Jasper County Democrat, Volume 6, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 July 1903 — SAYS DONS COULD HAVE WON. [ARTICLE]

SAYS DONS COULD HAVE WON.

Hero of the Merrimac Declares Cer* vera’a Fleet Was Superior to Ours. Captain Richmond Pearson Hobson, the hero of the Merrimac, in an article printed in New York, makes some interesting statements concerning the battle of Santiago. He says: “At Santiago the Spaniards had good ships, heavily armed, of twenty knots speed. Outside we had but two fast ships in our squadron, the New York and prooklyn, and they only armed cruisers, our heavily armored vessels being only sixteen-knot ships. “If the Spaniards had clustered outside and stood away at twenty knots’ speed, and our motley fleet had put out in pursuit, before nightfall our vessels would have been far separated, scarcely one in the line being in sight of the next ahead or next astern, and the Spanish squadron could have turned around and defeated them one at a time. “The Spanish officers and enlisted men were brave and courageous, and died nobly at their posts of duty. The difference lay in efficiency. “Why this was not the result, instead of the complete destruction of the Spanish fleet, I can explain as follows: “Any person going down to our fleet prior to the war would have found every officer and enli-ted man engaged from morning to night, each in planniug and executing methods to increase the efficiency of his own department in battle. Reports from the Spanish squadron show no such activity; no target practice, only occasional perfunctory swinging of turret guns. “Admiral Cervera informed me when I called on him at Annapolis, returning the gracious call that he paid to me while in prison in Santiago, when the question of the bgjttle came up in conversation, that he had been forbidden by his government to cut out any of the woodwork, and that the cutting of the fire main on his flagship in the early stages of the action prevented fighting the tire, whicli raged with inconceivable Gereeness.”