The immediate reason for this legislation in the United States was similar to that in France. At that time there was a rapidly growing commerce on the Great Lakes, but storm disasters were all too frequent. In 1869, nearly two thousand vessels were beached or sunk by gales on the Lakes. On the seacoasts, the situation was almost equally bad. The new service was soon in operation. The first storm warning by the United States government was sent out in November, 1870. During the next twenty years, blizzards, hail storms, tornadoes and sudden wind storms of other kinds gave the new weather service a great deal of trouble. They brought a vivid realization of the great variety of surprises that lay in wait for the storm hunters. No sooner had they found rules for the issuance of warnings than a new kind of peril came along. The service had been in the Signal Corps of the Army, but in 1891 it was turned over to the Department of Agriculture because of its value to the farmers. The desperate struggle against storms continued, with many experienced weathermen feeling very discouraged about the whole business. And then on February 15, 1898, the Battleship Maine was sunk in Havana Harbor and war with Spain loomed on the horizon. On April 25, the United States declared war. The Spanish fleet left the Cape Verde Islands for Cuba and American warships departed for the West Indies, to prepare the way for the movement of troops for the coming campaign in Cuba. It was June 29, however, before the transports arrived at Santiago, carrying seventeen thousand officers and men to support the United States fleet. By that time, the commanders on both sides had begun to worry about storms, for the first hurricanes had appeared as early as June in some years, bringing destructive winds and torrential rains to some parts of Cuba and the surrounding area. Willis Moore was Chief of the Weather Bureau. He had been a sergeant in the Signal Corps, transferred when the service was put in the Department of Agriculture. He knew very well the difficulties of tracking storms and especially in the West Indies, where only scattered weather reports could be obtained by cable from some of the islands. A bad hurricane could easily sneak up on the American forces through the broad waters of the Caribbean, a predicament likely to arise if the Weather Bureau depended on cable messages from native observers.