On the afternoon of Tuesday, June 28, one of the small vessels of the
mosquito fleet arrived from Guantanamo Bay with a letter from Captain
McCalla in which he said that General Perez had furnished a pack-train
and an escort for the food that the Red Cross had promised to send to
the Guantanamo refugees, and that he would like to have us return there
as soon as possible and land five thousand rations. As our hospital work
on shore was well under way, and Dr. Lesser and the nurses had been
supplied with everything that they would need for a day or two, Miss
Barton decided to fill Captain McCalla's requisition at once. Late
Tuesday evening, therefore, the _State of Texas_ left Siboney, and after
a quiet and peaceful run down the coast entered Guantanamo Bay about six
o'clock Wednesday morning. At half-past six Captain McCalla came on
board to make arrangements for the landing, and in less than two hours
there was a large lighter alongside, with a steam-launch to tow it to
the place where an officer of General Perez's command was waiting for it
with a pack-train and an escort. Before noon ten or fifteen thousand
pounds of supplies, consisting principally of beans, rice, hard bread,
and South American jerked beef, had been safely landed on the western
side of the entrance to the lower harbor; and as we passed the point, on
our return, we saw a large party of Cubans carrying the boxes and
barrels up the bank.
We reached Siboney early that evening, drifted and rolled all night on a
heavy swell, a mile or two off the coast, and at daybreak on the
following morning ran close in to the beach and began landing supplies
for several thousand destitute Cuban refugees who had assembled at the
little village of Firmeza, three miles back of Siboney in the hills. In
getting provisions ashore at Siboney, we encountered precisely the same
difficulties that the army had to meet; but we fortunately had with us,
as chief of transportation, a man who was familiar with boats and who
had had large experience in handling them in circumstances and under
conditions similar to those that prevailed on the Cuban coast. In
proportion to our facilities, therefore, we got more stuff ashore in a
given time than the army quartermasters did, and with fewer accidents.
Mr. Warner, I think, was the first man to use, at Siboney, an anchor and
a stern-line to prevent a boat or a lighter from broaching to in the
surf. It was a simple enough expedient, but nobody, apparently, had
thought of it. By dropping an anchor astern, just before the lighter
reached the outer edge of the breakers, and then slacking off the line
until the boat was near enough so that thirty Cubans could rush into the
water, seize it, and run it up on the beach, a landing was effected
without difficulty or risk. Then, when the supplies had been unloaded,
the stern-anchor line could be used again as a means of pulling the
lighter off through the surf into smooth water and preventing it from
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