Dewey made no effort to capture the city of Manila, as he had no troops to hold it. No further firing took place. Cavite arsenal was taken possession of and a blockade of Manila established. He lifted and cut the telegraph cable, but the Hongkong office of the cable company refused to take his messages as vitiat ing its contract with the Spanish government. It was thus necessary to send a ship to Hong kong to cable thence. The McCulloch coaled and left 5 Mav, and arrived at Hongkong the 7th with the official information of the victory. There was a period of quiet waiting for the troops and ships, varied with rumors of the despatch of a fleet from Spain and by the ar rival of Aguinaldo and the organization of a Filipino army which was later to give much trouble. The first American troops, 2,500 in num ber, reached Luzon 30 June accompanied by the cruiser Charleston, which took over the sur render of Guam en route; the second expedition of 3,500 arrived 16 July. Dewey in the mean time was rendered anxious by the departure from Cadiz 16 June of the Spanish squadron under Admiral Camara. This consisted of the second class battleship Pelayo, the armored cruiser Car los V, three destroyers, three armed liners (two of which had been purchased from the Ham burg Line) and four transports. The expedition was in reality as ill advised as any other act of the Spanish Ministry of Marine. There were but two ships of any power and one of these slow; the rest, excepting the destroyers, were power less for offense or defense. The battle of San tiago, which left Spain's coast open to the at tack of the squadron which was formed to go through the Mediterranean, settled the question of their return, which was ordered from Spain 7 July. An expenditure of $320,000 for the ben efit of the canal company was the main result of the expedition. In any case the arrival of the Monterey 4 August and the Monadnock 16 August, very effective ships in smooth water, removed any anxiety on the part of the Ameri can commander. While much was to come in the Philippines, the battle of 1 May practically determined that they were lost to Spain unless she should succeed in destroying the American fleet in the Atlantic; should she do this the ques tion of final command in Asian waters could easily wait. The loss of the Philippines could have no determining effect (valuable as the re sult was in prestige and in setting to rest any question of a European concert of intervention) so long as Spain could keep open her communi cations with Cuba, relinquishment of Spanish authority in which had been announced in the Congressional resolution of 20 April as the ob ject of American action. In the Atlantic was her only battle squadron; so long as this was in being, so long would the war continue.
Cervera left the Cape Verdes with his four armored cruisers and three destroyers 29 April. This was known at the Navy Department the same day and the news at once transmitted to Sampson. The latter determined to go eastward with the main part of the battle portion of his fleet. He obtained the consent of the depart ment, coaled his ships and 4 May left with the New York, Iowa and Indiana, the monitors Amphitrite and Terror, the cruisers Montgom ery and Detroit, torpedo boat Porter, tug Wom patuck and collier Niagara. He had calculated to reach San Juan by the 8th, judging that by this date the Spanish squadron would be in that longitude and premising with his usual excellent judgment that San Juan was their objective, as was the case. Should he not find them at San
Juan it was his intention to at once return to Havana, after making an effort to occupy San Juan and leaving the monitors there in occu pancy, to hold it against the Spanish squadron should it appear later. Continuous breakdowns of the monitors, which had to be towed a great part of the way, and of the Indiana, so delayed the squadron that it was not off San Juan until the early morning of 12 May. No Spanish ships were there. The fortifications were, however, assailed by the squadron in an active bombard ment of three hours, in which, on the American side, one man was killed and four wounded. On the Spanish side eight were killed and 20 wounded. There is little doubt, as is known from Spanish officers present, that the place would have been yielded had the attack been a little lciis'er continued, not through actual dam age but through pressure from a population frantic with fear. Sampson, however, yielded to the arguments regarding the necessity of holding the fighting ships intact to meet the Spanish fleet, and started westward.
The day previous to that of the action at San Juan occurred, as far as loss of life was con cerned, two of the most serious fights of the war one in connection with the cable cutting at Cienfuegos, the other at Cardenas; both were most gallant deeds. The four launches (includ ing two steamers) of the Marblehead and Nash ville, under the immediate charge of Lieutenant Winslow, were employed in the former opera tion, which was carried on in the early morning within a few yards of the beach under a cover ing fire from the ships in a rough sea and under a severe rifle fire from shore. Three hours were spent in lifting the cables, two of which were cut ; a third was lifted but as it was thought to be a small cable connecting the destroyed cables with Cienfuegos and thus useless, it was left uncut, it being thought advisable not to delay for the purpose under the heavy and increasing fire. Lieutenant Cameron McR. Winslow and 12 men were wounded, two of the men mortally. At Cardenas, which was blockaded by the Machias, Wilmington, the revenue cutter Hud son and the torpedo boat Winslow, it was de termined to attack the three Spanish gunboats in the port, which is extremely shallow and difficult of access to larger vessels. The Wins low, leading, had approached the town within a mile when fire was opened by the Spanish battery and gunboats. Though supported by the other ships, the Winslow armed only with three one-pounder guns could not make much return. The Spanish fire was concentrated upon her, her steering gear and one engine injured and a shell exploded in one of her boilers. She became helpless and drifted shoreward. The Hudson, the lightest of the three other vessels, gallantly went to her aid and towed her into safety, but not before the Winslow's commander, Lieutenant Bernadou, had been wounded, and a little later, Ensign Bagley and two seamen killed and two others mortally wounded by a shell which ex ploded on the deck. Her use for such a purpose was, of course, not justified, and the same might be said of much of the employment of these frail crafts during the war, the paucity of ves sels and the necessities of the service making such misapplication unavoidable.