Capture of Guantanamo Bay
10 JUNE 1898
CAPTURE OF GUANTANAMO BAY
Much of the Spanish-American War was fought in Cuba, where American intervention hoped to end oppression of local Cubans by their Spanish overlords. Spain answered with a squadron of four cruisers and three destroyers from the Cape Verde Islands on 29 April. These feared warships, under the command of ADM Pascual Cervera y Topete, deeply troubled American planners who were doubly concerned at not knowing Cervera’s intended target. Would they reinforce Havana, or attack the US marshalling base in Key West, Florida, or worse, bombard our Atlantic seaboard? RADM William T. Sampson was dispatched with a strong flotilla of modern American battleships and cruisers to Cuban waters. His scouts finally located Cervera’s ships in the protected harbor at Santiago de Cuba, on the southeastern shore of the island. Visual inspection of this harbor was blocked by hills at its mouth, but by this date Sampson had positioned his battleships outside the harbor entrance and had blocked the main exit channel with the scuttled collier USS MERRIMAC. But Sampson’s ships, powerful as they were, burned coal. The nearest coaling station was off the tip of Florida at Fort Jefferson, a two-day round trip. Consequently, Sampson looked to establish a coaling station 40 miles to the east of Santiago de Cuba at a harbor called Guantanamo Bay.
The 1st Marine Battalion, then training in Key West, was ordered to take Guantanamo Bay. On June 7th, CDR Bowman H. MaCalla in the cruiser MARBLEHEAD (C-11) and the auxiliary cruisers YANKEE and ST. LOUIS entered Guantanamo Bay. Two days of maneuvers and gunfire from the battleship OREGON (BB-3) routed Spanish defenders from a blockhouse on a hill at Fisherman’s Point, silenced a battery at Caimanera, and chased the gunboat SANDOVAL into the upper harbor. The 633 men and 21 officers of the 1st Battalion–“Huntington’s Battalion” after their commander, USMC LCOL Robert W. Huntington–landed this day at Fisherman’s Point from the transport PANTHER. They were the first American forces ashore in Cuba, establishing Camp McCalla near the deserted Spanish blockhouse. PVTs William Dumphy and James McColgan became the first US ground casualties of the war while standing picket duty.
But over their first three evenings ashore, Huntington’s Marines came under vicious counterattack by a growing number of Spanish. The battalion medical officer, Assistant Surgeon John Blair Gibbs, was struck in the head and killed on the 11th. To protect his supply lines and reduce exposure to such attacks, Huntington moved his Marines closer to the beach. Huntington then learned from a Cuban guerrilla that the Spanish force numbering about 500 was garrisoned two miles distant in a plantation house near their only source of drinking water, a well at Cuzco beach. If that well could be destroyed, the Spanish would be forced to evacuate.
Continued 14 June…
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ADDITIONAL NOTES: Today the area of Fisherman’s Point and MaCalla Hill is the site of the leeward ferry landing of Naval Station Guantanamo Bay.
