ssive movement in the period covered by the blockade.
Admiral Cervera evidently thought that the chance of accomplishing
anything by means of a torpedo-boat attack was too remote to justify the
risk.

On the 6th of June Admiral Sampson bombarded the shore batteries and the
mouth of the harbor for two hours and a half, destroying a number of
houses on Smith Cay, setting fire to the Spanish cruiser _Reina
Mercedes_, which was moored near the end of the Socapa promontory, and
killing or wounding twenty-five or thirty officers and men on the
cruiser, in the batteries, and in Morro Castle. The earthwork batteries
east and west of the entrance did not prove to be very formidable and
were quickly silenced; but the submarine mines in the narrow channel
leading to the upper harbor, which prevented our fleet from forcing an
entrance, could not be removed without the cooeperation of a land force.
All that Admiral Sampson could do, therefore, was to bombard the harbor
fortifications now and then, so as to prevent further work on them;
occupy the lower part of Guantanamo Bay, forty miles east of Santiago,
as a coaling-station; and urge the government in Washington, by
telegraph, to send the army forward as speedily as possible.

The fleet of transports which conveyed General Shafter's command to the
southern coast of Cuba arrived off the entrance to Santiago harbor at
midday on the 20th of June, after a tedious and uneventful voyage of
five days from the Dry Tortugas around the eastern end of the island.
General Shafter at once held a conference with Admiral Sampson and with
the Cuban general Garcia, who had come to the coast to meet the fleet,
and, after considering every possible line of attack, decided to land
his force at two points, within supporting distance of each other, ten
or fifteen miles east of the entrance to Santiago harbor, and then march
toward the city through the interior. The points selected for
debarkation were Siboney, a small village about ten miles east of Morro
Castle, and Daiquiri,[3] another similar village five miles farther
away, which, before the war, was the shipping-port of the
Spanish-American Iron Company. From Daiquiri there was a rough
wagon-road to Siboney, and the latter place was connected with Santiago
by a narrow-gage railroad along the coast and up the Aguadores ravine,
as well as by a trail or wagon-road over the foot-hills and through the
marshy, jungle-skirted valleys of the interior.