Sixty of us awed, green kid bluejackets from inland Chicago lined up on the wharf at Key West May 24, 1898, wearing the Navy’s wide, flat, blue pancake hats with jack-knives dangling from halyard strings around our necks under broad uniform collars.
“So you’re the Illinois Naval Preserves for the Oregon?" was our greeting from a master of arms. “Well, get aboard of her and turn to and coal ship!”
Moored before us was the nation’s idol, the battleship Oregon, just arrived from her record-setting run through the Straits of Magellan from the new Puget Sound Navy Yard at Bremerton to join Admiral William T. Sampson’s American fleet operating against the Spanish off Cuba.
To us landlubber kids the Oregon was massive and grim, with Old Glory whipping from her lone military mast. She was & 10,000-ton giant man-of-war and cost $6,000,000! And the sight of her brought the Spanish-American War close home to us youngsters, who had heard the war cry sweeping the nation: “Remember the Maine," after the Spanish sank our cruiser at Havana.
Our nation throbbed with patriotic enthusiasm. People clamored to whip the Spanish. Congress voted $50,000,000 for national defense. President William McKinley called for 200,000 volunteers, prorated among the states, and more than '00,000 responded.
We thrilled to the news that Commodore George Dewey took his Asiatic squadron into Manila Bay under the guns of Cavite and Corregidor and destroyed Admiral Montojo’s Spanish fleet. A new national slogan was Dewey’s order to the captain of his flagship, the Olympia: “You may fire when ready, Gridley!”
Our Illinois Naval Reserve was inducted into the Navy and ordered to Florida. Relatives, friends, and a band bade us farewell at the depot and our home state of Illinois proudly paid for our special train. We didn’t eat on the train but were served delicious meals by pretty girls in cities where we stopped en route.
At Key West the Oregon waited for men to swell her crew to war strength and we were the men. Her skipper, Captain Charles E. Clark, was anxious to be away to seek the enemy, Admiral Don Pasquale Cervera’s main Spanish fleet of four cruisers and two torpedo boat destroyers. The foe was believed in Cuban waters, but there were rumors the ships had been seen off our Atlantic seaboard and, fearful, the Navy Department ordered ancient Civil War monitors made ready to defend New York and Boston.
We rushed coaling, getting ourselves and the ship black as we shoveled the fuel into bunker hatches as it came aboard in a clamshell boom from a collier alongside, and at midnight, May 26, we stood to sea to join Admiral Sampson off Havana. The Admiral had taken his flagship, the cruiser New York, and a force to Puerto Rico to bombard that harbor in the belief Cervera was there. The attack was futile because the Spanish were elsewhere.
Commodore Winfield Scott Schley and his “Flying Squadron” had gone to Cienfuegos, on Cuba’s south coast, vainly hunting the enemy and then steamed east to blockade Santiago de Cuba, thinking the Spanish were hiding in the landlocked harbor there.
That Spanish fleet was a will-o’-the-wisp. British merchantmen officers swore the enemy was at Cienfuegos, and friendly Cuban pilots declared a warship the size of the Spanish flagship, the Infanta Maria Teresa, couldn’t possibly navigate the narrow entrance to Santiago Harbor without tugs at bow and stern and then only on a high tide.
The Oregon joined the New York off Havana and we sailed together to Santiago, keeping out of sight of the Cuban shore so the Spanish wouldn’t learn our own whereabouts. In Windward Passage we met the auxiliary cruiser St. Paul, commanded by Captain Charles I). Sigsbee, master of the Maine and the last man to leave her alive.
Captain Sigsbee bore dispatches from Commodore Schley that the Spanish ships were definitely located in Santiago Harbor. “I have seen the enemy with my own eyes,” the Commodore wrote Admiral Sampson, and related how, while he was aboard the Marblehead, she crept at dawn to the harbor mouth and he made out, through the haze, the mast of the “Cristobol Col6n,” one of Cervera’s cruisers. Schley knew the Colon from the peculiar location of her mast between the two funnels.
We reached Santiago June 1 and found Schley and his flagship, the cruiser Brooklyn, with its caved-in sides, the battleships Texas, Iowa and Massachusetts, the cruiser New Orleans, which our government had just bought from Brazil, and a fleet of smaller vessels. The American ships lay off the Santiago Harbor gate like cats around a rat hole, the larger ships forming a half-moon blockade line 15 miles long, with the smaller craft in closer. Orders were to keep our prows pointed at the harbor to pounce on the Spanish if they should venture out.
There was no rest for the Oregon. The day after we arrived we saw the smoke of a strange vessel on the horizon and the Admiral ordered our ship, with its wonderful steaming record, to give chase. We went at top speed three hours, only to find the stranger was the Associated Press boat Wanda heading for Mole St. Nicholas, Haiti, to file dispatches. The press boat’s skipper gave us a bunch of ripe bananas for our trouble!
On blockade we fell into routine. Signal flags by day and blinker lights by night kept the ships in communication with each other and dispatch boats carried mail, newspapers, and gossip. The Oregon was dubbed the Irish battleship “O’Regan” because there were seven Murphys and three Kellys aboard. One of the Murphys was my cousin Stanislaus who later wrote that popular song “Put on Your Old Gray Bonnet.”
Word came down the line one day that Lieutenant Richmond Pearson Hobson, 28- year-old Alabamian on the New York, erstwhile teacher at Annapolis, had volunteered to sink our collier Merrimac across the narrow mouth of Santiago Harbor to padlock the Spanish inside. This truly was a perilous venture, for the guns of Santiago’s Morro Castle hung over the channel and enemy gunboats reconnoitered there nightly.
Hobson wanted a crew of six volunteers. The signal flags went up on the New York calling for men for a “desperate and perhaps fatal expedition.” We thrilled to the call. Men actually begged to go. Captain “Fighting Bob” Evans of the Iowa signaled: “Every man aboard volunteers.” Captain Philip of the Texas wig-wagged: “We can give you 200 men.” On the Oregon all of us stepped forward.
First it was planned to take one man from each major vessel, but then the boys on the Merrimac declared they should be allowed to man their craft on its suicide voyage. Finally Hobson chose three from the collier and three from the New York. Another stowed away.
The Merrimac was stripped of everything movable and ten torpedoes were strapped to her port side beneath the water line. Anchors were lashed with rope so the slash of an axe would free them, and her small boat was loaded with rifles and life buoys.
On a midnight flood tide, under a tropical moon, the Merrimac slid away on her mission like a black ghost. Hobson and his men wore only underclothing with revolvers and ammunition in watertight kits around their waists. Every eye on the fleet followed the collier as far as possible and at about two o’clock our officers with night glasses saw her enter the channel.
Then hell broke loose! A roving Spanish gunboat spotted the Merrimac and opened fire. The enemy shore guns let go! Hobson couldn’t shoot back. Firing continued for half an hour and then we heard a terrific explosion.
Nobody knew what happened, but we felt our brave crew couldn’t survive. Daylight brought no sign of the men or their ship. Sadness hung over our fleet. Maybe we’d watched brave men go to die for their country.
Most of that next day we wondered about their fate silently but at four o’clock came a ripple of excitement when a Spanish launch, flying a while flag, came out to the New York and an enemy officer went aboard. We knew now the Merrimac crew were dead because we thought we could see long coffin-like boxes on the deck of the launch. All eyes looked to the New York for word. We saw the Spaniard leave and then we saw a string of flags spell out the glorious news that neither Hobson nor any of his men was killed or wounded! And chivalrous old Admiral Cervera was so impressed by the bravery of the Americans he sent his chief of staff out to tell his foemen their countrymen were safe and were his honored prisoners of war.
Details came later. The Spanish gunboat crippled the Merrimac's rudder so Hobson couldn’t steer, but he did get the bow anchor flown and set off the torpedoes. His small boat was wrecked by gunfire so the crew climbed on a raft which floated as the vessel went down. At daybreak the Spanish found the Americans drifting helplessly.
After the war, Lieutenant Hobson, a national hero, came to Chicago to make a speech and our Naval Reserve unit proudly served as his guard of honor. Chicago women forced their way to kiss him. It wasn’t Hobson who started the kissing bee which added to his fame. It was the women. But the lieutenant said the first kiss he received for his Merrimac adventure was planted on his forehead by Admiral Cervera.
Just recently the newspapers said one of the Merrimac crew tried to enlist in the Navy to fight the Japs. He was Randolph Clausen, the stowaway. His plea to join was turned down, but the 72-year-old boy took it gamely. “Guess my youth is only in my heart,” he said.
Through June we stood on blockade in those hot tropics. Our two propellers thumped the water monotonously. Nightly we played searchlights on the harbor entrance and, strangely, the Spanish never fired at those lights. We even coaled in range of the shore guns.
Our “mystery ship,” the Vesuvius, nightly hurled 200-pound nitroglycerin shells at Santiago. These shells were fired by compressed air through three stationary mortars strapped to the forward deck and could be aimed only in the direction the ship was pointing. The operations of the Vesuvius were a secret experiment and by day she hid behind the larger American ships to keep out of sight of the Spanish. Her guns had the strange sound of a giant’s cough, but she would have gone up in one big cough herself had an enemy shell hit her magazines with their nitroglycerin shells containing 25 times the explosive power of gunpowder.
William Randolph Hearst was at the blockade to get news for his San Francisco and New York newspapers. He was aboard a chartered fruit steamer and brought a printing plant to turn out the “Siboney American” for our soldiers and sailors there.
Recently Mr. Hearst related that his steamer picked Spanish soldiers off a beach, made them prisoners, and went alongside the Oregon to deliver them to Captain Clark. Our skipper stepped to the rail and this conversation took place:
Mr. Hearst: “We have Spanish prisoners of war to turn over to you.”
Captain Clark: “You captured ’em; you keep ’em!”
Mr. Hearst: “But think of the glory!”
Captain Clark: “But think of the yellow fever!”
As June wore on, we increased our fire against the Spanish forts and sent a few big ones over the hills toward Santiago. One was lucky and set Admiral Cervera’s cabin afire. We shelled Spanish blockhouses at Siboney and Daquiri to protect the landing of our troops and we threw a barrage at San Juan Hill to help Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, but they weren’t Rough Riders then, as they’d left their horses in Florida.
Day after day Spain’s red and gold flag flew from Morro’s flagstaff as if to defy our presence and one morning Captain Clark told our 8-inch-gun crew to make a try for it. Our aim was excellent. The first shot hit the base of the wall and the second carried the mail to strike just beneath the flagpole. Masonry shot skyward and the corner crumpled, Spanish flag and all. Our entire fleet gave us a big cheer!
Nightly signal fires burned on the hills and lights blinked in Morro Castle but we paid no attention to them. But on the night of July 2 there were more fires than usual and smoke poured up as if from the Spanish ships inside. Our vessels were ordered to stand in closer that night, but nobody expected the enemy out.
We knew, however, Santiago was being starved, with supplies cut off from sea by our blockade and from land by the American and Cuban armies. President McKinley had sent Lieutenant Andrew S. Rowan into the jungles to deliver his promise of help to the Cuban leader, General Garcia, and our General W. R. Shafter was leading the campaign. Mr. Hearst recalls General Joe Wheeler, one of the American commanders in Cuba, formerly was a famous Confederate officer and so forgot himself in the Battle of Kettle Hill against the Spanish that he yelled to his troops: “Give those damn Yankees hell!”
Among the ships of war, our Oregon was the only vessel with full steam up and that was because of the wisdom and perhaps intuition of our chief engineer, R. W. Milligan, who kept his fires going constantly. Other chiefs could let their fires go down, but not Milligan. And neither did he follow the custom of pumping salt water into the boilers. Our boilers got fresh water. The chief believed the Oregon was built for one battle and he wanted her ready.
Below, on the chief’s staff, were two young Navy men destined to rise far. One was an' assistant engineer, Joe Reeves, now Admiral Joseph M. Reeves, member of the board President Roosevelt sent to investigate Pearl Harbor, and the other was Naval Cadet Bill Leahy, now Admiral William D. Leahy, our President’s Chief of Staff.
On that Sunday morning of the day before the Fourth of July our crew was lined up for routine inspection. My gang was on the starboard forward deck, dressed in our “Sunday” clothes, but barefoot. On the bridge a bosun’s mate was idly looking at the shore through his glass. The big ship rolled lazily in the trade wind sea. Our flagship, the New York, had just left for Siboney.
Suddenly a yell came from the mate above: “The Spanish ships are coming out!”
Captain Clark hurried to the bridge. The Oregon fired a 6-inch gun to warn the rest of the fleet. The blockade was over!
The Brooklyn signaled: “They’re all out and going to the west!”
Inspection ended then and there. Bugles sounded general quarters! Gongs clanged men to their posts! There was great scurrying of the 450 aboard but it was all orderly, for we’d been trained to battle duty. Except that in the excitement two of my buddies forgot a job assigned the three of us and I had to drag a 300-pound leak stopper alone to the gun deck. But in the spirit of that morning, I could have lifted anything!
I was fortunate to be stationed topside and I witnessed that morning a naval demonstration with all the pageantry and glory of the Spanish Armada. I saw those enemy ships sail to their doom dressed in the glittering red and gold of their faraway motherland. One by one those men-of-war swept out of the harbor. The sun hit on the figurehead of the flagship, the Maria Teresa, from whose truck flew the broad pennant of Admiral Cervera. Next came the two-stacker Vizcaya and the banner she flew was woven by the ladies of the Spanish province whose name she bore. Behind, in line, was the Cristobal Colon and the Almirante Oquendo, followed by the torpedo-boat destroyers Pluton and Furor. Their black hulls gleamed. Smoke belched from their cannon and their stacks. Their flags fluttered in the sun. The fleet was on parade.
It was the battle plan of the Americans to pick off each Spanish ship as she cleared the harbor, but the enemy was too fast for us. The Maria was leading her deadly brood westward and the Brooklyn was the only American vessel in their path, for the Texas, Oregon, Iowa and Indiana were on the east end of the blockade line.
In the absence of the New York, the Brooklyn was our flagship. She signaled: “Follow the flag. Close up.” But even before Commodore Schley sent that message, Captain Clark saw the Brooklyn’s dangerous plight and had the Oregon on her way to help. We left the Indiana standing still. We scudded under the stern of the slow Iowa and almost hit the bow of the Texas, cutting off her fire. That Oregon had a big white bone in her teeth. Water came over her low freeboard and sloshed against the forward turret.
It was my battle job to stand outside the opening of the 8-inch-gun turret, turn on the water valve and hand the hose in to the gunners to shove up the breech to cool the guns. In addition, I became a human range finder, for our range finders in the conning tower were put out of commission by the concussion and every once in a while our Lieutenant Overstreet would stick his smoke-begrimed head out of the turret door to yell: “Murphy, climb to the top of the turret to see how our shells are falling.”
Up the iron ladder I’d go to stick my head over the turret to see a sight just like pictures of naval battles in history books. Every ship on both sides was firing. The sea was covered with dense rolls of black smoke from the guns and funnels. Blinding flashes cut the murk.
I saw the Brooklyn gamely cutting in to head off her larger foe. The Vizcaya was heading to ram our flagship, but we stopped her when our 13-inch guns got the range and raked her superstructure.
Racing westward the Oregon took on every Spanish ship in order. One shell hit the boilers of the Furor and blew that vessel to smithereens. It was a hard, running battle. The Texas and the Brooklyn and the Oregon poured tons of shells into the Spaniards. We fought bow and quarter.
At about ten o’clock the Teresa was so riddled she burst into flames and ran for the beach. Then the Oquendo started burning and she, too, ran.
Two gone! Inshore our auxiliary cruiser Gloucester engaged the Pluton. That Gloucester was a tartar! Outgunned, she sent her adversary to the beach before the Spaniard could sneak eastward to harass our transports at Siboney. The Gloucester’s captain was named Wainwright and likely he’s of the same fighting breed as our General Jonathan Wainwright, the heroic battler of Bataan.
Ahead of us the Vizcaya and the Colon raced westward. The Oregon and the Brooklyn caught up with the former and broadsides hurled in both directions. Not one hit the Oregon but the Brooklyn took punishment.
Our 15-year-old apprentice boys held their hands over their heads and yelled “High Ball” as the singing shells flew above them. Noise! I wonder my eardrums didn’t split! But we didn’t stop to think about the racket or the ship’s vibration and we had no feeling of fear.
Our job now in that battle was to wipe out the Vizcaya and get the C0I611. We had it in for the Vizcaya, for she visited New York, after the loss of the Maine and cockily pointed her cannon toward the city’s skyscrapers as if to say she could raze the metropolis if she chose. Spain bragged this vessel had more speed, cannon, and twice the armor of our cruisers, and even our own New York newspapers admitted she was superior to an American ship in her class.
We wanted the Vizcaya and we got her! I saw a 6-inch shell from our gun deck rake her from stern to stem, hurling men’s bodies over the side. Our guns vomited destruction. Her bridge collapsed. At eleven o’clock she ran ashore.
In 90 minutes our fleet had destroyed five enemy men-of-war, but we didn’t even pause to cheer, for ahead of us flew the Colon, the fastest ship in the Spanish Navy. Far astern we could see American vessels at rescue work. Admiral Cervera and his lieutenant son were picked up floating in the water. A press boat threw a wicker chair overboard for Spanish sailors to carry ashore the wounded Vice Admiral Villamel, head of the Spanish torpedo-boat flotilla. The Admiral died on the beach and later I traded my knife for his yellow socks and his cap with a tortoise-shell peak.
Now the Brooklyn and the Oregon left the Texas behind in the pursuit of the Col6n. We were in for a race. And thanks to our chief engineer, we had good coal. Coming from the Pacific, the Oregon got some bad coal, but at Rio Janeiro the chief recognized the fuel taken aboard as high-grade Welsh coal and he stowed this away in a separate battle compartment, padlocked the door and kept the keys in his pocket.
Out came this hard Welsh coal for our long stern chase. For the moment, the shooting was over. Victory depended on the black gang below. The fireroom temperature went to 130 degrees, 140, and hit 150! Firemen dripping with black sweat were carried topside for air but fought to get back below. Captain Clark ordered beer from the refrigerators in the officers’ quarters sent to the men below. Our two stacks were pillars of red fire.
The Oregon was dubbed the bulldog of the fleet and now she was the greyhound as well. On the books our top speed was rated at IS knots but we were doing better than 16 and overtaking the flying Spaniard, who was believed able to do 20 knots. Water boiled over our jack staff. Never before had this battle wagon gone so fast, even though her hull was fouled with the growth of two oceans.
All eyes topside were glued on our quarry. Captain Clark ordered out the ship’s band and sent word for all hands possible to come up from below. Immediately every casemate and turret top was a mass of black, sweaty, cheering tars. And as the ship groaned from speed and the drafts roared, the band played “Darling Nellie Gray” and “There’ll be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.”
Off to port, Commodore Schley was wisecracking from the Brooklyn, signaling, “That ship ahead looks like an Italian.” The Commodore was correct, for Spain bought the “Colon" from Italy. Then Schley signaled, “Remember the Maine!” We replied: “We have!”
Slowly we were catching up. Ten miles, twenty miles, thirty miles! Our wake was white water for a mile behind. At 12:20 we were 8,500 yards from the enemy and we let go a “railroad train”—a 13-inch shell— which fell just short. At 12:25 we sent another, which threw tons of water onto the enemy. Then the Brooklyn opened with her 8-inch guns.
The Col6n was cornered! She put up no last fight. At 1:15, at the end of a 60-mile run, her flag crumpled to the deck and she went onto the beach, firing her leeward guns shoreward. Commodore Schley asked why they were fired and when told it was a sign of surrender, commented, “It’s a good thing we didn’t lose, for I wouldn’t have known how to surrender.”
We won! Red, blue, and yellow flags went upon the Brooklyn to spell: “The enemy has surrendered!” To the truck of the Oregon went a broom to signal a clean sweep. Schley sent a message to us: “Well done, Oregon! But for you we might not be here,”
Launches carried the Colon’s crew to the American steamer Resolute and as they passed the Oregon the Spaniards yelled “Bravo Americanos! Bravo Blanco Diablo!” which meant “Brave Americans” and “Brave White Devil,” which was us, for saltpeter in the gunpowder had turned our ship’s grim war gray to splotchy white.
All in all, we put on 300 Fourth of July celebrations, all wrapped into one, but a day too soon. Our new Navy swept from the seas Castile’s once mighty fleet. The end of Spain’s 400 years of colorful maritime dominance in the Western Hemisphere was going up in the smoke from those blazing hulks on Cuba’s far southern beaches.
Victory was sweet but we know now we witnessed a brave gesture by a decrepit war fleet of a decadent nation. Not all those Spanish ships were ready to fight. The Colon didn’t have her gun batteries aboard and her captain said perhaps they were in the pocket of the Minister of Marine at Madrid. Food, fuel, and morale were low and brandy was given the men to key them to battle pitch. Officers brandished revolvers to force gunners to their stations.
Only one American was killed, a yeoman on the Brooklyn. He was standing alongside Commodore Schley when an unexploded Spanish shell cut off his head. Blood and flesh splattered on Schley’s clothes.
Today as I look back in mellowing memory I become more convinced the Oregon single-handed wrecked that whole Spanish fleet. She was the greatest fighting machine afloat in her day. But for her, Spain might have won the war and the course of American history changed. To me, there’ll never be another ironclad like her. The Navy never has and, I pray, never will, name another ship the Oregon.
For years she was a national shrine, dozing on the calm Willamette at Portland, likely yearning down deep in her ancient heart of steel for the far white waters and the distant wars.
I know she wanted to steam to battle once more, with Old Glory at her masthead. She tried to enlist, in this Global War, when the state of Oregon offered her for active patrol duty. I tried to enlist, too, even if I am 65, but they found the both of us too old; my ship and me. As they told Randy Clausen of the Merrimac, our youth was only in our hearts. With me, too, would have gone, I’m sure, all my old Illinois Naval Reserve shipmates of the Captain Charles E. Clark Association. There are only a dozen of us left from the original sixty.
Now the Oregon’s wish for action has been answered, in a way, for they’ve broken her up for the steel, and nothing of the old ship remains but her military mast, set in concrete on the river bank at Portland.
I know she’ll be just as effective against the Japs and the Huns, in little pieces, as she was against the Spaniards in a glorious one big piece at Santiago nearly half a century ago.