Spanish-American War, 1898 -- Regimental histories; United States. Army. Volunteer Cavalry, 1st
One day General Lawton, General Wood and I, with Ferguson and poor
Tiffany, went down the bay to visit Morro Castle. The shores were
beautiful, especially where there were groves of palms and of the
scarlet-flower tree, and the castle itself, on a jutting headland,
overlooking the sea and guarding the deep, narrow entrance to the bay,
showed just what it was, the splendid relic of a vanished power and a
vanished age. We wandered all through it, among the castellated
battlements, and in the dungeons, where we found hideous rusty
implements of torture; and looked at the guns, some modern and some
very old. It had been little hurt by the bombardment of the ships.
Afterward I had a swim, not trusting much to the shark stories. We
passed by the sunken hulks of the Merrimac and the Reina Mercedes,
lying just outside the main channel. Our own people had tried to sink
the first and the Spaniards had tried to sink the second, so as to
block the entrance. Neither attempt was successful.
On August 6th we were ordered to embark, and next morning we sailed
on the transport Miami. General Wheeler was with us and a squadron of
the Third Cavalry under Major Jackson. The General put the policing
and management of the ship into my hands, and I had great aid from
Captain McCormick, who had been acting with me as adjutant-general of
the brigade. I had profited by my experience coming down, and as Dr.
Church knew his work well, although he was very sick, we kept the ship
in such good sanitary condition, that we were one of the very few
organizations allowed to land at Montauk immediately upon our arrival.
Soon after leaving port the captain of the ship notified me that his
stokers and engineers were insubordinate and drunken, due, he thought,
to liquor which my men had given them. I at once started a search of
the ship, explaining to the men that they could not keep the liquor;
that if they surrendered whatever they had to me I should return it to
them when we went ashore; and that meanwhile I would allow the sick to
drink when they really needed it; but that if they did not give the
liquor to me of their own accord I would throw it overboard. About
seventy flasks and bottles were handed to me, and I found and threw
overboard about twenty. This at once put a stop to all drunkenness.
The stokers and engineers were sullen and half mutinous, so I sent a
detail of my men down to watch them and see that they did their work
under the orders of the chief engineer; and we reduced them to
obedience in short order. I could easily have drawn from the regiment
sufficient skilled men to fill every position in the entire ship's
crew, from captain to stoker.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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