CHAPTER XXVII
THE GREAT VICTORY OF MANILA BAY
Dewey Destroys a Fleet Without Losing a Man
GEORGE DEWEY was a Green Mountain boy, a son of the Vermont hills. Many good stories are told of his schoolboy days, and when he grew up to be a man everybody that knew him said that he was a fine fellow, who would make his mark. And they were right about him, though he had to wait a long time for the chance to show what he would do.
Dewey was sent to the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, and when the Civil War began he was a lieutenant in the navy. He was with Farragut on the Mississippi, and did some gallant deeds on that great river.
When the war with Spain began Dewey was on the Chinese coast with a squadron of American ships. He had been raised in rank and was Commodore Dewey then. A commodore, you should know, was next above a captain and next below an admiral.
Commodore Dewey had four fine ships, the cruisers Olympia, Baltimore, Raleigh, and Boston. He had also two gunboats and a despatch-boat, making seven in all.
These vessels were at Hong Kong, a British seaport in China. They could not stay there after war with Spain was declared, for Hong Kong was a neutral port, and after war begins fighting ships must leave neutral ports. But Dewey knew where to go, for under the ocean and over the land there had come to him a telegram from Washington, more than ten thousand miles away, which said, "Seek the Spanish fleet and capture or destroy it." Dewey did not waste any time in obeying orders.
He knew where to seek the Spanish fleet. A few hundred miles away to the east of China lay the fine group of islands called the Philippines, which then belonged to Spain. In Luzon, the biggest of these islands, was the fine large City of Manila, the centre of the Spanish power in the East. So straight across the China Sea Dewey went at all speed towards this seaport of Spain.
On the morning of Saturday, April 30, 1898, the men on the leading ship saw land rising in the distance, green and beautiful, and farther away they beheld the faint blue lines of the mountains of Luzon. Down this green tropical coast they sped, and when night was near at hand they came close to the entrance of Manila Bay.