rly fifty miles away the "Colon" was sunk at the mouth of the Tarquino
River.

And never was success obtained with such a trifling loss to the victors.
The Spanish gunnery had been wretchedly bad. The only ships hit were the
"Brooklyn" and the "Iowa," and neither received any serious damage. The
only losses by the enemy's fire were on board the "Brooklyn," where a
signalman was killed and two seamen wounded. Nine men were more or less
seriously injured by the concussion of their own guns.

It must be confessed that the gunnery of the Americans was not of a high
order. Some 6500 shells were expended during the action. The Spanish wrecks
were carefully examined, and all hits counted. Fires and explosions perhaps
obliterated the traces of some of them, but so far as could be ascertained,
the hits on the hulls and the upper works were comparatively few. And of
hits by the heavy 13-inch and 12-inch guns, only two could be traced
anywhere.

The Spanish squadron had 2300 officers and men on board when it left
Santiago. Of these 1600 were prisoners after the action. It was estimated
that in the fight 350 were killed and 150 wounded. This leaves some 200 to
be accounted for. Nearly 150 rejoined the garrison of Santiago after
swimming ashore. This leaves only fifty missing. They were probably drowned
or killed by the Cuban guerillas. The fact that three of the Spanish
cruisers had been rendered helpless by fires lighted on board by the
enemy's shells accentuated the lesson already learned from the battle of
the Yalu as to the necessity of eliminating inflammable material in the
construction and fittings of warships. The damage done to the "Vizcaya" by
the explosion of one of her own torpedoes in her bow-tube proved the
reality of a danger to which naval critics had already called attention.
Henceforth the torpedo tubes of cruisers and battleships were all made to
open below the water-line.

The result of the victory was a complete change in the situation at
Santiago. The destruction of Cervera's fleet was the "beginning of the end"
for the Spanish power in Cuba.

CHAPTER XIV

TSU-SHIMA

1905

When the war of 1894-5 between China and Japan was brought to a close by
the Treaty of Shimonoseki (17 April, 1895), the Japanese were in possession
of Korea and Southern Manchuria, Port Arthur and the Liao-tung Peninsula,
Wei-hai-wei and the Pescadores Islands, and a joint naval and military
expedition was read