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unit and equipment were intact. They stepped off the flatcars into the chaos of the harbor, staring in alarm at the thousands of men who had beaten them there and were struggling to scamper onto the ships in time.
    More confusion ensued when they looked out at the flotilla of thirty-one ships and realized they had no instructions about which one was assigned to them. Roosevelt tracked down Colonel Charles Frederic Humphrey, the overwhelmed officer in charge of loading operations, who told Roosevelt to take a launch out to the
Yucatan
, which was anchored off the dock. Roosevelt mustered his men, and together they outmaneuvered two other regiments also anxious to board the ship, which was quickly filled to capacity. Roosevelt managed to get two of his horses, Rain in the Face and Texas, on board as well.
    And there they remained for a week, the entire expedition that was supposed to leave at dawn, sweltering beneath the blistering Florida sun, chowing down on bad food—including so-called corned beef, which the men called “embalmed meat”—fuming inwardly over the hopelessly crowded conditions aboard ship andboiling to get into action as they waited for orders to sail. On the evening of June 13, they finally received word to get ready to depart from their US homeland the next morning and head down the coast of Florida toward war in Cuba.

    When Roosevelt discovered that no ship had been assigned to the Rough Riders to transport them to Cuba, he outmaneuvered two other regiments to get his men on board the already overcrowded
Yucatan.
    Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (LC-USZ62-57122)
     8
    T he black regiments, along with a small group of white soldiers, were assigned to six ships: the
Miami
,
Alamo
,
Comal
,
Concho
,
City of Washington
, and
Leona.
They were sent down to the lowest deck, where no light could penetrate the dark enclosure beyond the ten feet from the main hatch. The bunks were stacked in four tiers and lined up so closely together that the men could barely slip between them. They were constructed of raw timber, with rectangular rims four to six inches high. There was no bedding except for whatever the men could improvise for themselves, using blankets for mattresses and haversacks for pillows. The men were forced to stack their gear, including their clothes, shelter-halves, rifles, and ammunition, on their bunks, allowing them scarcely enough room to stretch out and sleep. Toilet and bathing facilities were all but nonexistent. The lowest deck of the
Concho
contained a single toilet for more than twelve hundred soldiers.
    Adding insult to injury, the black troops were confined aboard ship during the time they were in port, while their white brethren were allowed to visit the bars, brothels, and cafés in Last Chance Village whenever they pleased. They crowded onto the upper decksto find sunlight and breathe fresh air as often as they could, but they seethed over the ongoing racism they were subjected to, even as they prepared to risk their lives in war on foreign soil.
    Sergeant Major Frank W. Pullen of the Twenty-Fifth said that the black troops on board were not allowed to “intermingle” with the whites. “We were put on board,” he said, “but it is simply because we cannot use the term
under board.
We were huddled together below two other regiments and under the water line, in the dirtiest, closest, most sickening place imaginable. For about fifteen days we were on the water in this dirty hole, but being soldiers we were compelled to accept this without a murmur.” They ate corned beef, canned tomatoes, and hardtack until they were almost sickened by it, but it was the only food available for them.
    Their anger reached a boiling point when their officers ordered them to let the white regiments make coffee and eat their meals first, before the black troops could assuage their own hunger. Pullen said it was a miracle they managed