That first day of June, 1898, when Rear Admiral William T. Sampson arrived off Santiago de Cuba in his flagship New York, accompanied by the Oregon and Mayflower, 42 years ago! It’s a long time in which to forget things, but to us in the Admiral’s office the events of the day were impressed indelibly on our minds. It was six o’clock in the morning when the gray forms of Commodore Schley’s fleet of about ten ships appeared solidly against a blurred background of mountains to the north, an open challenge for Cervera’s squadron to come out and fight.
But of all the ships, our own and the enemy’s, Admiral Sampson was interested most in the collier Merrimac, the crippled ship that had been on the verge of causing one of the most disastrous failures of any naval campaign in history. Her broken-down condition was reported as the cause of the withdrawal of the squadron from the Presence of the enemy.
In the New York’s cabin, at a conference of commanding officers on the north coast four days before, the use of the Merrimac as a barrier of egress to the Spanish Fleet had been decided upon. Commodore Schley, on the south coast of the island, had been directed to proceed without delay in effecting the plan. Our Commander m Chief was most anxious to bottle up the Spaniards and appealed urgently to the Navy Department for permission to proceed to Santiago and personally supervise the operation. Upon receipt of “permission granted” he immediately put in motion detailed preparations for sinking the collier.
The Merrimac, a rusty, sorry looking ship, was ordered alongside the flagship shortly after noon, and our port watch was sent on board to strip her. Our bluejackets enjoyed that kind of work; so did the officers, who took their pick of drapes and hangings, of furniture, and pantry stores. The lower ratings found in cushions and rugs good things to soften the planks on which they had been sleeping about their guns ever since the attack on San Juan on May 12. Tableware, silver, pots, pans, brass and bronze, even the lumber and coal not needed for the short run in, were saved from loss in the doomed ship. Typewriters got into strange hands, wardroom chairs found their way even to the heads, while battleship boatswains and naval reserve officers from the converted yachts snooped about for cordage, hawsers, spare cables, and wire fittings. Meanwhile the gunner’s gang and quartermasters prepared the collier for a quick sinking. Our Admiral, fresh from the Bureau of Ordnance in Washington, had taken an active part in devising the ten torpedoes, each containing 78 pounds of cordite. He drew up the plans for a firing device of all the dry cells we could muster, strapped to a wide board. These preparations made us feel that any volunteer for the Merrimac would bring his life back with him only by a miracle. Our hope was that each would be able to execute the task assigned to him before becoming disabled, for was it not rumored, and published on our bulletin board for all to read, that the Spaniards had mined the eastern bluffs so that they might be folded over any ship making an unauthorized entrance?
The Admiral conferred with his officers all day. He pored over new maps, and old maps of the harbor, with Hobson. “Fighting Bob” Evans of the Iowa limped down the after hatch ladder and exchanged some witticism with his son-in-law, Flag Secretary C. C. Marsh, and then critically discussed the plan. The cheery voice of good Jack Phillip of the Texas boomed along the passageway as he predicted it would be a good ending to a hoodoo ship to have her serve as a stopper against the Spaniards coming out of their harbor.
Officers envied the man destined to command the ship into her last berth. Her former captain, Commander J. M. Miller, urgently requested the Admiral’s permission to command her last glorious journey, despite the excellent possibility of sharing personally the same final resting place. However, because of his familiarity with the details of a plan which he had helped to form, and in which he had been trained, Naval Constructor Richmond Pearson Hobson was chosen by the Admiral to command the undertaking. Hobson’s long hours of study, training, and work were to be rewarded with a small, almost hopeless, chance of glorious success, and an almost certain chance of early destruction.
Captain French E. Chadwick, the Chief of Staff, and commanding officer of the New York, was also intimately connected with the plan for sinking the collier from its inception on May 27. He dictated memoranda on the working of the electrical apparatus for firing the torpedoes, the addition of an auxiliary steering gear, the safety of each of the men, the courses to be steered, and the location of the ship where she was to be sent to the bottom. There was no time for him that day to devote to painting British landscapes; to write notes for his 2-volume History of Spain; to record his fears that the nation’s coal supply was near exhaustion; or to protest against the growing tendency to give a new spelling to the Island of Puerto Rico. No time even to bother with his usual concern for the private troubles of any man on the ship. Captain Chadwick was the busiest officer I have ever known.
During the afternoon a signal was made to the fleet asking for volunteers to go with the Merrimac. But the six picked enlisted men had already been decided on by Chadwick and Hobson. I say this because our chief master-at-arms, D. Montague, had been on our half deck familiarizing himself with the detonating arrangements for the torpedoes, and “Frenchy” Charette had the auxiliary steering apparatus explained to him before the call for volunteers from the fleet was made. There were three men from the crew of the Merrimac—F. Kelly, Water Tender, G. F. Phillips, Machinist’s Mate, first class, and Oscar Deignan, Coxswain. Another man was J. E. Murphy, Coxswain, of the Iowa, with whom I had been shipmates on that ship, and who was personally known to the Admiral. There was a seventh man, R. Clausen, Coxswain of the New York, but an unauthorized one. He stowed away on the Merrimac before she sailed for the harbor.
In the first dog watch the lists of volunteers began to come in and were given in my charge. I remember that nearly every ship supplied a list of some kind—they came by boat, by wigwag, or other means. A few were typewritten and were as ponderous as a quarterly muster roll of officers and ratings. All were volunteers to go into a strange harbor on a death ship, into the mouth of hell where, if not blown up by the enemy mines, they were to pull the lanyards and blow themselves to Fiddlers’ Green. When I reported at six o’clock how many men had volunteered—more than a thousand—the Admiral remarked, in his whimsical way: “Chadwick, next time we want people for this kind of a job, just ask for the names of those who do not want to go.”
There was the usual after-dinner hush about our decks that evening, the guns’ crews bedding down on their hammocks on deck or on calking mats in the sponsons or on hatches. For hours the collier had rubbed her dirty shell against the clean skin of the flagship, thumping, whining, and creaking against and squeezing the stuffing out of puddings and mats, causing agonized swear words from petty officers. There was now more water between us, but a steady passing to and fro in boats continued. Down in the collier’s hold was heard the hammering of unfinished work. From our own lower decks came the tinkle of fo’c’sl music, and some of the wardroom boys were singing. Scout ships and dispatch boats came and went in their mysterious and darkened ways, while blinking lights at the trucks vied with the southern stars to add to the charm of a cathedral-like atmosphere.
About five bells of the midwatch the Admiral went on board the Merrimac and bade good-bye to Hobson and his men and wished them luck. He made a last-minute inspection. I took what I thought would be my last look at the volunteers. I knew them all except the Merrimac men. Our Montague was a tall, well-built, clean-looking fellow, with the dignity and appearance of an officer who could be trusted with any kind of duty. Charette was a gunner’s mate whose Christian name I had never heard, and who no doubt was selected because of his popularity. Deignan of the collier was a tall farmer boy from the state of Iowa, a good-looking man with rosy cheeks. Murphy, like Charette, was well known for his pranks on shore and afloat. Clausen was simply one of the Navy’s irrepressibles who had to be into everything. Altogether a presentable and a promising crew for a desperate venture.
I turned in, feeling sure that the gunfire from the shore batteries would rouse me when the entering ship was detected before dawn. I could not sleep because my thoughts were fixed on my good shipmates. If they succeeded in bottling up the enemy ships, as Sampson so earnestly hoped they would, the fear of a Spanish raid on our Atlantic coast would be allayed for a time, at least long enough to permit the embarkation of troops for Cuba. The war would be over in a short time. In the night I was called into the cabin by the orderly, and Chadwick dictated a letter in connection with an order for battle for the next day. It was about 3:30 a.m. then. The Admiral had just come on board from the Merrimac; his raincoat and sou’wester were on the cabin deck. The dictation finished I went forward. It was very cloudy, the moon was gone, and there was a faint breeze. The dark shape of the Merrimac moved gently between us and the shore. There was activity on her deck and about the hatches. A winch was working, and water was spouting from her bilges. She stood curiously high in the water. A thin plume of steam cut the darkness and showed the after mast and booms. I slipped into the port sponson out of the rain and stood there alongside an officer, partly dressed, who was staring intently at the collier. 11 was her former commanding officer, Captain Miller. He was to go north in one of the scout cruisers. I felt sorry for the Captain—losing a command just when the name of that ship was about to be glorified in one of the bravest sea adventures of history.
We remained there until the Merrimac shoved off shortly after, but she had not gone far into the darkness when she was recalled. Weather conditions, tide, the moon, all had been propitious, but something in the plans had gone wrong, and reluctantly the Admiral decided to postpone the sailing for one day.
Minor acts in preparation were continued throughout the second of June, and at 3:30 a.m. of the following day the collier disappeared into the darkness before dawn, followed silently by one of our steam launches under command of Cadet Joseph W. Powell, who daringly closed in with her to the outer harbor, in hope of picking up some of the collier’s crew. She came back without a survivor.
How the American ship was detected quickly by the alert Spaniards, who met her with all they had in the way of guns, old and new, with quick firers and rifles, with torpedoes and mines, is history now. But little has been said of the depressed spirits of the personnel of the American fleet. Soon after daylight we passed across the harbor entrance where we could see the masts of the sunken and destroyed Merrimac well up in the channel. We felt we were looking at a tombstone.
About two o’clock that afternoon the Spanish tug Colon, flying a white flag, came out from under the guns of the Morro, and our converted yacht Vixen intercepted her and brought a group of Spanish officers alongside the flagship. One of the visitors was Captain Joaquin Bustamente, Rear Admiral Cervera’s Chief of Staff. They were escorted into our port cabin, where Captain Chadwick treated them graciously and acted as interpreter, though one or two could speak English well. The principal news for us was that the crew of the Menimac had been saved, had been received on board the Reina Mercedes by Rear Admiral Cervera himself, and were now confined in the Morro as prisoners of war. This information, published from the flagship by signal, was received with rejoicing throughout the fleet, and many a heart responded with a prayer of gratitude.
The party in our cabin was served with refreshments, and the friendly nature of the intercourse gave no hint that war existed between two governments. It was one of Bustamente’s subordinates who spoke to Chadwick, in Spanish, saying how happy he felt to meet two of the members of a board of inquiry into the loss of the Maine who had been so fair and tolerant in their finding. When they left the ship we, who had been close to them, wondered why any differences could not be settled in a friendly manner then and there.
In his anxiety for the comfort of Hobson and his men the Admiral offered some gold pieces to Bustamente, with which to purchase tobacco and necessities. I remember that soap and towels, postage and writing materials, were mentioned. Bustamente wrote out a receipt for $25, which the Admiral turned over to me with many other papers for disposition after we returned to New York. I am glad I did not destroy that paper, because it shows a most unique feeling between individuals of warring powers. It may have been Captain Bustamente’s last official signature, as he was fatally wounded in the trenches that night.
I have tried to record here such points of a historical event as have not appeared in print. I wanted to give intimate facts of personalities because, burn me, I think there were great men, fore’n aft, among those officers and men 42 years ago.