SpanishAmericanWar.info The Navies

On paper, the Spanish navy was very powerful, and many observers expected much better results from the Spanish navy than the disasters which befell it . Before the war, Americans were fretful of a mighty Spanish armada bombarding costal cities and there were clamours for huge coastal defense guns . Gold reserves were moved inland on the east coast. However, the American navy was much more powerful than the Spanish navy, the American navy together had 116,445 tons against Spain's 56,644 tons . Spain only had two fifths of the American number of guns .

Commerce raiders were feared and the Spanish torpedo boats , ( torpedo boats had sunk many ships in the Sino-Japanese war ) were a source of consternation to the American navy . Like the Imperial Chinese, which was also very strong on paper against the Japanese navy in the first Sino-Japanese War a few years before in 1894-5, the reality of war revealed its great shortcomings .

At the beginning of 1898 Spain's population was estimated at eighteen million about a quarter of that of the United States ; and in other respects the disproportion of resources was still greater. Unlike the American navy which was able to appropriate millions, Spain was overwhelmingly burdened with debt .

Of armoured men-of-war the ships that win sea fights she had in commission six, against seven, and her vessels were individually inferior. In its second line the United States had thirteen good modern steel cruisers besides the New Orleans, bought just in time for the war ; Spain had only five that could be classed as such. The rest of her navy consisted mainly of old iron and wooden vessels and of small gunboats used in patrolling the Cuban coast. Of her six first-rates, only one was a battle ship the Pelayo, a steel vessel of 9,900 tons, launched at La Seyne (Toulon) in 1887 and since fitted with new boilers.

Another battle ship, the Emperador Carlos V, launched at Cadiz in 1895, was at Havre taking her armament aboard when the war began. In June she was hurried off with Camara s squadron, her equipment still incomplete. Spain had no other ship of this class in service or building.

The fighting strength of the Spanish navy lay in its armoured cruisers.

Nine of these were listed, but two of the nine were unfinished, and two the Numancia and the Vittoria were iron ships more than thirty years old, very slow,and practically use less for distant work. The other five cruisers were fine modern vessels. Four: the Almirante Oquendo, the Infanta Maria Teresa, the Princesa de Asturias, and the Vizcaya were sister ships, built in the Spanish yards, mainly by British constructors, during the last eight years. Each was of 7,000 tons, with a speed stated at twenty knots an hour, and costing three million dollars. The fifth was the Cristobal Colon, built at Sestri, Italy, as the Giuseppe Garibaldi II, the purchase of which was reported by the American newspapers, in March, 1898, as part of Spain's war preparations. As a matter of fact the Colon was bought in 1897, an order being placed with the same builders for a sister ship, which has never been delivered.

At the Spanish yards the most important are those at Cartagena, Cadiz, Ferrol, and Bilbao some other ships were building. Two were the unfinished cruisers Cardinal Cisneros and Cataluna, similar to the Vizcaya class. Another, the Isabel la Catolica, a 3,000ton cruiser, was to be paid for by a fund raised in Mexico ;a third small cruiser, the Rio de la Plata, was building at Havre, as a gift from the Spaniards of South America. None of these could be made ready for service, but two swift torpedo cruisers had just been completed in Thomson's yard, at Glasgow. In bringing them south their Spanish crews ran afoul of the Irish coast, and one was badly damaged.

The firing accuracy of the Spanish navy, according to a British naval observer was incredibly bad .

During the last three years her vessels had suffered many mishaps, and four had actually been lost one being the cruiser Reina Regente, which went down with all on board off Cape Trafalgar in 1895. The personnel of the Spanish navy recruited mainly by conscription in the coast districts was thus stated for 1898:

There were three major fleets in the spanish navy, the Cape Verde fleet under Admiral Cervera, the Far Eastern fleet under Admiral Montojo and the home fleet under admiral Admiral Camara .

Pascual Cervera y Topete, (February 18, 1839 - April 3, 1909) served as Almirante (or Admiral) of the Spanish Caribbean Squadron during the Spanish-American War. During his tenure, Cervera attempted a number of far-reaching reforms to make right what he called the numerous evils of Spanish naval administration at the time. These included graft and corruption in the ordnance branches of the fleet, a terrible maintenance performance record, and criminal neglect of the fleet's needs by Spain's inefficient parliament, the Cortes.

In 1896, Cervera resigned his position in disgust when a number of reforms put in place were overturned by vote-hungry politicians supported by sycophantic officers who were hungry for his job. After two years of isolation, Cervera was called back to service in the fleet, through the personal intercession of the Queen Regent and began a reorganisation of the vessels under his command, determined at least to bring the fleet to fighting shape before the now inevitable war with the United States of America erupted.

When war with America broke out, Cervera found himself given orders to sail immediately to the Caribbean and break the U.S. blockade. Despite a desperate plea for time to re-fit and to await the completion of badly needed reinforcing vessels, Cervera was immediately dispatched to Cuba. Despite a brilliant circumnavigation of U.S. naval forces, Cervera simply did not have the firepower to engage the might of the United States fleet. Foolish advertisement of his position in Cuba by the Spanish government of that island endangered a plan by Cervera to isolate the U.S. fleet in sections, and doomed his command to destruction.

Admiral Patricio Montojo y Pasar�n was the commander of the Spanish Far eastern fleet .Montojo fought in the Battle of Abtao and the Battle of El Callao under Admiral Casto M�ndez N��ez against Peru . in 1896 Admiral Montojo was called away from his positon as director of material from the Spanish Ministry of Marine and ordered to take command of the fleet in the Philoppines .Montojo tried to avoid the appointment, knowing that he was being set up to play the the scapgoat .Montojo begged Madrid for more supplies and ships, but they were not forthcoming .

For the defense of the Philippines Montojo had two cruisers, the Reina Cristina the Castilla and the gunboats Isla de Cuba, Isla de Luzon, Don Antonio de Ulloa, Don Juan de Austria and Marques del Duero .The engines of the Castilla were so old that they would no longer move the ship and she had to be towed .Montojo was wounded during the battle of Manila Bay .In March 1899 he was court-martialed and imprisoned. He was later absolved. Among his defenders was his onetime opponent in battle, Admiral George Dewey.

After the civil War, the American Navy declined to a point to which it could not hope to meet even the navy of Chile. However , a modernization program beginning in the 1880s brought the U.S. into the first rank of the world's navies by the end of the century.

.Battleships of the time were armed with two or four very powerful heavy guns, plus numerous rapid fire guns. They were heavily armored, in order to fight other battleships .

Cruisers , though lighter armored than battleships could travel farther and were feared for commerce raiding .

The onlysurvivor of America's Spanish-American War fleet, she is now a museum ship at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In 1897, five new battle ships were ordered. These the Illinois, the Kearsarge, the Kentucky, the Alabama, and the Wisconsin 11,525 tons each, and will practically double the fighting strength of the navy's first line. None of them had been launched at the outbreak of war with Spain. At the head of the list of ships in actual service there stood seven great engines of warfare which in speed, armament, and general efficiency were well prepared to meet anything of their inches on the sea. These included the four first-class battle ships four floating fortresses, carrying twelve- and thirteen-inch guns, making from fifteen and a half to seventeen knots an hour, and costing more than three million dollars each

For months before the war the navy had been holding itself in readiness to strike at short notice. In January, Admiral Sicard, commanding the North Atlantic squadron, rendezvoused at Key West the strongest fleet that ever went to sea under the American flag, its chief vessels being the Iowa, the Massa chusetts, the Indiana, the Maine, the Texas, the Brooklyn, and the New York. It was from this squadron that the Maine was detached for her fatal cruise to Havana. The rest of the fleet was still in Southern waters, from Hampton Roads to the West Indies, and the Cincinnati (brought up from the South Atlantic station), the Detroit, the Marblehead, the Montgomery, the monitors Amphitrite, Miantonomoh, Puritan, and Terror, and several other vessels, much more than replaced the lost battle ship.

Mr. John P Holland, whose remarkable ' submarine topedo boat ' had been arousing much interest, offered to sell the boat to the Navy for $175,000. In spite of favorable recommendations from Assistant Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt, the naval board rejected the offer .

Because of the inactivity of Secretary of the Navy John D. Long at the time, this basically gave Roosevelt control over the department.) Roosevelt was instrumental in preparing the Navy for the Spanish-American WarUpon the 1898 Declaration of War launching the Spanish-American War, Roosevelt resigned from the Navy Department. With the aid of U.S. Army Colonel Leonard Wood, Roosevelt found volunteers from cowboys from the Western territories to Ivy League friends from New York, forming the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment. The newspapers called them the "Rough Riders.

For months before the warthe navy had been holding itself in readiness to strike at short notice. In January, Admiral Sicard, commanding the North Atlantic squadron, rendezvoused at Key West the strongest fleet that ever went to sea under the American flag, its chief vessels being the Iowa, the Massa chusetts, the Indiana, the Maine, the Texas, the Brooklyn, and the New York. It was from this squadron that the Maine was detached for her fatal cruise to Havana. The rest of the fleet was still in Southern waters, from Hampton Roads to the West Indies, and the Cincinnati (brought up from the South Atlantic station), the Detroit, the Marble- head, the Montgomery, the monitors Amphitrite, Miantonomoh, Puritan, and Terror, and several other vessels, much more than replaced the lost battle ship.

United States navy was divided into two fleets, on opposite sides of the globe, ready to strike at Spain in the two remaining strongholds of her colonial empire. One was the North Atlantic squadron, in which were all the first-rate men-of-war; the other the fleet of cruisers at Hong-Kong.