OFF FOR SANTIAGO
The most important event in the early history of the war, and the event
that controlled the movements of the Red Cross steamer _State of Texas_,
as well as the movements of General Shafter's army, was the arrival of
the Spanish fleet of cruisers and torpedo-boats at Santiago de Cuba on
May 19. There had been skirmishes and bombardments before that time, at
Matanzas, Cardenas, and various other points on the Cuban coast; but
none of them had any strategic importance, or any particular bearing
upon the course or the conduct of the war. It was the appearance of
Admiral Cervera at Santiago which determined the field of action, and,
to some extent, the plan of campaign. The invasion of eastern Cuba had
already been under consideration, and when the Spanish fleet took refuge
in Santiago harbor the President and his counselors decided, definitely
and finally, to begin operations at that end of the island, and to leave
the western provinces unmolested until fall. The regular army, it was
thought, would be strong enough, with the aid and cooeperation of Admiral
Sampson's fleet, to reduce the defenses of Santiago, and the volunteers
might be left in camp at Chickamauga, Tampa, and Jacksonville, to get in
training for an attack upon Havana at the end of the rainy season.
The preparations for the invasion of Cuba seemed, at that time, to be
nearly, if not quite, complete. The whole regular army, consisting of
seven regiments of cavalry, twenty-two regiments of infantry, and
fourteen batteries of artillery, had been mobilized and transported to
the Gulf coast; the quartermaster's department had, under charter,
twenty-seven steamers, with a carrying capacity of about twenty thousand
men; immense quantities of food and munitions of war had been bought and
sent to Tampa, and there seemed to be no good reason why General
Shafter's command should not embark for Cuba, if necessary, at
twenty-four hours' notice.
On May 26, just a week after the appearance of Admiral Cervera and his
fleet at Santiago, the President held a consultation at the Executive
Mansion with the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, and the
members of the Board of Strategy, and decided to begin the invasion of
Cuba at once. Orders were presumably sent to General Shafter to prepare
for an immediate movement, and Secretary Long telegraphed Admiral
Sampson as follows:
WASHINGTON, May 27, 1898.
_Sampson, Care Naval Base, Key West:_
If Spanish division is proved to be at Santiago, it is the
intention of the department to make a descent immediately upon that
port with ten thousand United States troops, landing about eight
nautical miles east of the port. You will be expected to convoy
transports....
[Signed] LONG.
Three days later General Shafter was directed, in the following order,
to embark his command and proceed at once to Santiago:
WAR DEPARTMENT, WASHINGTON, May 30, 1898.
_Major-General William R. Shafter, Tampa, Florida:_
With the approval of the Secretary of War you are directed to take
your command on transports, proceed under convoy of the navy to the
vicinity of Santiago de Cuba, land your force at such place east or
west of that point as your judgment may dictate, under the
protection of the navy, and move it on to the high ground and
bluffs overlooking the harbor, or into the interior, as shall best
enable you to capture or destroy the garrison there and cover the
navy as it sends its men in small boats to remove torpedoes, or,
with the aid of the navy, capture or destroy the Spanish fleet now
reported to be in Santiago harbor.
You will use the utmost energy to accomplish this enterprise, and
the government relies upon your good judgment as to the most
judicious use of your command, but desires to impress upon you the
importance of accomplishing this object with the least possible
delay....
[Signed] H. C. CORBIN,
Adjutant-General.
In view of the fact that General Shafter had been nearly a month at
Tampa, and of the further fact that his command was composed wholly, or
almost wholly, of regular troops, who were completely equipped for
service when they left their stations, he should have been able, it
seems to me, to comply with this order at once; but, apparently, he was
not ready. Day after day passed without any noticeable change in the
situation, and on June 7 the army at Tampa was apparently no nearer an
advance than it had been when Cervera's fleet entered Santiago harbor on
May 19.
Admiral Sampson, who was anxious to strike a decisive blow before the
enemy should have time to concentrate and intrench, then telegraphed
Secretary Long as follows:
MOLE, HAITI, June 7, 1898.
_Secretary of Navy, Washington_:
Bombarded forts at Santiago 7:30 A. M. to 10 A. M. to-day, June 6.
Have silenced works quickly without injury of any kind, though
stationary within two thousand yards. If ten thousand men were
here[1] city and fleet would be ours within forty-eight hours.
Every consideration demands immediate army movement. If delayed
city will be defended more strongly by guns taken from fleet.
[Signed] SAMPSON.
When this despatch reached Washington, the Secretary of War sent General
Shafter two peremptory telegrams, as follows:
WAR DEPARTMENT, June 7.
_Major-General Shafter, Port Tampa, Florida:_
You will sail immediately, as you are needed at destination at
once. Answer.
[Signed] R. A. ALGER,
Secretary of War.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
June 7, 1898, 8:50 P.M.
_Major-General Shafter, Port Tampa, Florida:_
Since telegraphing you an hour since, the President directs you to
sail at once with what force you have ready.
[Signed] R. A. ALGER,
Secretary of War.
Upon receipt of these "rush" orders, General Shafter hastily embarked
his army, amid great confusion and disorder, and telegraphed the
Secretary of War that he would be ready to sail, with about seventeen
thousand officers and men, on the morning of June 8. Before the
expedition could get away, however, Commodore Remey cabled the Secretary
of the Navy from Key West that two Spanish war-ships--an armored cruiser
and a torpedo-boat destroyer--had been seen in Nicholas Channel, off the
northern coast of Cuba, on the night of June 7, by Lieutenant W. H. H.
Southerland of the United States gunboat _Eagle_. Fearing that these
Spanish vessels would intercept the fleet of transports and perhaps
destroy some of them, Secretary Alger telegraphed General Shafter not to
leave Tampa Bay until he should receive further orders.
Scouting-vessels of the navy, which were promptly sent to Nicholas
Channel in search of the enemy, failed to locate or discover the two
war-ships reported by the commander of the _Eagle_, and on June 14
General Shafter's army, after having been held a week on board the
transports in Tampa Bay, sailed for Santiago by way of Cape Maysi and
the Windward Passage. The Spanish fleet under command of Admiral Cervera
had then been in Santiago harbor almost four weeks.
It is hard to say exactly where the responsibility should lie for the
long delay in the embarkation and despatch of General Shafter's
expedition. When I passed through Tampa on my way south in June, the two
railroad companies there were blaming each other, as well as the
quartermaster's department, for the existing blockade of unloaded cars,
while army officers declared that the railroad companies were unable to
handle promptly and satisfactorily the large quantity of supplies
brought there for the expedition. Naval authorities said that they had
to wait for the army, while army officers maintained that they were all
ready to start, but were stopped and delayed by reports of Spanish
war-ships brought in by scouting-vessels of the navy.
That there was unnecessary delay, as well as great confusion and
disorder, there seems to be no doubt. As one competent army officer said
to me, in terse but slangy English, "The fact of the matter is, they
simply got all balled up, and although they worked hard, they worked
without any definite, well-understood plan of operations."
The principal trouble seemed to be in the commissary and quartermaster's
departments. Many of the officers in these departments were young and
inexperienced; army supplies from the North came down in immense
quantities on two lines of railway and without proper invoices or bills
of lading; it was often utterly impossible to ascertain in which, out of
a hundred cars, certain articles of equipment or subsistence were to be
found; and there was a lack everywhere of cool, trained, experienced
supervision and direction. It was the business of some one somewhere to
see that every car-load of supplies shipped to Tampa was accompanied by
an invoice or bill of lading, so that the chief commissary at the point
of destination might know the exact nature, quantity, and car-location
of supplies brought by every train. Then, if he wanted twenty-five
thousand rations of hard bread or fifty thousand pounds of rice before
the cars had been unloaded, he would know exactly where and in what cars
to look for it. As it was, he could not tell, often, what car contained
it without making or ordering personal examination, and it was almost
impossible to know how much of any given commodity he had on hand in
trains that had not yet been unloaded or inspected. As the result of
this he had to telegraph to Jacksonville at the last moment before the
departure of the expedition for three or four hundred cases of baked
beans and forty or fifty thousand pounds of rice to be bought there in
open market and to be sent him in "rush shipment." It is more than
probable that there were beans and rice enough to meet all his wants in
unloaded trains at Tampa, but he had no clue to their car-location and
could not find them. Such a state of things, of course, is wholly
unnecessary, and it should not occur a second time. To take another
example:
When our army embarked at Port Tampa it was the business of some officer
somewhere to know the exact capacity of every transport and the
numerical strength of every regiment. Then it was some one's business to
prearrange the distribution of troops by assigning one or more
designated regiments to one or more designated steamers and giving
necessary orders to the colonels. As it was, however, according to the
testimony of every witness, a train-load of troops would come to the
docks at Port Tampa, apparently without orders or assignment to any
particular steamer, and while they were waiting to learn what they
should do, and while their train was still blocking the way, another
train-load of soldiers would arrive in a similar state of ignorance and
add to the disorder and confusion. As a natural consequence, men got on
wrong steamers and had to be unloaded, and often, after transports had
moved out into the bay, parts of companies and regiments had to be
transferred in small boats from one vessel to another. These are
examples of what seems to have been bad management. In another class of
cases the trouble was apparently due to mistaken judgment. To the latter
class belongs the loading and treatment of horses and mules. It would
have been much better and safer, I think, to load these animals on
vessels especially prepared for and exclusively devoted to them than to
put them into stifling and unventilated holds of steamers that also
carried troops. If, however, this was impracticable, it was manifestly
best to load the animals last, so as to expose them for as short a time
as possible to such murderous conditions. The mules, however, were
loaded first, and held in the holds of the transports while troops were
embarking. They began to die from heat and suffocation, and then they
were unloaded and reshipped after the troops were on board. This caused
unnecessary delay, as well as the loss of many valuable animals.
Eighteen perished, I am told, on one transport while the troops were
embarking.
These cases of disorder and bad judgment are only a few out of many
which were the subject of common talk among officers and civilians in
Tampa. I could specify many others, but criticism is at best unpleasant
duty, and the only justification for it is the hope that, if mistakes
and disorders are pointed out and frankly recognized, they may be
guarded against in future.
The army of invasion, when it finally left Tampa Bay for the Cuban
coast, consisted of 803 officers and 14,935 enlisted men.[2] With its
animals and equipment it filled thirty-five transports. It comprised (in
addition to regular infantry) four batteries of light field-artillery,
two batteries of heavy siege-guns, a battalion of engineers, a
detachment of the Signal Corps, twelve squadrons of dismounted cavalry,
and one squadron of cavalry with horses. All of the troops were regulars
with the exception of three regiments, namely, the First Cavalry (Rough
Riders, dismounted), the Seventy-first New York, and the Second
Massachusetts. The command was well supplied with food and ammunition,
but its facilities for land transportation were inadequate; its
equipment, in the shape of clothing and tentage, was not adapted to a
tropical climate in the rainy season; it carried no reserve medical
stores, and it had no small boats suitable for use in disembarkation or
in landing supplies on an unsheltered coast. Some of these deficiencies
in equipment were due, apparently, to lack of prevision, others to lack
of experience in tropical campaigning, and the rest to lack of water
transportation from Tampa to the Cuban coast; but all were as
unnecessary as they afterward proved to be unfortunate.
When the army of invasion sailed, the Red Cross steamer _State of
Texas_, laden with fourteen hundred tons of food and medical supplies,
lay at anchor in Tampa Bay, awaiting the return of Miss Barton and a
part of her staff from Washington. As soon as they arrived, the steamer
proceeded to Key West, and on the morning of Monday, June 20, after a
brief consultation with Commodore Remey, we sailed from that port for
Santiago de Cuba. In the group assembled on the pier to bid us good-by
were United States Marshal Horr; Mr. Hyatt, chairman of the local Red
Cross committee; Mr. White, correspondent of the Chicago "Record," whose
wife was going with us as a Red Cross worker; and Mrs. Porter, wife of
the President's secretary, who had come with Miss Barton from Washington
to Key West in order to show her interest in and sympathy with the work
in which the Red Cross is engaged. About ten o'clock the steamer's lines
were cast off, the gang-plank was drawn ashore, the screw began to churn
the green water into boiling foam astern, and, amid shouted good-bys and
the waving of handkerchiefs from the pier, we moved slowly out into the
stream, dipped our ensign to the _Lancaster_, Commodore Remey's
flagship, and proceeded down the bay in the direction of Sand Key
light.