ENTERING SANTIAGO HARBOR
As soon as possible after our return from Guantanamo, Miss Barton sent a
note to Admiral Sampson, on board the flagship _New York,_ saying that,
as the inhabitants of the city were reported to be in a starving
condition, she hoped that food would be allowed to go in with the
forces. The admiral promptly replied: "The food shall enter in advance
of the forces; you may go in this afternoon." Almost any other naval
commander, after destroying a hostile fleet and reducing all the
batteries that defended a hostile city, would have wished to crown his
victory and enjoy his triumph by entering the harbor in advance of all
other vessels and on one of his own ships of war; but Admiral Sampson,
with the modesty and generosity characteristic of a great and noble
nature, waived his right to be the first to enter the city, and sent in
the _State of Texas_, flying the flag of the Red Cross and carrying food
and relief for the wounded, the starving, and the dying.
An officer from the _New York_ had been at work all day locating and
removing the submarine mines in the narrow part of the channel just
north of Morro Castle; but there were still four that had not been
exploded. As they were electrical mines, however, and as the cables
connecting them with the shore had been cut, they were no longer
dangerous, and there was nothing to prevent the entrance of the _State
of Texas_ except the narrowness of the unobstructed part of the channel.
The collier _Merrimac_, sunk by Lieutenant Hobson and his men, was not
in a position to interfere seriously with navigation. Cervera's fleet
ran out without any serious trouble on the western side of her, and
there was no reason why Admiral Sampson, if he decided to force an
entrance, should not run in, following the same course. In order to
prevent this, the Spaniards, on the night of July 4, attempted to sink
the old war-ship _Reina Mercedes_ in such a position that she would
close the channel at a point where it is very narrow, between the
_Merrimac_ and the entrance to the harbor. The ships of the blockading
fleet, however, saw her coming out about midnight, turned their big guns
upon her, and sank her with six-and eight-inch projectiles before she
could get into position. She drifted around parallel with the shore, and
lay half submerged on the eastern side of the channel, about one hundred
and fifty yards from the entrance and three hundred or three hundred and
fifty yards from the _Merrimac_.
At four o'clock Admiral Sampson sent Lieutenant Capehart on board the
_State of Texas_ to give Captain Young all necessary information with
regard to the channel and the mines, and a few moments later, under the
guidance of a Cuban pilot, we steamed slowly in under the gray, frowning
battlements of Morro Castle. As we approached it I had an opportunity to
see, for the first time, the nature and extent of the damage done to it
by the guns of Admiral Sampson's fleet, and I was glad to find that,
although it had been somewhat battered on its southern or sea face, its
architectural picturesqueness had not been destroyed or even seriously
impaired. To an observer looking at it from the south, it has, in
general outline, the appearance of three huge cubes or rectangular
masses of gray masonry, put together in such a way that the largest
cube occupies the crest of the bold, almost precipitous bluff which
forms the eastern side of the entrance to the harbor, while the other
two descend from it in colossal steps of diminishing size toward an
escarpment in the hillside seventy-five or a hundred feet below, where
appear five or six square, grated doors, leading, apparently, to a row
of subterranean ammunition-vaults. Underneath the escarpment is a zigzag
flight of steps, screened at exposed points by what seem to be
comparatively recent walls, or curtains of masonry, much lighter in
color than the walls of the castle itself. Still lower down, at the base
of the bluff, are two or three huge, dark caves into which the swell of
the Caribbean Sea rolls with a dull, reverberating roar. The height of
the castle above the water appears to be one hundred and fifty or two
hundred feet. There are very few embrasures, or port-holes, in the gray,
lichen-stained walls of the old fortification, and, so far as I could
see, it had no armament whatever except two or three guns mounted en
barbette on the parapet of the uppermost cube, or bastion.
As a defensive work the Morro Castle of Santiago has no importance or
significance whatever, and its complete destruction would not have made
it any easier for Admiral Sampson to force an entrance to the harbor. It
is the oldest Morro, however, in Cuba; and as a relic of the past, and
an interesting and attractive feature in a landscape already
picturesque, it has the highest possible value, and I am more than glad
that it was not destroyed. There was no reason, really, for bombarding
it at all, because it was perfectly harmless. The defenses of Santiago
that were really dangerous and effective were the submarine mines in the
channel and the earthwork batteries east and west of the entrance to the
harbor. Morro was huge, formidable-looking, and impressive to the eye
and the imagination, but the horizontal reddish streaks of freshly
turned earth along the crests of the hills east and west of it had ten
times its offensive power. I saw the last Spanish soldier leave the
castle at noon on Sunday, and when we passed it, soon after four
o'clock, its flag was gone, its walls were deserted, and buzzards were
soaring in circles about its little corner turrets.
About one hundred and fifty yards inside the entrance to the harbor we
passed the wreck of the _Reina Mercedes_, lying close to the shore, on
the right-hand side of the channel, with her port rail under water and
her masts sloping at an angle of forty-five degrees to the westward. Two
brass-bound sea-chests and a pile of signal-flags were lying on her deck
aft, and she had not been touched, apparently, since she was sunk by the
guns of our battle-ships on the night of July 4.
Three hundred or three hundred and fifty yards farther in we passed what
the sailors of the fleet call "Hobson's choice," the steam-collier
_Merrimac_. She lay in deep water, about midway from shore to shore, and
all that could be seen of her were the tops of her masts and about two
feet of her smoke-stack. If the channel were narrow and were in the
middle of the passage, she would have blocked it completely; but
apparently it is wider than her length, and vessels drawing twenty feet
or more of water could go around her without touching bottom. It is a
little remarkable that both combatants should have tried to obstruct
this channel and that neither should have succeeded. The location chosen
by the Spaniards seemed to me to be a better one than that selected by
Hobson; but it is so near the mouth of the harbor that the chance of
reaching it with a vessel in the glare of our search-lights and under
the fire of our guns was a very slight one. The _Reina Mercedes_ reached
it, but was disabled before she could get into position.[5]
Beyond the _Merrimac_ the entrance to the harbor widens a little, but
the shores continue high and steep for a distance of a mile or more. At
intervals of a few hundred yards, however, beautiful deep coves run back
into the high land on either side, and at the head of every one the eye
catches a glimpse of a little settlement of half a dozen houses with
red-tiled roofs, or a country villa shaded by palms and half hidden in
shrubbery and flowers. One does not often see, in the tropics or
elsewhere, a harbor entrance that is more striking and picturesque than
the watery gateway which leads from the ocean to the spacious upper bay
of Santiago. It does not look like an inlet of the sea, but suggests
rather a tranquil, winding river, shut in by high, steep ramparts of
greenery, with here and there an opening to a beautiful lateral cove,
where the dark masses of chaparral are relieved by clumps of graceful,
white-stemmed palms and lighted up by the solid sheets of bright-red
flowers which hide the foliage of the _flamboyam_, or flame-tree.
As ours was the first vessel that had entered the harbor in nearly two
months, and as we were flying the Red Cross flag, our arrival naturally
caused great excitement in all the little settlements and at all the
villas along the shores. Men, women, and children ran down to the
water's edge, waving their hats and handkerchiefs or brandishing their
arms in joyous welcome, and even old, gray-haired, and feeble women, who
could not get as far as the shore, stood in front of their little
houses, now gazing at us in half-incredulous amazement, and then
crossing themselves devoutly with bowed heads, as if thanking God that
siege and starvation were over and help and food at hand.
About half-way between Morro Castle and Santiago there is a high, bare,
flat-topped hill, or mesa, called the Behia, on which there is a
signal-station with a mast for the display of flags. Just before this
hill is reached the channel widens, and, as the steamer rounds a high,
bold promontory, the beautiful upper bay comes into view, like a great
placid lake framed in a magnificent amphitheater of mountains, with a
fringe of cocoanut-palms here and there to break the level shore-line,
and a few splashes of vivid red where flame-trees stand out in brilliant
relief against the varied green of the mountain background. Two miles
away, on the eastern side of the harbor, appeared the city of
Santiago--a sloping expanse of red-tiled roofs, green mango-trees, and
twin-belfried Spanish churches, rising from the water's edge to the
crest of a range of low hills which bound the bay on that side. A week
or ten days earlier I had seen the town from the rifle-pits of the Rough
Riders at the front of our army; but its appearance from the harbor was
so different that I could hardly recognize it as the same place. Seen
from the intrenched hill occupied by General Wheeler's brigade, it
appeared to consist mainly of barracks, hospitals, and shed-like
buildings flying the flag of the Red Cross, and had no beauty or
picturesqueness whatever; but from the water it seemed to be rather an
interesting and attractive Spanish-American town.
As we entered the upper bay and caught sight of the city, some of our
Red Cross nurses who were standing with Miss Barton in a little group at
the bow of the steamer felt impelled to give expression to their
feelings in some way, and, acting upon a sudden impulse and without
premeditation, they began to sing in unison "Praise God, from whom all
blessings flow." Never before, probably, had the doxology been heard on
the waters of Santiago harbor, and it must have been more welcome music
to the crowds assembling on shore than the thunder of Admiral Sampson's
cannon and the jarring rattle of machine-guns from the advance line of
our army. The doxology was followed by "My country, 'tis of thee," in
which the whole ship's company joined with a thrill of patriotic pride;
and to this music the _State of Texas_ glided swiftly up the harbor to
her anchorage. It was then about half-past five. The daily afternoon
thunder-shower had just passed over the city, and its shadow still lay
heavy on the splendid group of peaks west of the bay; but the
light-green slopes of the grassy mountains to the eastward, as well as
the red roofs and gray church steeples of the city, were bathed in the
warm yellow light of the sinking sun.
Before we had fairly come to anchor, a great crowd had assembled on the
pier nearest to us, and in less than five minutes half a dozen small
boats were alongside, filled with people anxious to know whether we had
brought food and when we would begin to distribute it. Many of them said
that they had not tasted bread in weeks, and all agreed that there was
nothing to eat in the city except rice, and very little of that. We told
them that we should begin discharging the cargo of the _State of Texas_
early on the following morning and should be in a position to feed ten
thousand people within the next twenty-four hours. The normal population
of the city at that time was about fifty thousand, but a large part of
it had fled to Caney and other suburban villages to escape the
bombardment, and more than half the houses were closed and deserted.
General Shafter had entered the city with a single regiment--the Ninth
Infantry--at noon, and had raised the American flag over the palace of
the Spanish governor.