The “Splendid Little” Spanish-American War 593Sailors on the USS Oregonwatch the destruction of the Spanish cruiser, Cristobal Colon, during the Battle of Santiago, Cuba,
July 3, 1898.reached him, Dewey steamed from Hong Kong
across the South China Sea with four cruisers and
two gunboats. On the night of April 30 he entered
Manila Bay, and at daybreak he opened fire on the
Spanish fleet at 5,000 yards. His squadron made five
passes, each time reducing the range; when the
smoke had cleared, all ten of Admiral Montojo’s
ships had been destroyed. Not a single American was
killed in the engagement.
Dewey immediately asked for troops to take and
hold Manila, for now that war had been declared, he
could not return to Hong Kong or put in at any other
neutral port. McKinley took the fateful step of dis-
patching some 11,000 soldiers and additional naval
support. On August 13 these forces, assisted by
Filipino irregulars under Aguinaldo, captured Manila.
Meanwhile, in Cuba, the United States had won
a swift and total victory, though more because of the
weakness of the Spanish armed forces than because of
the power or efficiency of the Americans. When the
war began, the U.S. regular army consisted of about
28,000 men. This tiny force was bolstered by
200,000 hastily enlisted volunteers. In May an expe-
ditionary force gathered at Tampa, Florida. That
hamlet was inundated by the masses of men and sup-
plies that descended upon it. Entire regiments sat
without uniforms or weapons while hundreds of
freight cars jammed with equipment lay forgotten on
sidings. Army management was abominable, rivalry
between commanders a serious problem. Aggressive
units like the regiment of “Rough Riders” raised by
Theodore Roosevelt, who had resigned his Navy
Department post to become a lieutenant colonel of
volunteers, scrambled for space and supplies, shoul-
dering aside other units to get what they needed. “No
words could describe... the confusion and lack of
system and the general mismanagement of affairs
here,” the angry Roosevelt complained.
Since a Spanish fleet under Admiral Pascual
Cervera was known to be in Caribbean waters, no
invading army could safely embark until the fleet
could be located. On May 29 American ships found