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That death knell also resounded on the sea. On July 3, Cervera ordered his fleet to leave Santiago and make for the high seas. He hoped to outrun the Americans, whom he could not outgun, but the waiting U.S. fleet opened fire. Over the next few hours, one by one, the Spanish ships died. All were sunk, some dying in massive explosions as their magazines erupted, while others, torn by shot and shell and on fire, steamed for the rocky shore where their crews beached them rather than go down in deeper water where the sailors had less of a chance of surviving. Cuban rebels on the shore fired on Spanish sailors struggling in the surf, as sharks circled and ripped into the wounded men.
The victorious Americans treated the Spanish wounded, including Admiral Cervera, and accorded them the same chivalry that the Spaniards had granted to Hobson and his men. The war ended with the Spanish surrender outside of Santiago. Surprisingly, the victorious Americans did not invite their Cuban allies — in a war ostensibly fought for Cuban independence — to attend the negotiations or the surrender. Instead, the United States assumed control of Cuba, governing the island until 1903 and leaving only after writing a Cuban constitution that granted the U.S. the right to militarily intervene in Cuban affairs and a perpetual lease to Guantanamo Bay for a naval base. The seeds of Cuban discontent and a future revolution were thus sown.
With the war over, many of its combatants were acclaimed as heroes, among them Theodore Roosevelt, Admiral William Sampson, Richmond Hobson and the crew ofMerrimac. Hobson gained fame for his exploits and his good looks, earning the sobriquet of the “most kiss-able officer in the Navy.” He, like Roosevelt, rode his fame into political office. His crew also fared well. On November 2, 1899, the seven sailors of Merrimac were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Hobson did not receive the medal because of a provision barring its award to naval and marine officers. It was not until April 29, 1933, that then Congressman Richmond Hobson finally received his Medal of Honor from President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Our plane drops from the clouds and banks along the line of cliffs that define the shores of Cuba’s southeast coast. As we approach Santiago, I look out the window and see the walls of El Morro flash below me, then the lighthouse, and then we’re down, bouncing on the airstrip that stretches out next to the ancient fortress. The Sea Hunters team is here to explore waters rarely dived in search of a doomed fleet and one forgotten American collier that a century ago had been the talk of a nation.
We’re in Fidel Castro’s Cuba, with his permission, to dive all of the wrecks from the Spanish-Cuban-American War of 1898. We have toured Havana and the site of the destruction of USS Maine, visited the U.S. memorial monument to Maine’s dead on the city’s oceanfront drive, the Malecon, and interviewed Cuba’s top historians and curators about that war. Now The Sea Hunters team heads to Santiago to see the sites: Daiquiri and Siboney, where the American troops landed; San Juan Hill, where the Rough Riders stormed up to victory; Santa Iphigenia Cemetery, where the dead of the battles are buried, and El Morro. Standing on its parapets with Mike Fletcher and John Davis, I look down into the narrow harbor mouth at the scene of Merrimac’s last mission. The collier would have steamed just a few yards away from El Morro’s closest guns and into the mouth of more guns that doubtless rained fire into Merrimac’s hull. “It’s a miracle the ship made it through with no one killed,” Mike says, and John and I nod in agreement. “It will be a miracle if anything has survived in that cha
After touring the battlefields and memorials on land, with their manicured lawns, statues and bronze plaques offering a distant, cleaned-up and sanctified image of that hundred-year-old war, we head out to sea to search for Cervera’s sunken fleet. Mike and his son Warren start by diving to find the wrecks of the torpedo boat destroyers Pluton and Furor. Their shattered and scattered remains litter the steep slope of the seabed, 100 to 120 feet down. From there, we head to the cruiser Almirante Oquendo. Dozens of shells ripped through the cruiser during her final flight and fight, and at the end, burning fiercely with more than half of the crew dead, the wounded ship hit the rocks near shore and broke in two. Very few men made it off Oquendo. Today, the cruiser’s grave is marked by one of its large u-inch guns sticking up out of the sea. We follow it down into a broken field of debris that only after a careful survey reveals the outlines of the ship.
We travel farther down the coast to look at Oquendo’s sister ship, the cruiser Vizcaya. Ru
Captain Eulate, in his official report of the battle, said: “I immediately convened the officers who were nearest… and asked them whether there was anyone among them who thought we could do anything more in the defense of our country and our honor, and the unanimous reply was that nothing more could be done.” As Spaniards, some with their uniforms ablaze, leapt screaming from their burning ship into the sea, some men on Texas started to cheer their victory until Captain John Philip yelled out, “Don’t cheer, boys! These poor devils are dying!” USS Iowa, commanded by Robley Evans, approached next. Evans, incensed that Cuban sharpshooters were gu
With Mike Fletcher and his son Warren, I drop down into the sea, swimming past twisted armor plate and the broken engines of Vizcaya. We swim along the hull, punctured here and there by shellfire and the rocks where the burning hulk settled. Looming up in the milky sea, washed by the surging of the surf that breaks overhead, is the bulk of one of the cruiser’s turrets, its u-inch Hontoria ca
I shrug out of my dive vest and tank, and shove them through a narrow gap in the armor. Then, kicking and squeezing, I work my body into the turret. It is still and dark, as it should be — this is a tomb. Mike follows, and we strap our gear back on and carefully float in the enclosed space, filming it. We’re probably the first living people to be in here in more than a hundred years, and we quietly and respectfully document the turret, disturbing its peace only with our lights and air bubbles in order to share the story of what happened here with the world.