The Spanish gunners had the range and their time fuses were accurately set. The crews of both ships were at their guns. Lieutenant Craig, who was in charge of the bow 4-inch rapid-fire gun of the Morrill, asked for and obtained permission to return the fire. At the first shot the Vicksburg, which was in the wake of the Morrill, slightly in-shore, sheered off and passed to windward under the Morrill's stern.
ANOTHER NARROW ESCAPE.
In the meantime, Captain Smith also put his helm to port, and was none too soon, for as the Morrill stood off a solid 8-inch shot grazed her starboard quarter and kicked up tons of water as it struck a wave 100 yards beyond. Captain Smith said afterward that this was undoubtedly an 8-inch armor piercing projectile, and that it would have passed through the Morrill's boilers had he not changed his course in the nick of time.
All the guns of the water battery were now at work. One of them cut the Jacob's ladder of the Vicksburg adrift, and another carried away a portion of the rigging. As the Morrill and the Vicksburg steamed away their aft guns were used, but only a few shots were fired. The Morrill's 6-inch gun was elevated for 4,000 yards and struck the earth-works repeatedly. The Vicksburg fired but three shots from her 6-pounder.
The Spaniards continued to fire shot and shell for twenty minutes, but the shots were ineffective. Some of them were so wild that they roused the American "Jackies" to jeers. The Spaniards only ceased firing when the Morrill and Vicksburg were completely out of range.
If all the Spanish gunners had been suffering from strabismus their practice could not have been worse. But the officers of both the Morrill and Vicksburg frankly admit their own recklessness and the narrow escape of their vessels from destruction. They are firmly convinced that the pursuit of the schooner was a neatly planned trick, which almost proved successful.
If any one of the shots had struck the thin skin of either vessel it would have offered no more resistance than a piece of paper to a rifle ball.
The accurate range of the first few shots is accounted for by the fact that the Spanish officers had ample time to make observations. The bearings of the two vessels were probably taken with a range-finder at the Santa Clara battery, and, as this battery is probably connected by wire with Morro, they were able to take bearings from both points, and by laborious calculations they fixed the positions of the vessels pretty accurately. With such opportunity for observation it would have been no great trick for an American gunner to drop a shell down the smokestack of a vessel.
As soon as the ships sheered off after the first fire, the Spanish gunners lost the range and their practice became ludicrous. If they had waited five minutes longer before opening fire, Captain Smith says it would have been well-nigh impossible to have missed the target.
Prior to the invasion of Cuba by our army large stores of arms and ammunition were sent to the insurgents. One of the most notable of these expeditions was made by the tug Leyden, which carried 50,000 rounds of rifle cartridges and two chests of dynamite. She left Key West with Colonel Acosta and some twenty-five other Cubans on board, who were to join General Gomez in Santa Clara Province. The tug reached the Cuban coast and after landing her passengers in safety steamed to a point seventeen miles west of Havana, where she was met by General Perico Delgado with about 100 Cubans on the beach. The Leyden's crew began landing the ammunition, when a small body of Spanish cavalry appeared some little distance back from the shore, and, dismounting, began firing upon the Leyden. Several bullets had penetrated the tug's smoke-stack, when the boat drew off the shore some three miles, where it met the gunboat Wilmington.