he can't get one
away out here. I can buy another ashore."
Late in the afternoon we made a second round of all the Spanish ships to
collect their letters, and then returned to the _State of Texas_. Mr.
Cobb that same evening submitted the open letters to the United States
prize-court for approval, and I made an arrangement with Mr. E. F.
Knight, war correspondent of the London "Times," who was just starting
for Havana, to take the Cuban letters with him and mail them there. The
letters for Spain were sent to the National Red Cross of Portugal.