Only a few years before our war with Spain, that country was threatened with another war whose theater would have been chiefly her colonial possessions in the Pacific. War with Germany over the Caroline Islands was so imminent that military plans for the defense of the Philippines were carefully elaborated, and modern high-powered rifled guns were shipped to Manila and emplaced, while ammunition in vast quantities was received and stored. Thus, in the fall of 1897, there stood before the city of Manila four 9 ½-inch breech-loading rifles, nine 8 ¼-inch muzzle-loading rifled mortars, four 5 ½-inch converted breech-loading rifles, and fifteen 6.3-inch muzzle-loading bronze rifled guns of old design all carefully emplaced behind heavy earthworks, fully equipped and superabundantly supplied with ammunition. All batteries were connected by telephone, and plane tables were arranged at the extremities of measured bases, to give accurate ranges. Drills were carried on continually and with enthusiasm.
The old city of Manila lies upon the right bank of the Pasig’s mouth, surrounded by a picturesque Medieval wall, fifty feet thick and twenty feet high, and by a deep moat. The wall along the bay front is practically straight, with a bastion at each end and one in the center. Five of the 6.3-inch muzzle-loading bronze rifles stood in the north bastion and eight in the south while in the center were five muzzle-loading rifled mortars. Many other very old muzzle-loading bronze guns lined this wall, but they were recognized even by the Spaniards, as obsolete. All the artillery on the walls antedated the German scare. The modern formidable guns then emplaced were located in front of the wall and moat, in earthworks well screened by shrubbery and sod. One 9 ½-inch rifle was placed under the north bastion and one under the south, while the four 5 ½-inch converted B. L. R.'s were placed near the center bastion and four 8 ½-inch mortars on the flank of the south wall. The two remaining 9 ½-inch rifles were placed some distance to the southward, on the water front in the suburb of Ermita.
A new battery, to hold six 15-centimeter Ordonez rifled guns was built on Sangley Point for the protection of the naval arsenal at Cavite. This was a casemated earthwork of entirely modern character. The Cavite arsenal had also 6.3-inch three Armstrong M. L. R.'s mounted in a stone redoubt, and on Fort San Felipe, a medieval fortress adjacent.
The old fort of San Antonio Abad which had figured so much in the war history of Manila, was too antiquated for modern artillery emplacement.
Such were the defenses of Manila when the new war cloud gathered in the winter of 1897-8. Much more had been planned and the incentive of renewed danger brought the plans out for revision and execution. One of the larger Spanish ocean liners sent to the Philippines, the Isla de Mindanao, was loaded with guns and munitions of war and started from Spain. Believing, perhaps, that these guns would reach them in time for emplacement at Cavite, the military authorities at Manila sent four of the 15-centimeter rifles belonging to Fort Sangley, about the first week in March, to Isla Grande in Subig Bay. In Manila, however, they added two modern 15-centimeter B. L. R. siege guns to the battery of 5 ½-inch B. L. R's under the west wall, and placed two 12-centimeter B. L. R. siege guns in the circular redoubt on the south mole of the Pasig River mouth, where there were already two 6.3-inch M. L. bronze rifles.
At the same time, the emplacement of batteries for the defense of the entrance of the bay was entrusted to the Navy. This entrance, though very wide, is divided into two channels by a island called Corregidor.
In twenty-four days the following batteries were ready to defend these channels: Covering Boca Chica: On the north shore of Corregidor Island, three 8-inch M. L. Armstrong rifles; at Punta Gorda, north side three 18-cm. Palliser M. L. R.'s, and at Punta Lassisi farther in the bay, two 16-cm. Hontoria B. L. R's.
Covering Boca Grande: On Caballo Island, three 6-inch Armstrong B. L. R.’s on El Fraile Rock, three 12-centimeter B. L. R.'s, and at Punta Restina, three 16-cm. Palliser M. L. R's.
They also reinforced Fort Sangley by one 14-centimeter B. L. R., a few hundred yards up the beach, and were preparing to mount a second beside it when the American squadron arrived. The gun here mounted was taken from the cruiser Ulloa, she being so far dismantled for repairs that they moored her head and stern for battle and retained only her starboard battery.
At all of these batteries were built in the ground with covered galleries or trenches for approach, while in sheltered spots near at hand were roomy bamboo quarters for the guns' crews. An abundance of ammunition was provided and the guns were manned chiefly by sailors from such vessels as were hors de combat because repairing at Cavite Arsenal.
A line of mines was laid northwestward from San Nicholas shoal, in Manila Bay, and others were laid in Boca Grande but firing arrangements for the latter seemed not to have been installed when Commodore Dewey’s squadron arrived.
At Subig Bay some hulks were sunk to block the southeast channel, and mines being were laid in the northwest channel when our ships arrived, but the four 15-centimeter guns, through inexcusable and inexplicable procrastination, remained prostrate on Isla Grande. Had they been mounted there or at Fort Sangley at the end of April 1898, the Battle of Manila Bay might have been quite another story.
The merchant steamer Isla de Mindanao arrived in Manila the last week in April too late to unload all her munitions of war before the arrival of the United States squadron, and her fate is now a matter of history.
Such, then, were the land defenses of Manila Bay which confronted Commodore Dewey when his squadron stole in silence and darkness towards the entrance at midnight, April 30, 1898. The Spaniards had guarded their work well. U. S. Consul Williams, who remained in Manila till one week before that date and who accompanied the American squadron back, could only learn that numerous new batteries were being erected at the entrance to the bay and that the channels were being mined. No knowledge of the relative strength of the defenses of the two channels could guide the American commander's choice. The wider channel, Boca Grande, was the one selected. The squadron thus passed under the muzzles of nine rifled cannon, some of them modern breech-loaders, and through a mined channel. In Boca Chica it would have encountered eight rifles, two of them breech-loading, and no mines, but there were also in this channel a small Spanish gunboat, the Arayat or Leyte, and a picket launch.
Allowing four large guns as a cruiser's broadside, giving double weight to batteries on shore over those afloat, and counting the mines efficient, it might reasonably be claimed that a contest with the defenses of Boca Grande in daylight would have been about an even fight.
By referring to the diagram showing the zones of gun fire at the mouth of the bay, it will be seen that the United States squadron unwittingly took a course which placed it longest under fire and led it through the zone of heaviest concentration. At the speed the squadron moved, eight knots per hour, and granting most liberal times for the service of the Spanish guns, the latter could have hurled about five tons of projectiles against the American vessels before they were out of range. Nevertheless, the route was well chosen. We all know the actual story: the squadron half way through before detected; then a geyser of flame from the McCulloch's overheated smokestack; a single rocket from Corregidor; a signal flare on El Fraile rock, five impotent shrieking shells from it and Punta Restinga; innocuous mines; and the daring squadron safe within the bay!
Had the Spaniards provided for every contingency, a score of idle gun vessels and armed launches could have patrolled the Manila "bocas" at night, so that even a canoe could scarcely have approached undetected. As it was, the absolute silence and the perfect screening of lights on the American vessels made them undetectable at a few hundred yards distance. The moon in its first quarter was setting behind clouds. A single guiding light, shut in on three sides, was necessarily displayed at the stern of each vessel. The course steered prevented these from being seen from the Restinga and Caballo batteries until the squadron had passed nearly out of their sectors of gun fire. Then, too late, they gave each battery in succession a target: Restina fired, but Caballo probably thought the enemy already out of range. The flare up from the McCulloch's smokestack was but a brief accident which the Spaniards could not seize to advantage. One feature of the passage was the close approach of the squadron to El Fraile rock. That the Spaniards would have a battery on this isolated and tiny island was not expected, so, as it made an excellent point of departure for a course up the bay, it was approached within five hundred yards, and its battery promptly opened fire. A few shells in return convinced the gunners that their position was perilously exposed and untenable at such short range, and they desisted.
In the face of all evidence, the existence of mines at the entrance to the bay can scarcely be doubted. A chart was captured at Cavite next morning with lines of torpedoes marked on it in Boca Chica and off San Nicholas Shoal, and with marginal memoranda about the spacing and number of mines. In the articles of articulation signed by the Governor of Corregidor. it was stated that mines existed in Boca Grande. The testimony of nearly every Spanish officer interviewed by the writer after the fall of Manila was to the same effect. If these mines were contact mines, they had become innocuous from barnacles and seaweed or badly adjusted moorings; if they were electro-controlled, the firing devices had not been installed or were defective.
Having run the gauntlet of nine rifled guns and a line of mines unharmed, our squadron stood up the bay in a direction a little north of Manila, thus safely passing around the mines if they existed, off San Nicholas Shoal; and in the morning, as it reconnoitered the roads off the city and then stood down toward the discovered Spanish fleet at Cavite, it came under the muzzles of thirty-six rifled guns, twelve of them breech-loaders, and thirteen of larger caliber than any in the American ships. Situated as these guns were, however, they could not fire upon the enemy without drawing a return fire not only upon themselves but upon their city: their homes, their places of business, their wives and children. Nearly nine tons of projectiles could have been hurled at the passing enemy while within range of those Manila guns, but they were paralyzed by their false emplacement. The three batteries of 9 ½-inch guns, however, being least disadvantageously emplaced, opened, and, through bad marksmanship, kept up an impotent fire throughout the action.
The batteries at Cavite added four hundred and sixty-six pounds of metal to the broadside of the Spanish fleet throughout the first engagement. The duel of the Baltimore with these batteries was a feature of the second engagement. Such a hail of exploding shells plowed into their entrenchments that they resembled volcanic eruptions. Though several times silenced, they as often renewed the fight until their final surrender.
When the work at Cavite was finished, the Olympia steamed alone to Manila, followed soon after by the Baltimore and the Raleigh. These three ships, once more under the muzzles of Manila's thirty-six shotted guns, coolly anchored in the harbor, the bands of the Olympia and, Baltimore playing their evening concerts as usual, while Commodore Dewey sent word to the Governor-General that if a single shot was fired at the American ships he would lay the city in ashes.
The isolated batteries at the mouth of the bay were, by orders from Manila, surrendered to the Raleigh and Baltimore on the evening of the 3rd of May. Their breech-plugs were delivered on board the Raleigh. Each battery was visited by landing parties from the American ships, the guns disabled and the ammunition thrown into the sea. At a later period, when it was found that the Philippine insurgents were endeavoring to remove some of the guns, they were all again visited and thrown into the sea.
The guns on Sangley Point were destroyed with gun-cotton. The ones at Manila fell into the hands of the United States Army when Manila was taken, and still remain monuments to the folly of those who emplaced them in such tactically embarrassing positions.
Defenses of Manila Bay.
About March 10. A council of war at Manila decides to hasten erection of four Is-cm. Ordonez guns at Subig, block one channel with sunken hulks and mine the other and place the fleet there.
About March 15. The captain of the Leyo submitted a plan for defence of Manila and Cavite, fortifying the mouths of the bay with a line of batteries on points conveniently located and another second line of more moral and material strength, composed of torpedoes protected by two batteries at their extremity, situated between Punta Amos, in the Province of Bataan, and the shoals of San Nicholas. Artillery available:
Ranges.
6 Muzzle-loading Armstrong rifles, 180 lbs., Range: 3600 meters.
7 16-cm. conv. M. L. Palliser M. L. 1, Range: 5600 meters.
12 16-cm. conv. M. L. Palliser M. L. 2, Range: 5000 meters.
3 18-cm. conv. M. L. Palliser, Range: 4400 meters.
2 16-cm. B. L. Hontoria, 1879, Range: 5000 meters.
4 12-cm. B. L. Hontoria, 1883, Range: 10500 meters.
Last four on board Ulloa.
Sites visited by a committee on the Bulusan.
March 29. Fraile, Caballo and Restinga chosen; Carabao rejected.
Captain and crew of Velasco land Caballo battery and named it Velasco.
Captain and crew of Leyo land Le Fraile battery and named it Leyo.
120 workmen from Cavite Arsenal and 30 laborers from Corregidor employed on batteries April 1, Leyte, Bulusan and Hercules used.
Fraile battery had one 12-cm. Hont. B. L. R, 1883, from the Ulloa and two 12-cm. Hont. B. L. R, 1879, from the Leyo.
Caballo battery had three Armsirong 16-cm. B. L. R from the Velasco.
Punta Lassisi battery had two I6-cm. Hont. B. L. R No. 3 modern 1879, which had been stored in the (Cavite) arsenal.
Corregidor (Talisaz): 3 Armstrong M. L. R 6-in. 180-pdr.
Punta Gorda: 3 Palliser 18-cm. M. L. R.
Punta Restinga: 3 Palliser 16-cm. M. L. R, No.1.
It took 22 days to erect the batteries, working Sundays and Saints' days.