With these facts in mind Admiral Sampson planned to obstruct the entrance to Santiago harbor to prevent the Spanish fleet from getting out. Lieutenant Hobson, a young man of twenty-eight, worked out the plan of sinking the collier Merrimac across the channel; and to him the important task of carrying it out was assigned. Torpedoes were so arranged on the sides of the Merrimac that their explosion would shatter her bottom and sink her in the channel. There was serious difficulty in selecting the small number of brave, cool-headed men who were to accompany Lieutenant Hobson in this perilous enterprise, for several hundred American sailors were eager to go, even though they knew that in so doing they were running serious risk of capture or death. But such was the heroic temper of the American sailors that many of them begged for an opportunity of rendering this loyal service. On the night appointed for the daring feat, the Merrimac did not get well started before the morning light began to appear in the eastern sky, so that Admiral Sampson recalled the expedition. After a long, nervous day of waiting, the next morning, June 3d, the Merrimac started off a second time. The vessel moved stealthily forward with its eager, silent crew, but before the place of sinking could be reached the Spaniards discovered her. Suddenly from the forts and the war-vessels in the harbor a storm of shot and shell beat in pitiless fury about the Merrimac. But she pressed forward. When the moment came for her to be swung across the channel Hobson found that the rudder of the ship had been shot away, so that she could not be swung about according to the plan. He therefore had to be content with sinking her _along_ instead of _across_ the channel. When the torpedoes exploded and she went down, her crew of eight men, struggling for life in the seething waters, managed to reach a float which they had brought with them on the deck of the collier. To this float they clung, hanging on with their hands, for they dared not expose their bodies as targets to Spanish soldiers on land or to Spanish sailors in the launches that were trying to find out what had happened. For some hours Hobson and his men remained in this uncomfortable position, shivering with the cold. At length Hobson hailed an approaching launch to which he swam. He was pulled in by an elderly man, with the exclamation, "You are brave fellows." This was Admiral Cervera, who treated the prisoners, Lieutenant Hobson and his crew, with great kindness. With the rest of the world he admired the courageous spirit of the "brave fellows" who had given so much in the service of their country.