The men on the Texas raised a shout of joy. But Captain Philip spoke from the bridge: "Don't cheer, men; those poor fellows are dying."
For less than forty minutes Admiral Cervera had been running a race for life, and now, clad in underclothes, he tried to escape to the shore on a raft, directed by his son, but was captured and taken to the Gloucester, where he was received with the honors due his rank. His voyage from Santiago had been just six miles and a half, but had cost the lives of nearly half his officers and crew.
The Vizcaya had followed the Teresa at a distance of about eight hundred yards in coming out of Santiago harbor. Upon her decks, in Havana harbor, Cuba, Spanish officers had looked down with careless indifference upon the sunken wreck of our gallant battleship, the Maine, and it may be supposed that when she came ploughing out of the bay, Wainwright, late of the Maine, now on the little Gloucester, aimed some shots at her with a special ill-will. But the Vizcaya, under gathered headway, rushed on to the west, passing the heavier battleships Iowa and Indiana, but receiving terrible punishment from their guns. A lieutenant of the Vizcaya, taken prisoner to the United States, in an interview by a newspaper reporter, told of the murderous effect of the shells from the Indiana.
"They appeared to slide along the surface of the water and hunt for a seam in our armor," he said. "Three of those monster projectiles penetrated the hull of the Vizcaya, and exploded there before we started for the shore. The carnage inside the ship was something horrible and beyond description. Fires were started up constantly. It seemed to me that the iron bulkheads were ablaze. Our organization was perfect. We acted promptly and mastered all small outbreaks of flame, until the small ammunition magazine was exploded by a shell. From that moment the vessel became a furnace of fire. While we were walking the deck, headed shoreward, we could hear the roar of the flames under our feet above the voice of artillery. The Vizcaya's hull bellowed like a blast furnace. Why, men sprang from the red-hot decks straight into the mouths of sharks."
But the Vizcaya lasted longer than the Almirante Oquendo, which followed her out of the harbor. The Vizcaya turned at the mouth of the harbor and went west, the Brooklyn, Oregon, and Texas in hot pursuit, while the Indiana and Iowa attacked the Oquendo. She had been credited with as great speed as that of her sister ships, but this day moved so slowly that she fared worse than any of her comrades. She stood the fire of her foes five minutes longer than had the Teresa, then with flames pouring out of every opening in her hull, she ran for the beach, hauling down her flag as she went, in token of surrender, while at the same time men were dropping from her red-hot decks into the water.
Thus, in the first three-quarters of an hour two great Spanish war vessels were destroyed, and the American fleet was concentrating its fire on the other two.
The fighting men on the vessels were not the only ones who did noble work for their country that day. In the engine rooms and stoke-holes of the men-of-war, on that scorching hot July day, men worked naked in fiery heat. They could hear the thunder of the guns above them, and feel the ship tremble with the shock of the broadsides. How the battle was going they could not see. Deep in their fiery prison, far below the lapping waves that rushed along the armored hull, they only knew that if disaster came they would suffer first and most cruelly. A successful torpedo stroke would mean death to them, every one. The clean blow of an enemy's ram would in all probability drown them like rats in a cage, even if it did not cause them to be parboiled by the explosion of their own boilers. A shot in the magazine would be their death warrant. All the perils which menaced the men who were fighting so bravely at the guns on deck threatened the sooty, sweating fellows who shovelled coal and fixed fires down in the hold, with the added certainty that for them escape was impossible, and the inspiration which comes from the very sight of battle was denied them. They did their duty nobly. If we had not the testimony of their commanders to that effect, we still should know it, for they got out of every ship not only the fullest speed with which she was credited under the most favorable circumstances, but even more—notably in the cases of the Texas and Oregon, which, despite bottoms fouled from long service in tropical waters, actually exceeded their highest recorded speed in the chase. On the Oregon, when she was silently pursuing the Colon at the end of the battle, Lieutenant Milligan, who had gone down into the furnace room to work by the side of the men on whom so much depended, came up to the captain to ask that a gun might be fired now and then. "My men were almost exhausted," said Milligan, "when the last thirteen-inch gun was fired, and the sound of it restored their energy, and they fell to work with renewed vigor. If you will fire a gun occasionally it will keep their enthusiasm up." On most of the ships the great value of the work the men in engine rooms were doing was recognized by the captain's sending down every few minutes to them an account of how the fight progressed. Each report was received with cheers and redoubled activity.
On the Brooklyn, when the Colon was making her final race for life, Commodore Schley sent orderlies down to the stoke-holes and engine room with this message: "Now, boys, it all depends on you. Everything is sunk except the Colon, and she is trying to get away. We don't want her to, and everything depends on you." The Colon did not get away.
The Vizcaya was still making a gallant running fight, and in some degree protecting the magnificent Cristobal Colon. While these fled, disaster fell upon the two torpedo-boat destroyers, Pluton and Furor. Instead of dashing at the nearest American ship—which would have been their wisest course—both followed the example of the cruisers, and turned along the shore to the westward. Either of them would have been more than a match for the little Gloucester, but her commander, Richard Wainwright, sped forward in a cloud of smoke from her own guns, receiving unnoticed shots from the batteries and the nearer Spanish cruisers, though one six-inch shell would have destroyed her. The batteries of the Pluton and Furor were of twice the power of the Gloucester's, and they had, besides, the engine of destruction which they could send out from their torpedo tubes. But in a few minutes Wainwright was engaged with them both at short range and under the fire of the Socapa battery. The other American battleships had been firing at them, but desisted when they perceived that the Gloucester alone was capable of managing them. In a very few minutes they both began to smoke ominously, and their fire became much less rapid. Then the Furor moved as if her steering gear had been cut. Wainwright and his men redoubled their efforts at the guns. Suddenly, on the Furor, amidships, there shot up a great cloud of smoke and flame, with a deafening roar and shock that could be felt across the water, even amid the thunders of the guns. A shell from one of the battleships had struck her fairly, and broken her in two, exploding either the magazine or the boilers, or both, and she sank like a stone.
Wainwright pursued the other torpedo boat, the Pluton, more vigorously. She was already badly crippled, and tried hard to escape; but at last, fairly shot to pieces, she hauled down her flag, and ran for the line of breaking surf, where her men leaped overboard to escape the fierce flames that were sweeping relentlessly below from bow to stern.