On 1 May 1898 Commodore George Dewey's U.S. Asiatic Squadron destroyed the Spanish squadron of Rear Admiral Patricio Montojo in Manila Bay, in the Philippines, in the first major battle of the Spanish-American War. No American was killed. On 1 May 1945 Australian troops landed on the oil island of Tarakan, off Borneo.
Battle of Manila Bay
1 May 1898 · 128 years ago
Orders from Washington
When war came in April 1898, Commodore Dewey's Asiatic Squadron lay at Hong Kong: the cruisers Olympia, his flagship, Baltimore, Raleigh and Boston, and the gunboats Concord and Petrel. The naval historian French Ensor Chadwick prints the telegram from Washington, dated 24 April there, that reached Dewey at Mirs Bay on the Chinese coast two days later: "War has commenced between the United States and Spain. Proceed at once to Philippine Islands. Commence operations at once, particularly against the Spanish fleet. You must capture vessels or destroy. Use utmost endeavors". EBSCO, by contrast, has Dewey receiving his orders on 24 April. The squadron sailed on the afternoon of 27 April, Chadwick writes.1
Montojo, a rear admiral, expected to lose, Chadwick writes. At a meeting with the governor-general on 15 March, according to Chadwick, he said that his "poor squadron would not be able to withstand the onslaught of the American ships, and that he was firmly convinced that it would be destroyed". He took his ships to Subic Bay, found that the guns meant to defend it were still not mounted, and after a council of his captains on 28 April went back to Manila Bay.2
In his report Montojo explains that his captains rejected a position off the city, since it would bring a bombardment down on Manila, and chose to anchor off Cavite and Sangley Point, where the ships could fight beside the shore batteries. One of them, the old wooden cruiser Castilla, leaked so badly at Subic that, once the leaks were stopped with cement, her engines could not be used at all; in the English text of the report printed by Chadwick, she "could be merely considered as a floating battery, incapable of any movement or action". Chadwick, himself a retired American rear admiral, judged that by accepting battle "wholly unsupported by the shore defences of Manila" Montojo removed any hope.3
Past El Fraile in the dark
On 30 April Dewey's scouts searched Subic Bay and found it empty. That evening the squadron reached the entrance to Manila Bay and made for the wide Boca Grande channel with its lights screened. At about ten minutes after midnight the battery on the rock of El Fraile opened fire, a few ships replied, and the column steamed on into the bay. Dewey then slowed down so as not to reach Manila before daylight.4
Five runs off Cavite
At daybreak the Americans saw only merchant ships off the city and turned toward Cavite, where Montojo's seven ships lay in line off the arsenal and Sangley Point. The Olympia led, followed by the Baltimore, Raleigh, Petrel, Concord and Boston. The Spanish squadron opened fire at about 5.15, by both Dewey's and Montojo's accounts; Montojo has the Sangley Point battery firing first, at 5. At 5.40, Dewey wrote, at a range of 5,000 yards, he turned to the Olympia's captain and said: "You may fire when you are ready, Gridley".5
The squadron passed the Spanish line five times, three times heading west and twice heading east, working closer on each run; Dewey puts the nearest range at 2,000 yards, the New York Herald correspondent J. L. Stickney at about 2,500. The Reina Cristina, Montojo's flagship, came out toward the Olympia and was driven back by concentrated fire.6
Montojo's report describes what happened aboard her: a shell that put out of action all the men serving four rapid-fire guns, the steering gear destroyed, a shell bursting in the officers' cabin among the wounded, and fires fore and aft. With half the crew out of action, he wrote, he gave the order to sink and abandon her and, "in profound grief", hoisted his flag on the Isla de Cuba. Her captain, Luis Cadarso, was killed while directing the rescue of his men.7
"To hell with breakfast!"
At 7.35 the Olympia's captain reported that only fifteen rounds per gun remained for the 5-inch battery, and Dewey hauled off to redistribute ammunition. The report was wrong: according to Dewey, fifteen rounds per gun had been fired, not left. Lieutenant Calkins, the Olympia's navigator, wrote that "there was no shortage of ammunition". The crews, who had had little more than coffee at four, were given breakfast.8
Stickney, a former naval officer who, by Dewey's account, stood with him on the flagship's bridge, wrote that as they hauled off "the gloom on the bridge of the Olympia was thicker than a London fog in November". When Stickney told one of the gun crews that they were stopping for breakfast, the man appealed to Dewey's chief of staff, Lamberton: "For God's sake, captain, don't let us stop now. To hell with breakfast!"9
A white flag at Cavite
Dewey went back in at 11.16. Only the shore batteries and the Don Antonio de Ulloa, moored off Sangley Point, still fought, and the Ulloa was sunk. Dewey sent the shallow-draft Petrel into Cavite harbor, and after her fire the Spanish flag over the arsenal came down and a white flag went up; Dewey has the Petrel signalling the surrender at 12.30. Chadwick writes that Enrique Sostoa, commanding the arsenal, hoisted the white flag at 12.15 without referring to Montojo.10
The Petrel's executive officer, Lieutenant E. M. Hughes, then took a whaleboat with seven men and set fire to the abandoned Spanish ships. Montojo, by his own report wounded in the left leg, had gone ashore to be treated.11
Counting the cost
No American was killed, and two officers and six men of the Baltimore were slightly wounded. EBSCO also gives eight Americans wounded.12
For the Spanish, Lieutenant Ellicott of the Baltimore established "by painstaking inquiry", as Chadwick reports, 167 killed and 214 wounded, 381 in all; Dewey and EBSCO also give 381. Montojo's own final statement, quoted by Chadwick, gives 75 dead and 281 wounded in the squadron and the navy yard, 356 in all. Chadwick added that Ellicott's count of only ten casualties ashore "would appear from many accounts much too small".13
From Cavite to the Treaty of Paris
A Library of Congress timeline calls Manila Bay the first major battle between Spanish and U.S. forces, and the State Department's Office of the Historian calls it the first battle of the war. Dewey now held the bay. In his cable of 4 May he wrote that he could "take city at any time, but I have not sufficient men to hold"; EBSCO says he lacked the men to occupy Manila, a Library of Congress guide the manpower to capture it.14
Dewey was given the rank of rear admiral and later raised to admiral of the navy. American troops under Major General Wesley Merritt took Manila on 13 August, the day after the peace protocol was signed. In the Treaty of Paris of 10 December 1898 Spain agreed to sell the Philippines to the United States for $20 million.15
Chadwick judged that the military results of a battle fought so far from the main theater "could not be great", while its moral and political results were "vast and far-reaching". Montojo was tried in Spain. Chadwick prints the decree of 10 October 1899 that, after a sentence of the Supreme Council of War and Marine, retired him from active service and forbade him to discharge any public duties, and Chadwick called such treatment "a stain upon the honor of Spain".16
Battle of Tarakan, 1945: the airfield that came too late
1 May 1945 · 81 years ago
Australian troops with a small Dutch contingent landed on Japanese-held Tarakan off Borneo, opening the Allied Borneo campaign. The island fell after weeks of hard fighting, but its airfield was so wrecked that the victory is judged not worth its cost.
Read the full story of Battle of Tarakan, 1945: the airfield that came too late ›
