As dawn broke over the South China Sea on Saturday, 30 April 1898, the ships of U.S. Navy Commodore George Dewey’s Asiatic Squadron sighted Cape Bolinao, the westward-most point of the Philippine island of Luzon, 560 miles from where they had started a few days earlier at Hong Kong. Dewey’s singular concern as the verdant coastline came into view was where he would find his target: the Spanish Pacific fleet under the command of Admiral Patricio Montojo y Pasarón.
Conflict in the Caribbean brought Dewey to the Philippines. War between the United States and Spain had been a possibility for some time, chiefly because of Spanish attempts to crush an ongoing revolution in Cuba. The Navy considered an attack on the Spanish base at Manila as a way of gaining leverage at the inevitable bargaining table. Consequently, years earlier strategists at the nascent Naval War
College in Newport, Rhode Island, and the Office of Naval Intelligence drew up outlines for such an attack. Now Dewey was here to carry it out.
Led by the protected cruiser Olympia, Dewey’s flagship, the squadron cruised southward. “Poet or painter never pictured a lovelier scene,” wrote a ship’s doctor as he watched the Edenic country slip past in the afternoon light, “for in color and luxuriance of vegetation this island is not excelled anywhere in the world.” He and his mates would have enjoyed the voyage more if it had not been for “the preparations for battle and death seen on every side.”1
Night fell as the squadron approached the mouth of Manila Bay. Temperatures were still in the 80s as periodic flashes of lightning in the distance turned the sky a copper color and gave sailors quick glimpses of the looming headlands. All the lights were out on Dewey’s ships save for a small white light at each stern, shielded on its sides so that it could be seen only from directly behind. At 2240 orders quietly circulated for the men to get to their battle stations as the ships passed through a light shower, just enough to get the decks wet.
Walking back to the stern rail of the Olympia, Joseph Stickney, a journalist and former U.S. Naval Academy midshipman who had joined the squadron in Japan as one of Dewey’s informal aides, could barely see the “ghostly shape” of the protected cruiser Baltimore 400 yards back as the second in the line of ships smoothly approaching the passage. Four hundred yards behind the Baltimore steamed the smaller protected cruiser Raleigh, visible from the flagship only fleetingly when the moon was completely unobscured by the broken cloud deck and shining on the water. Behind the Raleigh was the gunboat Petrel, then the gunboat Concord, and the stalwart protected cruiser Boston. Then came the wooden-hulled revenue cutter McCulloch and two unarmed colliers, Nanshan and Zafiro, which Dewey had purchased at Hong Kong along with their loads of coal. Water that hissed past the grey steel hulls seemed to the nervous sailors impossibly loud. “A fleet stealing into an enemy’s bay never made so much noise as we did,” one sailor remarked.2
Then, at about 2330, as the McCulloch was passing El Fraile—a rocky little island about two-thirds of the way between Corregidor and the southern shore—soot rising through her single stack was ignited by a spark from her furnace. It momentarily flared like a torch extending up into the night sky while flames also shot downward into the engine room. It was as if a beacon had been lit in the middle of the dark channel, “like a bonfire at election time,” a stunned sailor watching from the Boston put it.3
Suddenly the bright crimson trail of a rocket rose skyward from Corregidor, probably a signal to Manila that ships were trying to run the channel. Railings, masts, and men all cast garish quivering shadows on the decks as the searing light seemed to tear back what little cover the night was providing. For a moment after the rocket burned out, silence and darkness returned. But then the guns. From the Olympia, Dewey looked back to see flashes from the south shore of the channel—and closer, from El Fraile. A shell tore over
the Raleigh. Another dull boom echoed across the still water and a geyser of water erupted just behind the Baltimore. Eager gunners on board the Boston, Raleigh, Concord, and McCulloch all scrambled to fire back. The Boston hove to starboard toward the flashes. A shot split the air over the Concord with a hiss, seeming to pass directly between its masts before splashing into the sea off to port. Gunners on board the Olympia wanted to return fire, but Dewey calmly ordered them to hold. Ammunition had to be conserved. The other ships could handle it.
As suddenly as it had begun, the firing stopped. Silence returned to the channel. Down in the engine room of the McCulloch, however, the battle had claimed its first casualty. Chief Engineer Frank B. Randall had collapsed and died, desperately trying to put out the fire that had flared from her stack and for a moment brought Spanish shells down around Dewey’s squadron.
Once the Nanshan cleared the narrows, the column steered northeastward toward the middle of Manila Bay. The Olympia signaled for the ships to reduce speed as they passed from immediate danger. Dewey did not intend to arrive at Manila until daybreak because he wanted his officers and sailors to rest before the fight he knew was coming. At the order to stand at ease, men slumped to the deck, trusting that such an order from the commodore meant they could relax for the moment, at least until dawn. A few shut their eyes and fell asleep immediately, but others were far too anxious. Stewards circulated with coffee pots. There was hardtack and cold meat if anyone was hungry. The hardtack was embossed with “Remember the Maine.”4
Dewey turned to Captain Charles Gridley with concern, for he knew the heat and stress were taking a toll on his already poor health. He had only known Gridley since the beginning of the year, but he liked him and was worried. He encouraged the captain to go below and lie down, get some sleep. The ships were in the clear until dawn. No, Gridley said. The Olympia was his ship. He wanted to see her through. He took a cup of coffee from a passing steward, excused himself, and headed down the steps to the main deck. Dewey stayed on the bridge, sipping at tea that had long since gone cold.
As the American ships approached Manila, there was no sign of the Spanish fleet. Dewey now knew where they were. The Olympia turned to her right, paralleling the coastline, heading for the Spanish anchorage at the southern edge of the bay. The order for battle stations quickly passed along the ships. Once the sky began to lighten, sailors spotted the line of Spanish warships through the tropical morning haze. No breezes had yet arisen, and in fact the day would turn out beastly hot with almost no wind at all. The Olympia signaled for the ships behind her to close ranks to 200 yards and increase speed to eight knots. Gun crews began aiming and gauging range.5
When the Spanish ships opened fire at 0515 it was no great surprise, at least to Dewey. He knew they would fire first and anticipated that their initial shots would be “hasty and inaccurate,” as he later said. His worry over his ammunition supply dictated his tactical choices. He wanted all his ships in range before he gave the order to fire. For 20 long minutes, Dewey’s squadron steamed ahead, watching Spanish rounds fall short. The wait was agonizing on the men who desperately wanted to fire back. “Our hearts threatened to burst from desire to respond,” one gunner later remembered. They whispered “Hold your fire, hold your fire, hold your fire” to the steady rhythm of the engines. Sometimes a shell would burst well short of its target and the sailors could see the pieces of shrapnel hurtling toward them. Other Spanish shots that hit the water sometimes skipped like stones thrown across a pond.6
Finally, when a Spanish shell burst directly over the center of the Olympia, Dewey knew his ships were close enough. He calmly called to the Olympia’s captain through the speaking tube that connected the bridge to the armored conning tower. “You may fire when you are ready, Captain Gridley.” Gridley gave a nod to a bugler standing nearby, and, as if it were a cavalry charge on the Great Plains, the signal to fire rang out. The starboard 8-inch gun in the Olympia’s bow turret was first to fire.7
At 0541 Dewey finally ordered a sharp turn to starboard and her port side battery opened up. One by one the ships behind her in the column swung to starboard when they reached that same point and unleashed the full torrent of their port batteries. Within just a few minutes, white smoke hung in the still air like a heavy fog, repeatedly illuminated by the flashes from muzzles of every size.
“It is almost impossible to describe the situation at this moment,” marveled one of Dewey’s aides when all the squadron’s guns began firing. “War has always been fearful, but the confusion and horror of modern warfare can only be understood by an eyewitness.” Of the sound, another sailor said, “The thunders of heaven would have been lost in its din. It wasfierce and fast, like the rolling of all the drums in the world, or like bolts of heavy sail-cloth torn into shreds by the wind.” The long history of war at sea had never seen anything like it.8
On deck, officers and sailors alike reflexively ducked any time a shell burst nearby, while shrapnel cut lines and gouged holes in the decks. Below, it was deafening when a shell struck the side. From the hospital ward in the forward part of the Olympia, surgeons, nurses, and a chaplain watched through the ports as the sound of the ship’s guns thundered down through the decks. One incoming shell hit the water what seemed like just a few feet from the bow, and “it seemed inevitable that we should be destroyed,” said the ship’s junior surgeon, but it ricocheted “clear over the vessel, with a screech that was indescribable.” Then before anyone could realize what had happened another Spanish shell tore into the hull right where they were and ripped through the hospital compartments. No one was killed but some were knocked senseless by the blast. Another shell hit the hull squarely with another deafening bang and dented in the steel plates nearly two inches. Farther back on the starboard side, a hit from a six-pounder shell tore up planking and carried away one of the small boat davits.
As his ships reached the end of Montojo’s line, Dewey ordered a 180-degree turn to starboard to pass back along in front of the Spanish. As the American line doubled back on itself, for a moment the ships passed alongside each other. Their crews waved and cheered wildly. Two crewmen on board the Raleigh snatched up a guitar and a violin and launched into a rousing version of “There’ll be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.” “Keep it up,” said one of the officers, “I want the music to reach the upper deck.”9
A shell hit just 30 feet from the Petrel, sending a torrent of water as high as the top of the foremast and drenching everyone on deck. Another nicked the mast of the Boston, sending splinters flying into the officers on the bridge, and exploded ten feet past the railing. The Baltimore, second in line behind the Olympia, took the worst pounding. One armor-piercing shell tore into her starboard side behind one of her 6-inch guns. It ignited shells, which exploded with a storm of shrapnel. Hustling through a compartment nearby, Lieutenant Frank W. Kellogg had his uniform coat nearly ripped off his back by the blast. Another sailor’s leg was shattered, but he stayed at his post, later claiming not to have realized it was broken.10
After the fourth pass in front of the Spanish line, Dewey was increasingly preoccupied with his ammunition reserves. In the chaos of battle, it was impossible to know how many shells his squadron had fired. At about 0715 he ordered his chief of staff, Captain Benjamin Lamberton, to get him the answer. It shocked him: The five-inch guns had only about 15 shells left. It couldn’t be right, he thought, that’s impossible. But he had to be sure. In mounting frustration, he decided to suspend the attack and haul off toward the middle of the bay and get some solid answers.11
As the American column met up with the McCulloch and her companions where they had gone to wait out the battle, Dewey summoned his captains to the flagship. Men stood panting from the heat that seemed more like midday than early morning. Almost all of them had stripped to the waist and were streaked with gunpowder dust, smoke stains, and sweat. “I was 32 hours in the engine-rooms of the Baltimore,” one crewman said later, where the temperature ranged from 120 to 160 degrees. “If the Spaniards send me to hell,” said another, “I’m getting a good start here.” Dewey, by contrast, was immaculate in his dress whites, although he was wearing a grey civilian cap instead of his white uniform hat, which, to his frustration, he had somehow misplaced.12
Dewey’s attendant brought him a cup of coffee and his dog, Bob, bounded up the steps to the bridge wagging his tail. The doctor and ships’ pharmacists brought up gallons of whiskey, and officers and men alike fell into line for a stiff belt. “It was against the rules of the blue book,” one remarked, “but we needed it, and that badly, for we were exhausted from heat and hard work, smoke and lack of proper food.”13
Dewey learned that 85 rounds of 5-inch shells remained on the Olympia. Far better than 15 but insufficient if the fight were to continue as long as it already had. Of the shells for the main 8-inch guns, over half were gone. Another two hours of bombardment was out of the question. The Baltimore had the largest reserves, so Dewey ordered her to take the lead when the fighting resumed. Just after 1115, the American ships steamed back into the fight.
Now the Spanish were firing much slower, and it was evident the previous hours had taken a severe toll. Most of the fire now was from shore batteries, not from Montojo’s fleet, and to these Dewey’s gunners turned their attention. Fountains of sand shot into the air as shells exploded in the earth embankments constructed around the Sangley Point forts. The eager captain of the Boston, the oldest ship under Dewey’s command and one of the first two all-steel cruisers in the U.S. Navy, got her so close to shore her single screw started churning up mud. One blast from her 8-inch gun dismantled three guns.
The abandoned Spanish protected cruiser Reina Cristina and the Castillo were both now burning out of control, but the Don Antonio de Ulloa kept up the fight even as her guns sank, one by one, under the surface. Finally, only her bow gun was serviceable, her crew was standing waist deep in water and firing “as though victory were crowning them,” said an American admiringly. When it became evident that the Spanish could no longer keep up the fight, Dewey sent the Petrel into the harbor to finish off the remainder of the Spanish ships and shell any buildings that still flew the Spanish flag. She “coolly banged away as though she were an armored battle-ship,” said sailors on board other ships who immediately began calling the diminutive gunboat the “Baby Battleship.”14
At 1230 the Spanish flag over the arsenal at Cavite came down and a white one went up in its place. Elation erupted on board the American ships. Signal flags spelling out “none killed aboard” appeared on American masts. Men cheered and hugged one another, bursting with relief that the battle was over.
That evening, the sky over Manila was clear with hardly a cloud, and countless stars shone bright. The bay was smooth as glass, as if a battle had never been fought. To the south, however, dull red flames still rose into the sky from seven ships that continued to burn, a testament to the violence of the morning. Occasionally, another magazine would ignite “like the erupting of a volcano.” As curious crowds ventured down to the waterfront to see the ships of the American squadron, Dewey, sitting on deck in a wicker chair and smoking a cigar, requested the Olympia’s band play Spanish folk songs rather than anything distinctively American. The melody of “La Paloma” wafted ashore to the walls of the old city, whose long history as a possession of Spain was now, like the day itself, in its twilight. As he tossed his half-smoked cigar into the bay, George Dewey and the Americans’ presence in the Philippines was just beginning.15
1. “The Battle of Manila Bay,” Century Magazine 56, no. 4 (August 1898): 620.
2. Joseph L. Stickney, Admiral Dewey at Manila and the Complete Story of the Philippines (Chicago: Imperial Publishing Co., 1899), 35; and “Never Made So Much Noise,” Thomas J. Vivian, ed., With Dewey at Manila (New York: R.F. Fenno & Co., 1898), 32.
3. “The Battle of Manila Bay,” 624.
4. For the embossed hardtack, see Roy F. Dibble, Strenuous Americans (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1923), 80–81.
5. Joseph Stickney relates this scene from the perspective of Manila, using in part a Manila newspaper as his source, in Admiral Dewey at Manila, 59–63.
6. See, Carl LaVO, “Olympian Effort to Save the Olympia,” Naval History 30, no. 4 (August 2016).
7. ADM George Dewey, USN, Autobiography of George Dewey: Admiral of the Navy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1987), 62.
8. Stickney, Admiral Dewey at Manila, 46; “The Thunders of Heaven,” in LT G. Tisdale, USN, Three Years Behind the Guns: The True Chronicles of a “Diddy-Box” (New York: The Century Co., 1908), 243.
9. Louis Stanley Young, ed., The Bounding Billow: Being an Authentic Account of the Memorable Cruise of the U.S. Flagship “Olympia” from 1895 to 1899, as Recorded in the Different Issues of That Official Journal, Published on Board the Ship During the Voyage (San Francisco: The Whitaker & Ray Co., 1899), 80; and Laurin Hall Healy and Luis Kutner, The Admiral (New York: Ziff-Davis Publishing Co., 1944), 183.
10. “Stories Told by Dewey’s Brave Men,” New York Journal, 1 October 1899, 49.
11. For 15 shells remaining, see John Barrett, Admiral George Dewey, A Sketch of the Man (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1899, reprinted by Forgotten Books, 2015), 84; for more frustration at the poor American marksmanship, see Healy and Kutner, The Admiral, 188.
12. Louis Stanley Young, Life and Heroic Deeds of Admiral Dewey (Boston: B. B. Russell, 1899), 101, 136; and C. A. Silk and J. J. Vanderveer, Souvenir of the Battle of Manila Bay (Buffalo, NY: The Sutton Press, 1898), 21
13. Young, Life and Heroic Deeds, 101.
14. Tisdale, Three Years Behind the Guns, 243; “The Battle of Manila Bay,” 614.
15. Young, Life and Heroic Deeds, 77. For the Olympia’s band playing “La Paloma,” see Healy and Kutner, The Admiral, 191.