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British Military and Naval Observers in the Spanish-American War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

E. Ranson
E. Ranson
Affiliation:
University of Aberdeen
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Extract

The American expeditionary force against Santiago, which sailed from Tampa, Florida, on 14 June 1898, comprised some 800 officers and 16,000 men, plus a number of civilian clerks and stenographers, teamsters, packers and stevedores. The troops were honoured by the presence of eighty-nine newspaper correspondents, and eleven foreign military observers. The colourful exploits of the correspondents are well known, but the activities and opinions of the foreign attachés were by their very nature strictly confidential. Happily, the reports of the British military and naval representatives who accompanied the Santiago expedition have survived the intervening years, and when viewed in conjunction with the observations of the British military attaché with the Spanish forces in Cuba they shed interesting light on the conduct of the war.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 3 , Issue 1 , July 1969 , pp. 33 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1969

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References

page 33 note 1 Miley, John D., In Cuba With Shafter (New York, 1899), pp. 44–5Google Scholar. The exact strength of the expedition is disputed by the various authorities, even the official reports of the War Department are contradictory.

page 33 note 2 See Brown, Charles H., The Correspondent's War. Journalists in the Spanish-American War (New York, 1967)Google Scholar.

page 33 note 3 According to General Shafter's aide, Lt.-Col. John D. Miley, the officers officially designated to accompany the expedition and observe the American forces in the field were: Colonel Yermoloff, Military Attaché to the Imperial Russian Embassy at Washington; Major Clément de Grandpré, Military Attaché to the French Embassy in Washington; Major G. Shiba, of the Japanese Army; Captain Wester, Military Attaché to the Legation of Sweden and Norway at Washington; Captain Abildgaard, of the Royal Norwegian General Staff and Military Attaché to the Legation of Sweden and Norway at Washington; Captain Arthur H. Lee, Royal Artillery, British Army, Military Attaché to the British Embassy at Washington; Lieutenant J. Roedler, Naval Attaché to the Austro-Hungarian Legation at Washington; Commander Lieutenant Von Rebeur Paschwitz, of the Imperial German Navy, and Naval Attaché to the German Embassy at Washington; Commander Dahlgren, Naval Attaché to the Legation of Sweden and Norway at Washington; Lieutenant Saneyuki Akiyama, of the Imperial Japanese Navy; and later Captain Alfred Paget, of the British Navy, and Naval Attaché to the British Embassy at Washington. Miley, op. cit. pp. 45–6.

page 33 note 4 These accounts are to be found in War Office Reports and Miscellaneous Papers, W.O. 33/155 (Public Record Office) as Reports of the Military Attachés with the Spanish and United States Forces in Cuba and Porto Rico (London, 1899)Google Scholar, which contains: I. Report of the Military Attaché with the Spanish Forces in Cuba, by Major G. F. Leverson, R. E., pp. 3–53, hereinafter cited as Spanish Forces in Cuba; II. Report on the Santiago Campaign, by Captain A. H. Lee, R. A., pp. 54–102, hereinafter cited as Santiago Campaign; and III. Report on the Operations in Porto Rico, by Captain A. H. Lee, R. A., pp. 103–21 here-inafter cited as Operations in Porto Rico. All quotations from Crown-copyright records in the Public Record Office appear by permission of the Controller of H.M. Stationery Office. The original drafts of Lee's reports are to be found in the Ministry of Defence Library (Central and Army), Old War Office Building, Whitehall, as also is a copy of Spanish-American War of 1898, United States Transport Service, Report, by Captain Alfred W. Paget, R.N., C.M.G., hereinafter cited as U.S. Transport Service.

page 34 note 1 Dictionary of National Biography 1941–1950 (London, 1959), pp. 494–6Google Scholar; Who's Who 1947 (London)Google Scholar.

page 35 note 1 The Army and Navy Gazette, 22 June 1918; Who's Who 1918 (London)Google Scholar.

page 35 note 2 Who's Who 1938 (London)Google Scholar; see also Army Lists during the period of Leverson's active career.

page 36 note 1 Davis, Charles Belmont (ed.), The Adventures and Letters of Richard Harding Davis (New York, 1917), pp. 242–3Google Scholar. Lee was armed with a letter of introduction from the Speaker of the House of Representatives to the Secretary of War, T. B. Reed to R. A. Alger, 7 April 1898, in the Papers of R. A. Alger, Clements Libary, Ann Arbor, Michigan. William Collis Whitney, a former Secretary of the Navy in Cleveland's first administration, wrote to the incumbent Secretary, John D. Long, on Paget's behalf, on 10 May 1898: ‘What I want to do is to ask for Captain Paget your friendly offices to enable him to execute his mission as intelligently as consistent with his position among us. You can give him facilities for doing so—and I bespeak for Captain Paget your friendly offices in every way. Captain Paget's brother married my daughter, and I am therefore personally interested, but he is a most distinguished officer of the English Navy and it would I think be in line with the grateful courtesies being exchanged by the two governments and which we so highly appreciate at this time, if you should give to Captain Paget your favor and friendship’. Allen, Gardner Weld (ed.), Papers of John Davis Long 1897–1904 (The Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, vol. 78, 1939), p. 119Google Scholar.

page 36 note 2 Davis, Richard Harding, The Cuban and Porto Rican Campaigns (New York, 1898), pp. 56–7Google Scholar.

page 36 note 3 Davis, , Adventures and Letters, p. 243Google Scholar.

page 36 note 4 Lee, , Santiago Campaign, p. 75Google Scholar.

page 37 note 1 Davis, , The Cuban and Porto Rican Campaigns, pp. 58–9Google Scholar; Bigelow, John Jr, Reminiscences of the Santiago Campaign (New York, 1899), p. 106Google Scholar.

page 37 note 2 Lee, , Santiago Campaign, p. 56Google Scholar.

page 37 note 3 Ibid. pp. 78–9.

page 37 note 4 Ibid. p. 79.

page 37 note 5 Paget, , U.S. Transport Service, p. 11Google Scholar.

page 38 note 1 Paget, , U.S. Transport Service, pp. 1–4Google Scholar.

page 38 note 2 Ibid. p. 4.

page 38 note 3 Lee, , Santiago Campaign, p. 78Google Scholar. See also Paget, op. cit. p. 5.

page 38 note 4 Lee, , Santiago Campaign, p. 78Google Scholar; Paget, op. cit. p. 11.

page 39 note 1 Paget, op. cit. p. 7.

page 39 note 2 Ibid. p. 4 and pp. 24–7.

page 39 note 3 Ibid. p. 4.

page 39 note 4 Ibid. p. 6. The same episode is described in Bigelow, op. cit. p. 55.

page 40 note 1 Paget, , U.S. Transport Service, pp. 8–9Google Scholar.

page 40 note 2 Ibid. pp. 12–3.

page 40 note 3 Ibid. p. 9 and p. 13. Lee, , Santiago Campaign, p. 56Google Scholar, stated: ‘The average speed of the passage did not exceed 6 knots per hour, but even this slow progress did not prevent a dangerous amount of confusion and straggling’. He also referred to the ‘individual caprice of the ship captains’.

page 40 note 4 Lee, , Santiago Campaign, p. 56Google Scholar.

page 40 note 5 Paget, op. cit. p. 13.

page 41 note 1 Paget, op. cit. pp. 5–6, gives the number of boats as 149 with a capacity of 3,300. Lee, , Santiago Campaign, pp. 82–4Google Scholar, gives the figures as 153 boats with a capacity of 3,034, plus the steam-lighter Laura, which could carry 400 men standing on her deck. These latter figures are agreed by Miley, J. D., In Cuba With Shafter, p. 43Google Scholar, and by Alger, R. A., The Spanish-American War (New York, 1901), p. 79Google Scholar. According to Lee, the Alamo had four boats with a capacity of 80, but carried 607 officers and men plus crew; the City of Washington, also with four boats capable of carrying 80 persons, had 784 officers and men aboard plus crew; the Concho had five boats, capacity 100, but carried 1,087 officers and men plus crew; the San Marcos, five boats, capacity 132, carried 1,275 officers and men plus crew.

page 41 note 2 Paget, op. cit. pp. 5–6. Richard Harding Davis, who also travelled aboard the Segurança, complained that the ship had been stripped of wine and table-linen when chartered to the government, and was sent to Tampa undermanned. He added that ‘The food supplied by the line to which the ship belonged was villainous’. Davis, , The Cuban and Porto Rican Campaigns, pp. 94–5Google Scholar.

page 41 note 3 Paget, op. cit. p. 6 and p. 13.

page 41 note 4 Davis, , The Cuban and Porto Rican Campaigns, p. 98Google Scholar.

page 42 note 1 Lee, , Santiago Campaign, pp. 56–7Google Scholar.

page 42 note 2 Davis, , The Cuban and Porto Rican Campaigns, p. 111Google Scholar.

page 42 note 3 Lee, , Santiago Campaign, pp. 57–8Google Scholar.

page 42 note 4 Ibid. p. 95. The same facts were noted by Paget, op. cit. p. 14, and in Davis, Richard Harding, ‘The Battle of San Juan’, Scribner's Magazine, vol. xxiv, no. 4, pp. 387–403 (10 1898), pp. 389–90Google Scholar.

page 42 note 5 Paget, op. cit. p. 14 and p. 30.

page 42 note 6 Lee, , Santiago Campaign, p. 95Google Scholar.

page 43 note 1 Paget, op. cit. p. 10 and p. 14. See also Lee, , Santiago Campaign, p. 95Google Scholar, and Davis, , The Cuban and Porto Rican Campaigns, pp. 127–8Google Scholar.

page 43 note 2 Paget, op. cit., p. 9, p. 15 and p. 30.

page 43 note 3 Ibid. p. 14.

page 43 note 4 Ibid. p. 9. Paget also wrote, ‘On the 10th of July most of the seamen mutinied because Hansom would never bring the ship close in shore, but compelled the boats to pull in often as much as two to three miles to the landing jetty’.

page 43 note 5 Ibid. p. 10.

page 44 note 1 Paget, op.cit. p. 10. Lee, , Santiago Campaigny, pp. 87–92Google Scholar, includes a list of stores carried by each transport. While this is no clear guide to the material actually landed in Cuba, some surprising items do occur. The 17,000-strong expedition took with it over 36,000 lbs of baking powder, 1,156,000 lbs of tomatoes (or 68 lbs per man), and 7,500 lbs of pepper. One is tempted to see a connexion between this last item and the fact that the most popular tune with the troops was ‘There'll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight’.

page 44 note 2 Ibid. p. 10. Paget continued: ‘The San Marcos, Alleghany, Comal, Rita, Yucatan, Clinton, Saratoga, Vigilancia, and the Knickerbocker were sent back to Tampa during the last days of July; the last three arrived on August 5th. Hundreds of tons of sorely needed stores were found on board, particularly all medical stores, for which General Shafter was telegraphing. Nine tons of Krag-Jorgensen ammunition was found in the Santiago. On August 2nd a survey board found 1,100 to 1,200 tons of provisions in the holds of La Grande Duchesse, including biscuit, bacon, canned meats, vegetables, &c. Her master, Peter Hamlon, acknowledged that he had made no effort to clear his ship at Siboney or to acquaint the Army transport officers there with the schedule of his manifest’.

page 44 note 3 Davis, , Adventures And Letters, p. 252Google Scholar.

page 44 note 4 Lee, , Santiago Campaign, p. 75Google Scholar.

page 45 note 1 Lee, , Santiago Campaign, p. 71Google Scholar.

page 45 note 2 Ibid. p. 78. Lee explained: ‘ The whole of Wheeler's cavalry division consequently were dismounted, and assumed the rôle of infantry throughout the campaign. In this capacity they performed invaluable service, but a proper proportion of mounted cavalry, the most efficient arm in the American service, would have been of immense value to the army. As it was, the one mounted squadron accompanying the expedition was retained by General Shafter at his head-quarters, and it was used almost exclusively for orderly and escort duties ’.

page 45 note 3 Roosevelt, Theodore, An Autobiography (New York, 1913), p. 270Google Scholar. In Roosevelt, Theodore, The Rough Riders (New York, 1899), p. 55Google Scholar, the author remarked, ‘With the Englishman, Captain Arthur Lee, a capital fellow, we soon struck up an especially close friendship; and we saw much of him throughout the campaign’.

page 45 note 4 Roosevelt, , The Rough Riders, p. 192Google Scholar. Roosevelt also noted that both Englishmen were ‘fine fellows, who really seemed to take as much pride in the feats of our men as if we had been bound together by the ties of a common nationality instead of the ties of race and speech kinship’. Ibid. p. 191.

page 46 note 1 Roosevelt to Root, 2 September 1899 (Root Papers, Container 162, Library of Congress). See also Roosevelt to A. H. Lee, 2 September 1899, in Morison, Elting E. (ed.), The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 11 (Cambridge, Mass, 1951), p. 1065Google Scholar. That Root did consult Lee is confirmed in Lee to Roosevelt, 12 December 1899 (Roosevelt Papers, Library of Congress), in which Lee wrote, ‘I have seen a good deal of Mr. Root lately—and admire & like him immensely’.

page 46 note 2 Lee to Roosevelt, 1 March 1902, and Lee to Roosevelt, 22 November 1903, both in Roosevelt Papers, Library of Congress.

page 46 note 3 Lee, , Santiago Campaign, p. 58Google Scholar.

page 46 note 4 Ibid. p. 60.

page 46 note 5 Ibid. Further details concerning the engagement at Las Guasimas are given ibid. pp. 95–6.

page 47 note 1 Lee, , Santiago Campaign, p. 61Google Scholar.

page 47 note 2 Ibid. Lee also reported: ‘Pack-trains and marching columns fought for precedence, jams were frequent, and on one occasion when troops were being hurried to the front I saw the only trail blocked for three hours by two batteries of artillery which had chosen to halt in the short Guasimas defile where nothing could pass them in either direction’.

page 47 note 3 Ibid. p. 61. Only General Chaffee in the attack on El Caney on 1 July was exempted from this criticism, when Lee wrote, ‘I feel it only just at this point to mention that however novel the absence of reconnaissance in other directions, nothing could have been more enterprising or systematic than General Chaffee's exploration of his own theatre of operations’. Lee, , ‘The Regulars At El Caney’, Scribner's Magazine, vol. xxiv, no. 4, pp. 403–13 (10 1898), p. 404Google Scholar. In the original draft of Lee, Santiago Campaign, the same point is made, but the reference to Chaffee is omitted from the printed version.

page 47 note 4 Ibid. p. 62. Paget, op. cit. p. 34, wrote, ‘I am making out maps and diagrams. The field surveying appliances here are of the crudest, and the skill less’.

page 47 note 5 Ibid. p. 63.

page 47 note 6 Ibid. p. 62.

page 48 note 1 Lee, , Santiago Campaign, 65Google Scholar.

page 48 note 2 Ibid. p. 62 and p. 65.

page 48 note 3 Ibid. p. 64 and p. 66. See also Lee, ‘The Regulars At El Caney’, loc. cit.

page 48 note 4 Lee, , Santiago Campaign, p. 100Google Scholar.

page 48 note 5 Ibid. p. 75.

page 48 note 6 Ibid. p. 95.

page 48 note 7 Ibid. P. 100. See also pp. 66–7.

page 48 note 8 Lee, ‘The Regulars At El Caney’, loc. cit. p. 405. See also p. 413.

page 48 note 9 Lee, , Santiago Campaign, p. 63Google Scholar. On p. 64 Lee refers to these guns as being ‘inefficiently served’.

page 48 note 10 Ibid. p. 66.

page 48 note 11 Ibid. p. 64.

page 49 note 1 The original draft of Lee's Santiago Campaign in the Ministry of Defence Library contains the following remarks, pp. 28–9 (equivalent to p. 66 in the printed version), which were later censored:

‘ By far the worst feature, however, of the Artillery work was its timidity. This was shown on so many occasions, both on July 1 and in the subsequent fighting, that this arm gained a most unenviable reputation amongst the rest of the army.

‘ There was a disinclination to bring guns up to the front and a tendency to retire them as soon as fired upon, which is difficult to explain satisfactorily.

‘ The most glaring case was that of Best's battery, which on the afternoon of July 1 was brought into action on the San Juan ridge, in line with the first brigade of Wheeler's Division. The range was undoubtedly close and the Spanish rifle fire brisk, but the guns were sheltered in shallow pits and very little exposed.

‘ In any case their fire was much needed and their presence invaluable as a moral support to the exhausted infantry holding the ridge.

‘ After less than half an hour in action, however, and with a loss of only one man killed and 6 wounded, the battery went out of action and retired at a gallop, taking refuge behind the Hacienda hill. This left a gap in the centre of the line and had a most demoralising effect upon the infantry, who were heard to exclaim “There go the guns leaving us here to be murdered”.

‘ This demoralisation of the Artillery was, I believe, largely due to the character of the officer commanding it, and it is only just to state that the tone of this arm showed a marked improvement after the arrival of General Randolph and his six additional batteries. ’

page 49 note 2 Ibid. p. 64.

page 49 note 3 Ibid. p. 71.

page 50 note 1 Lee, , Santiago Campaign, p. 76Google Scholar.

page 50 note 2 Ibid. p. 59 and p. 73.

page 50 note 3 Ibid. p. 57.

page 50 note 4 Ibid. p. 76.

page 50 note 5 Ibid.

page 50 note 6 Ibid. p. 73.

page 51 note 1 Lee, , Santiago Campaign, p. 96–7Google Scholar. See also Lee, ‘The Regulars At El Caney’, loc. cit. p. 408.

page 51 note 2 Lee, , Santiago Campaign, p. 76Google Scholar.

page 51 note 3 Leverson, , Spanish Forces in Cuba, p. 48Google Scholar.

page 51 note 4 Ibid. p. 4, in Leverson's covering letter to the Marquis of Salisbury, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 8 November 1898.

page 51 note 5 Ibid.

page 51 note 6 Ibid. p. 43.

page 51 note 7 Ibid. pp. 17–20.

page 52 note 1 Leverson, , Spanish Forces in Cuba, pp. 23–42Google Scholar.

page 52 note 2 Ibid. p. 18.

page 52 note 3 Paget, op. cit. pp. 32–3.

page 52 note 4 Ibid. p. 33. Paget, p. 10, also remarked that ‘although entreated and forcibly urged to close and make an effort with boats to save human life, Hansom absolutely declined, nor would he allow volunteers to take boats in’. See also Davis, , The Cuban and Porto Rican Campaigns, p. 128Google Scholar.

page 53 note 1 Paget, op. cit. p. 17.

page 53 note 2 Lee, , Operations in Porto Rico, pp. 106–7Google Scholar.

page 53 note 3 Ibid. p. 114.

page 53 note 4 Ibid. p. 111.

page 53 note 5 Ibid. p. 114. Lee made his point by relating a curious incident: ‘A striking example of this was afforded by a military execution which took place at Ponce on 10th August, the details of which were carefully suppressed. The condemned man (a private of Volunteers) was seated on his coffin 30 yards from the firing squad of six men. Five bullets pierced the upper part of his body, in spite of which he stood up and commenced to walk away, and had to be brought back and finished off with a pistol by the sergeant of the firing squad’.

page 54 note 1 Lee, , Operations in Porto Rico, p. 109Google Scholar. Lieut. Edwards, Frank E., The '98 Campaign of the 6th Massachusetts, U.S.V. (Boston, 1899), pp. 100–7Google Scholar, claims that although large numbers of men did fall by the wayside this was due to exhaustion and poor diet, and that the case of the 6th Massachusetts was no worse than that of other regiments.

page 54 note 2 Lee, , Operations in Porto Rico, p. 109Google Scholar. Edwards, op. cit. pp. 112–25, gives a longer and somewhat different account of the episode.

page 54 note 3 Lee, , Operations in Porto Rico, p. 109Google Scholar.

page 54 note 4 Davis, Richard Harding, The Notes Of A War Correspondent (New York, 1911), pp. 104–12Google Scholar, and Davis, , The Cuban and Porto Rican Campaigns, pp. 344–8Google Scholar.

page 54 note 5 Davis, , The Cuban and Porto Rican Campaigns, pp. 353–5Google Scholar.

page 55 note 1 Atkins, John Black, The War In Cuba. The Experiences Of An Englishman With The United States Army (London, 1899), p. 250–1Google Scholar.

page 55 note 2 Lee, , Operations in Porto Rico, p. 113Google Scholar.

page 55 note 3 Paget, op. cit. p. 18.

page 55 note 4 Ibid.

page 56 note 1 Paget, op. cit. p. 19.