They destroyed a Spanish squadron with no loss of American life and the battleship was hero of the day. But records of shots fired and hits scored tell a different story. The Americans fired 6000 rounds. Only 130 of those hit anything and only two hits out of 6000 rounds came from big battleship guns. Those two did only topside damage.
Similar stories come out of other modern naval artillery duels.
My 1970 Encyclopaedia Britannica says those big guns could hit a target with great precision at twenty-five miles. They could not. To do damage, a shell must land perpendicular to a ship's armor. At long distances shells come down in an arc. The chances of hitting anything become vanishingly small, and long-range hits necessarily deal glancing blows.