25 SEPTEMBER 1899

                                     THE CAPTURE OF URDANETA

The autumn of 1898 saw the end of the Spanish-American war and the ceding of the Philippine Islands from Spain to the United States.  Militant Filipinos who had been struggling against Spanish colonial rule shifted their animosities toward their new stewards.  For the next four years the US countered this insurgent uprising–the Navy’s roles including patrolling inshore waters, providing gunfire support, and landing Marines at coastal and riverine jump-off’s.  It was during one such patrol that the 70-foot gunboat USS URDANETA ran aground in the Orani River on 17 September 1899.  Naval Cadet Welborn C. Wood and his eight-man crew worked for days at freeing their boat but had their efforts interrupted on the 25^th.  Insurgents discovered the stranded URDANETA and opened fire from the densely jungled riverbank.  Wood’s men sprang to action but found defense against an unseen enemy difficult.  Wood and half his crew were killed in the fire fight.  The survivors escaped overboard but were quickly captured.  URDANETA fell to the enemy, the only naval vessel to be captured during this “Philippine Insurrection,” as it was known in America.

Elsewhere, US Marines and Army soldiers found the land campaign an unwelcome departure from our past wartime experiences.  The outmatched enemy abandoned conventional tactics in favor of guerrilla warfare.  Enemy troops blended imperceptibly into the local populace.  Marine patrols might enter a rural village to the welcoming greetings of peasants working their rice paddies–only to be ambushed further down the road by these same peasant-insurgents.  Jungle patrols encountered booby traps with spring-loaded spears or poison-tipped arrows.  More than a few Marines fell victim to pungy pits lined with sharpened bamboo spears.  Random acts of terrorism became frequent.  On one Sunday morning, an American sentry playing solitaire was approached by an innocent looking street vendor selling eggs.  Before the sentry could look up however, he was decapitated by a machete the vendor had secreted under his produce.  Reports surfaced of American captives whose bodies were found hideously mutilated.  One corpse was discovered near an anthill, buried to the neck and covered in sugar.

Employing tactics we would face again in the 1960s Vietnam war–tactics that would later be formalized by Mao Tse Tung–Philippine nationalist leader Emilio Aguinaldo waged a campaign designed to dishearten the American public.  He hoped (in vain) for a Democratic victory in the 1900 American presidential election, judging candidate William Jennings Bryan to be more supportive of Philippine independence.  But unlike Vietnam, the Philippine Insurrection failed to outlast American public support.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  29 SEP 25

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 7 “T-V”.  GPO, Washington, DC, p. 421, 1981.

Karnow, Stanley.  In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines.  Ballantine Books, New York, NY, pp. 177-87, 1989.

Sweetman, Jack.  American Naval History:  An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-Present, 3^rd ed.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 2002, pp. 101-02.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  URDANETA had been captured from the Spanish Navy during our 1898 war.  She was named by the Spanish in honor of Andres de Urdaneta (1498-1568), a friar and explorer credited with the second circumnavigation of the globe (after Magellan).  “Urdaneta’s route” across the Pacific from Luzon to Central America was used by Spain’s Manila galleons.  Urdaneta City in the Pangasinan Province of Luzon, near the Lingayen Gulf, also remembers the friar.  URDANETA was recaptured in 1900 and served off and on in survey work, patrols, and as a yard tug until 1916.  Her ultimate fate after 1916 is unknown.

          Cadet Wood is remembered with the WWII veteran Clemson-class destroyer USS WELBORN C. WOOD (DD-195). WOOD was later transferred to the US Coast Guard and ultimately to Britian, with whom she served as HMS CHESTERFIELD.

The post The Capture of URDANETA appeared first on Today in Naval History.

                       FORT JEFFERSON–GIBRALTAR OF THE GULF

Sixty-eight miles west of Key West, Florida, lies a cluster of small islands named for the turtles early sailors harvested there.  The Dry Tortugas were notable in the 19^th century because they lay athwart the main passage for ships rounding Florida into the Gulf of Mexico.  With our purchase of Florida from Spain in 1821, the strategic location of these islands attracted the eye of US Army coastal defense planners.  By 1846, the Corps of Engineers had begun construction of a massive hexagonal fortification on Garden Key.  This “Gibraltar of the Gulf” was to have walls 45 feet high housing three decks of guns.  The enclosed grounds would have supported a thousand-man garrison.  The walls of Fort Jefferson, as it was named, were completed in 1862, and by virtue of its remoteness, the fort remained in Union hands throughout the Civil War.  Its guns were never fired in anger, in fact the largely forgotten fort is best known today for having served as a federal prison.  The still unfinished construction was halted in 1875, and for 20 years the military abandoned Fort Jefferson to use as a quarantine station.

But as hostilities with Spain loomed in 1898, renewed interest stirred in Fort Jefferson.  Indeed, it was the only installation between Norfolk and Texas with a natural channel deep enough to accommodate the battleships of the day.  Our Navy began further dredging in the spring of 1898, and construction commenced on two large coaling docks.  The fort serviced deep draft battleships throughout the Spanish-American War as an auxiliary to the Key West Naval Station.  Modern charts bear remembrances of this era of Naval occupation.  “Iowa Rock” and “Texas Rock” mark spots where at least two turn-of-the-century battleships ran afoul.

So successful was the coaling operation at Fort Jefferson, that the Navy purchased the installation outright in 1900.  For the next eight years the Fort was garrisoned by a small contingent of US Marines, for whom the remote posting must have seemed as much a punishment.  In 1908 however, the coaling operations and an unfinished seawater distillation plant were removed to Guantanamo Bay.  Navy interest revived briefly in WWI and again in WWII, when Fort Jefferson was occupied as a base for seaplanes conducting anti-U-boat patrols.

On 4 January 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt set aside the Dry Tortugas and Fort Jefferson as a National Park Service installation, by whose hands the property is now administered.  Fort Jefferson is one of our most remote and least visited National Park sites; access can only be gained via boat service out of Key West.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  20 MAY 24

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Bethel, Rodman.  A Slumbering Giant of the Past:  Fort Jefferson, U.S.A. in the Dry Tortugas.  Hialeah, FL: W.L. Litho, 1979.

Site visit, Fort Jefferson and Dry Tortugas National Par, August 1995.

USS Tortuga (LSD-46) website.  www.spear.navy.mil/ships/lsd46/ seal.htm, retrieved 22 June 1999.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Fort Jefferson is best known for having served as a federal prison, both during the Civil War for Confederate POWs and in the post-Civil War period.  Its most famous inmate by far was Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, the physician convicted as a co-conspirator with John Wilkes Booth in the Lincoln assassination after it was discovered that Mudd had set Booth’s broken fibula the morning following the Ford’s Theatre shooting.  Controversy persists today as to whether Mudd actually conspired or was simply a country doctor awakened by an unknown patient at his door.  Regardless, Mudd was pardoned in 1869 by President Andrew Johnson after Mudd worked tirelessly to minister to fellow prisoners during a yellow fever outbreak in 1867.

Today the remains of Navy occupation are still visible.  The pilings for the north and south coal docks remain, as does the concrete flooring for the eight large coal storage bunkers.

The ship’s seal of our modern Whidbey Island-class amphibious assault ship TORTUGA (LSD-46) bears a configuration representing  Fort Jefferson, as well as two Parrott rifles, representing the Civil War-era guns of this fort.

The Dry Tortugas were named by Juan Ponce de Leon when he stopped there in 1513 to harvest 160 turtles for food.  They are “dry” because they lack surface fresh water.

The post Fort Jefferson–Gibraltar of the Gulf appeared first on Today in Naval History.

                   SAMPSON-SCHLEY CONTROVERSY

The naval battle of Santiago on 3 July 1898 had been a pivotal victory in the Spanish-American war, despite some initial miscues.  The overall commander, Acting RADM William T. Sampson, had gone ashore hours before the battle to confer with Army commanders.  On-scene command fell to CAPT Winfield S. Schley in the cruiser BROOKLYN (ACR-3), who, when he observed the lead Spanish warship emerging from the harbor, ordered an inscrutable turn to port, away from the enemy cruiser.  BROOKLYN completed a 270^o loop to finally reach the proper heading, and in doing so crossed the path of the battleship TEXAS, who was forced to back all her engines.  Sampson heard the gunfire from ashore and returned in the cruiser NEW YORK (ACR-2) only to find he had missed most of the action.

Newspaper columns of the day sang the praises of CAPT Schley, to whom the lion’s share of the credit for the victory was given.  Out of respect for his commanding officer, Schley prepared a telegram laying credit for the victory at the feet of Sampson.  Sampson happily forwarded Schley’s telegram to SECNAV but appended it with a secret letter criticizing Schley’s dilatory conduct a month earlier in establishing the initial blockade of Santiago.  This secret letter came to light a few months later as Congress was considering the promotions of Schley, Sampson, and George Dewey to the permanent grade of RADM.  Schley was outraged, and his strong letter of protest sidelined plans to advance Sampson several slots above Schley on the seniority list.

The issue rested for two years until the respected historian Edgar Maclay published volume III of A History of the United States Navy, a text then in use at the Naval Academy.  In it, Maclay roundly criticized Schley’s actions before and during the battle, hinting even at Schley’s cowardice.  Again, Schley was outraged and requested a special Board of Inquiry into his conduct at the battle.  Secretary of the Navy John D. Long reluctantly convened the Board, which deliberated over 40 days.  Their majority opinion, released this day, sided with Sampson (though Board president RADM George Dewey authored the minority opinion supporting Schley).  This only incensed Schley the further, who appealed directly to President Theodore Roosevelt.

By now, the squabbling between otherwise respected naval officers had embarrassed the Navy substantially.  And after reviewing the entire case, Roosevelt approved the findings of the majority.  Schley continued his protestations until a frustrated Roosevelt arbitrarily declared the case closed.  The controversy split the senior Navy leadership between pro- and anti-Schley factions, a rift that remained until WWI intervened.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  20 DEC 22

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Beach, Edward L.  The United States Navy:  200 Years.  New York, NY: Henry Holt Co., 1986, pp. 362-65.

Langley, Harold D.  “Winfield S. Schley and Santiago:  A New Look at an Old Controversy.”  IN: James C. Bradford.  Crucible of Empire:  The Spanish American War & its Aftermath.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1993, pp. 69-98.

Maclay, Edgar Stanton.  A History of the United States Navy:  From 1775 to 1901, Vol III.  New York, NY: D. Appleton and Co., 1901, pp. 363-66.

Potter, E.B.  Sea Power: A Naval History, 2^nd ed.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1981, p. 185.

Sweetman, Jack.  American Naval History: An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-Present, 2^nd ed.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1991, p. 116.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  The Sampson-Schley controversy ranks with Tailhook as one of the greatest public image debacles in our Navy’s history.  The squabbling over an essentially vainglorious issue–who deserved credit for the one-sided victory at Santiago–tarnished the image of the Naval officer in favor of that of the Army officer.  The pro-Schley lobby was led by the respected George Dewey with the anti-Schley side voiced by War College pillars Alfred T. Mahan and Stephen B. Luce.  Ironically, Edward Beach points out that in truth, neither Sampson nor Schley had planned for the unexpected daylight breakout of the Spanish.  Neither was Schley “in command” of the fleet that morning.  The record shows he gave commands only to his flagship BROOKLYN.  In reality, every ship captain present had acted on his own in tackling the obvious situation that presented.

As a result of the controversy, Maclay’s test was withdrawn from the curriculum at the Naval Academy.  Few copies of volume III were printed and even fewer survive today.

The post Sampson-Schley Controversy appeared first on Today in Naval History.

                                        BATTLE OF CUZCO WELL

On this morning, LCOL Robert W. Huntington dispatched CPT George Fielding Elliott with two rifle companies and 50 Cuban scouts on a 6-mile circuitous march along the shore to the Cuzco Well.  They were spotted by the Spanish, and a foot race ensued to the high ground overlooking the Spanish plantation house.  Elliott’s Marines reached the hilltop first and forced the Spanish away with rifle and machine gun fire.  The enemy retreated to the shelter of their plantation house, where the Marines rained down small arms fire at a range of 1000 yards.  Meanwhile, another Marine platoon on outpost duty heard the firing and approached on their own initiative to the head of the valley opposite Elliott.  The Spanish were now caught low in the valley in a crossfire!  The gunboat USS DOLPHIN opened fire with her 4″ guns and 3-pounders, but unable to see her target, her shells were so erratic several struck the Marines.  For a time, the Marines ducked in their position on the hill to dodge DOLPHIN’s gunfire, until SGT John H. Quick crafted a makeshift signal flag from his blue polka dot bandanna and ran back to the crest.  With his back to the enemy, and sky-lined by the terrain, he and PVT John Fitzgerald began signaling DOLPHIN.  On three occasions over the next four hours, Quick braved enemy fire to correctly spot the gunboat’s fire.

In an afternoon of sharp fighting the Spanish were routed with an estimated 160 casualties.  The heavily outnumbered Marines had sustained only three losses to combat and 20 heat casualties.  Four allied Cuban scouts were hit as well.  The Spanish camp was burned, 18 were captured, and the well was dynamited.  Attacks on Huntington’s Guantanamo foothold ended.

The subsequent destruction of Cervera’s squadron and the capture of Santiago de Cuba in July obviated the need for the Guantanamo station.  The Marines were withdrawn on 5 August. Indeed, compared to later fighting, the battle of Cuzco was but a skirmish.  However, an American public hungry for news of the first ground action gobbled-up the story after imbedded newspaper correspondents painted this action as heroic.  One story, in particular, was widely published–that of Stephen Crane, whose name was well known as the author of the popular 1895 novel Red Badge of Courage.  SGT Quick and Fitzgerald received the Medal of Honor, and Huntington’s Battalion was paraded to public acclaim in Washington, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Omaha.

The Marines would return shortly.  The 1903 Platt Amendment, negotiated during our post-war occupation, guaranteed Cuban independence and negotiated the lease of Guantanamo Bay that continues today.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  19 JUN 22

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Heinl, Robert Debs, Jr.  Soldiers of the Sea:  The United States Marine Corps, 1775-1962.  Baltimore, MD: Nautical & Aviation Pub., 1991, p. 116.

Millett, Allan R.  Semper Fidelis:  The History of the United States Marine Corps.  New York, NY: Macmillan Pub Co., 1980, pp. 131-33.

Moskin, J. Robert.  The U.S. Marine Corps Story, 3^rd ed.  Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Co., 1992, pp. 89-90.

Sweetman, Jack.  American Naval History:  An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-Present, 3^rd ed.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 2002, p. 98.

United States Congress.  United States of America’s Congressional Medal of Honor Recipients and their Official Citations.  Columbia Heights, MN: Highland House II, 1994, pp. 606, 615.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  The beach near the Cuzco Well became part of the US Naval base and served as a recreational area.  It is located near the modern Camp X-Ray detention facility.

George F. Elliott rose to the rank of MGEN and served from 1908-1910 as Commandant of the Marine Corps.  Two WWII troop transports, USS GEORGE F. ELLIOTT (AP-13, AP-105) remember him.  John Quick rose to the rank of SGTMAJ and later received the Navy Cross for heroic actions in WWI at Belleau Wood.  The Gleaves-class destroyer QUICK (DD-490) honors him.  Trivia buffs will note that our Navy did have a ship commissioned with the name JOHN FITZGERALD, however this did not recognize PVT John Fitzgerald above.  Rather, she was a British trawler purchased by our Navy in WWI for U-boat patrols with her British name retained.  Likewise, our armored cruiser WEST VIRGINIA (ACR-5) was renamed HUNTINGTON in 1916 so her original name could be given to BB-48.  But in this case her name honors West Virginia’s second largest city.

The post Battle of Cuzco Well appeared first on Today in Naval History.

                                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 1^st Marine Battalion, then training in Key West, was ordered to take Guantanamo Bay.  On June 7^th, 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 1^st 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 11^th.  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…

The Abrogation of the Platt Amendment, May 29, 1934.  IN: Commager, Henry Steele.  Documents of American History, Vol II, 7^th ed.  New York, NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1963, pp. 291-92.

Department of the Navy, Naval History Division.  Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Vol 6 “R-S”.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1976, p. 244.

Hull, R.R.  “Signal Encounter at Guantanamo.”  Naval History, Vol 12 (3), June 1998, pp. 18-23.

Maclay, Edgar Stanton.  A History of the United States Navy from 1775 to 1901, Vol III.  New York, NY: D. Appleton and Company, 1901, pp. 337-41.

Millett, Allan R.  Semper Fidelis:  The History of the United States Marine Corps.  New York, NY: Macmillan Pub Co., 1980, pp. 131-34.

Murphy, M.E.  The History of Guantanamo Bay, on-line ed.  www.nsgtmo.navy.mil/history.html, 23 May 2003.

The Platt Amendment to the Army Appropriations Bill of March 2, 1901.  IN: Commager, Henry Steele.  Documents of American History, Vol II, 7^th ed.  New York, NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1963, pp. 28-29.

Site visit, Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, 19-22 May 2003.

United States Congress.  United States of America’s Congressional Medal of Honor Recipients and their Official Citations.  Columbia Heights, MN: Highland House II, 1994, pp. 606, 615.

Young, James Rankin.  Spanish American War and Battles in the Philippines.  Washington, DC: GPO, 1899, pp. 86-94.

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.

The post Capture of Guantanamo Bay appeared first on Today in Naval History.