June 16. On the fifteenth of June the marines at Guantanamo Bay were given an opportunity to rest, for the lesson the Spaniards received on the fourteenth had been a severe one, and the fleet off Santiago remained inactive. It was but the lull before the storm of iron which was rained upon the Spanish on the sixteenth.
The prelude to this third bombardment of Santiago was a second trial of the Vesuvius at midnight on the fifteenth, when she sent three more 250-pound charges of guncotton into the fortifications. This done, the fleet remained like spectres, each vessel at its respective station, until half-past three o’clock on the morning [pg 209]of the sixteenth, when the bluejackets were aroused and served with coffee.
Immediately the first gray light of dawn appeared, the ships steamed in toward the fortifications of Santiago until within three thousand yards, and there, lying broadside on, three cables’-lengths apart, they waited for the day to break.
It was 5.25 when the New York opened with a broadside from her main battery, and the bombardment was begun.
All along the crescent-shaped line the big guns roared and the smaller ones crackled and snapped, each piece throughout the entire squadron being worked with such energy that it was like one mighty, continuous wave of crashing thunder, and from out this convulsion came projectiles of enormous weight, until it seemed as if all that line of shore must be rent and riven.
Not a gun was directed at El Morro, for there it was believed the brave Hobson and his gallant comrades were held prisoners.
When the signal was given for the fleet to retire, not a man had been wounded, nor a vessel struck by the fire from the shore.
The governor of Santiago sent the following message to Madrid relative to the bombardment:
“The Americans fired one thousand shots. Several Spanish shells hit the enemy’s vessels. Our losses are three killed and twenty wounded, including two officers. The Spanish squadron was not damaged.”
While the Americans were making their presence felt at Santiago, those who held Guantanamo Bay were not idle. The Texas, Marblehead, and the Suwanee bombarded the brick fort and earthworks at Caimanera, at the terminus of the railroad leading to the city of Guantanamo, demolishing them entirely after an hour and a half of firing. When the Spaniards fled from the fortifications, the St. Paul shelled them until they were hidden in the surrounding forest.