The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1898-07-23
The SITUATION.
n spanish ships at Manila Tell a Pitt
full and Terrible Tale.

full and Terrible Tale.
correspondence of the Associated Press.
Manila, May 29.-The British gunboat
Swift arrived here a few days ago from
Hong Kong with mail. All the mails
went ashore. There are business firms
with immense interests at stake, all de-
pending on mail advices, now that tele-
graph cables are cut. For a few days
the lloilo cable was working, but tina
ala not last long, for the Americans
round out that the Spaniards were COM
munlcating with their home government
on war matters and so they stopped it.
Inc last message said that a squadron
OF four armored cruisers, accompanied
by coal ships and conveying torpedo
boats and troop ships with II, 900 soldiers
on board had left Spain for the Philip
pines. Admiral Dewey has been most
courteous and ~obliging. He readily
gave permission to visit the arsenal at
Cavite, where, however, there is nothing
to be seen of interest.
Cavite is on a low. sandy spot, about
eight miles from Manila, as the crow
flies, but nearly 30 miles by road, as
there is a broad bay intervening, and the
shores are swampy for some distance
inland. The Cavite peninsula points in
the direction of Manila, and is Joined
to the mainland by a low, narrow 18TH
mus, where, in last years rebellion, two
bodies OF Spanish troops met and mis-
took each other, over 1000 soldiers los
ing their lives through the blunder. AT
the end of the peninsula are two points,
a large one outside, named Sangley: a
small one, Cavite proper, on the inner
side, Jutting out between the upper and
lower parts of Cavite bay. On Sangley
point is the slipway for repairing ships
and a small battery of two krupp five
centimetre guns
AT "a wife ARSENAL Sax,ara1 80 IL. H.
type of Armstrong Misunderstanding six
inch guns are mounted, apparently for
with symmetrical mounds of
shot alongside. In the arsenal in
closure are buildings of the usual sort,
machine sheds, ammunition stores, etc.
The engine shops are kept in good order
by the Americans. 1t is small, but use
full. The machines generally bear the
mark of English makers and are in a
satisfactory state of repair. Here n
there the buildings show a great shot
hole, but there was little Smelling of the
place.
The Spanish ships i'm the bay, how
ever, tell a pitiful and terrible tale. The
poor old Castillo is the worst, though she
shows the least, for she is now almost
entirely submerged. She was a wooden
cruiser and all her woodwork burned to
the waters edge, leaving the metal
the ribs and frames, tunnels, |
ash hoists and gun shields,
battered, perforated in a thousand spots
and hammered and twisted out of posi-
ton and almost out of recognition. She
is a wonderful, terrible testimony of the
destructiveness of modern weapons well
handled. 1t is the most shocking OBJ
ject lesson that the friends of peace
possibly adduce, to picture a num-
Der of men and boys cooped up for two
hours on a floating target, to be shot to
bits with large and small projectiles.
managing, mutilating and numbering
mercilessly.
The Castillo was so old that when she
had her orders to venture out of Ma
Mia bay, TO go only 30 miles to Subic,
the working of the propeller shaft in the
tubes started the timber n she leaked
too fast for the pumps to keep her afloat.
had to be beached gently at Subic
until the leaky funnel and timbers could
be patched up with cement. When her
guns were fired she again started to fill
with water. 1t was an enormous crime
to put such a vessel in the fighting.
To make men fight in such a coffin ship
was simply diabolical.
The Reina Christina is less submerged,
less burned, but shows more battering.
her bridge itself only the starboard
supports and a foot or two of the bridge
itself remain, the rest evidently being
blown into atoms by a shell which went
In and struck the funnel near the base
and apparently exploded itself. causing
dreadful havoc in the engine room.
1t is thought that unless peace is
without further delay Manila is a
city, for the insurgents are clos
ing In rapidly and the city could no
more survive a big battle than a house
could Withstand a typhoon. Here is a
rich seaport, a metropolis almost as
as Liverpool. The majority of the
are of a high infiammable type
and a little Smelling would burn the
whole city to the ground. Here is a