struct a pier. How he ever would have disembarked his
command without the assistance of the navy, I do not know. I doubt
whether a landing could have been effected at all. Fortunately, the navy
was at hand, and its small boats and steam-launches, manned by officers
and sailors from the fleet, landed the whole army through the surf with
the loss of only two men. The navy then retired from the scene of
action, and General Shafter was left to his own devices--and deplorably
weak and ineffective they proved to be.

The engineer corps found near the railroad at Siboney a few sticks of
heavy timber belonging to the Iron Company, out of which they improvised
a small, narrow pier; but it was soon undermined and knocked to pieces
by the surf. The chief quartermaster discovered on or near the beach
three or four old lighters, also belonging to the Iron Company, which he
used to supplement the service rendered by the single scow attached to
the expedition; but as he put them in charge of soldiers, who had had
no experience in handling boats in broken water, they were soon stove
against the corners of the pier, or swamped in the heavy surf that swept
the beach. All that could be done then was to land supplies as fast as
possible in the small rowboats of the transports. If General Shafter had
had competent and experienced officers to put in command of these boats,
and steam-launches to tow them back and forth in strings or lines of
half a dozen each, and if he had made provision for communication with
the captains of the steamers by means of wigwag flag-signals, so as to
be able to give them orders and control their movements, he might have
landed supplies in this way with some success. But none of the
difficulties of the situation had been foreseen, and no arrangements had
been made to cope with them. The captains of the transports put their
vessels wherever they chose, and when a steamer that lay four or five
miles at sea was wanted closer inshore, there was no means of sending
orders to her except by rowboat. The captains, as a rule, did not put
officers in charge of their boats, and the sailors who manned them,
having no competent direction, acted upon their own judgment. Finally,
boats which could have made a round trip between the transports and the
shore in half an hour if towed by a steam-launch often used up the
greater part of two hours in toiling back and forth through a heavy sea
under oars.

It is not a matter for surp