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to live through those days aboard ship in the harbor under such horrendous conditions. They swallowed their pride and accepted their fate without exploding in violence, a tribute to the collective self-discipline they displayed.
    The days passed with the men overwhelmed by acute boredom. There was little to do but fall in line for inspections, pull guard duty, exercise as best they could in the limited space, and gamble away the little money they had.
    Finally, word came that it was time to raise anchor and set off toward Cuba. They left Port Tampa the morning of June 14 to great fanfare, with bands playing, flags flying, and the men clustered like ants on the rigging as the flotilla slowly steamed out to sea.
    The transports presented a picturesque spectacle as they departed toward the open ocean. The ships sailed out in three columns, each column separated from the others by a thousand yards, with theships about four hundred yards apart from one another. Smaller vessels escorted the American fleet from Port Tampa until it reached a point between the Dry Tortugas and Key West, where it was met by the battleship
Indiana
and thirteen other war vessels. When they passed around Key West, the
New York
was in the lead, followed by the
Iowa
and the
Indiana.
The official count was fifty-three ships in all, including thirty-five transports, four auxiliary vessels, and fourteen warships. The American armada presented an impressive sight for a fledgling empire about to expand its global reach.
    â€œThe passage to Santiago was generally smooth and uneventful,” noted General Shafter in his official report. Colonel Wood described the passage from his own perspective with a bit more color: “Painted ships in a painted ocean—imagine three great long lines of steaming transports with a warship at the head of each line … on a sea of indigo blue as smooth as a millpond. The trade wind sweeping through the ship has made the voyage very comfortable.”
    It was not so comfortable for the men in the hold, however. Body lice had infested them and their clothing for weeks before they left, and without the ability to boil their uniforms and underwear aboard ship, they had to seize every opportunity to tie their belongings to ropes on deck and drag them in the water behind the moving ships to dislodge the parasites.
    The weather was balmy until the fleet entered the Windward Passage between the western coast of Haiti and the eastern tip of Cuba, where high winds and rough seas buffeted the ships. Throughout the journey, the Americans avoided an encounter with Cervera and his Spanish armada, which had slipped past Sampson’s North American Squadron on its voyage to Havana. After rounding the east coast of Cuba on the morning of June 20, the US ships headed west past Guantanamo Bay along the southern coastline toward the town of Daiquiri, about eighteen miles east of Santiago de Cuba.
    Despite the cool breeze, a heavy mist obscured the shore as the men prepared to disembark once the order came. At about five o’clock the next morning, the heavy gray clouds began to evaporate, the wind picked up, and breaking daylight revealed the great flotilla of transports stretching as far as five miles out to sea, with the warships closer in. Towering rocky hills devoid of foliage dominated the coastline. The boats anchored about noon slightly west of the harbor, where Rear Admiral Sampson was anxiously waiting. He boarded General Shafter’s vessel, the
Seguranca
, and together they debarked to confer with Cuban General Calixto García, who occupied the area with about four thousand well-armed, battle-hardened troops. That afternoon they met with the sixty-year-old Cuban leader in the town of Aserradero in Santiago Province.

    The US fleet followed a route southward along the west coast of Florida, then southeast across the Bahama Channel, and finally around the Windward Passage on its way to Daiquiri, near Santiago de Cuba on