rise that, with such facilities and under
such conditions, General Shafter found it almost impossible to land even
food and ammunition enough to keep his army properly supplied. In his
official report of the campaign he says: "It was not until nearly two
weeks after the army landed that it was possible to place on shore three
days' supplies in excess of those required for daily consumption."

In addition to all the unnecessary difficulties and embarrassments
above described, there was another, almost, if not quite, as serious,
arising from the manner in which the transports had been loaded at
Tampa. Stores were put into the steamers apparently without any
reference to the circumstances under which they would be taken out, and
without any regard to the order in which they would be needed at the
point of destination. Medical supplies, for example, instead of being
put all together in a single transport, were scattered among twenty or
more vessels, so that in order to get all of them it was necessary
either to bring twenty steamers close to shore, one after another, and
take a little out of each, or send rowboats around to them all where
they lay at distances ranging from one mile to five.[13] Articles of
equipment that would be required as soon as the army landed were often
buried in the holds of the vessels under hundreds of tons of stuff that
would not be needed in a week, and the army went forward without them,
simply because they could not be quickly got at. Finally, I am inclined
to believe, from what I saw and heard of the landing of supplies at
Siboney, that there was not such a thing as a bill of lading, manifest,
or cargo list in existence, and that the chief quartermaster had no
other guide to the location of a particular article than that furnished
by his own memory or the memory of some first mate. I do not assert this
as a fact; I merely infer it from the difficulty that there seemed to be
in finding and getting ashore quickly a particular kind of stores for
which there happened to be an immediate and urgent demand. After the
fight of the Rough Riders at Guasimas, for example, General Wood found
himself short of ammunition for his Hotchkiss rapid-fire guns. He sent
Lieutenant Kilbourne back to General Shafter at Siboney with a request
that a fresh supply be forwarded at the earliest possible moment.
General Shafter said that he had no idea where that particular kind of
ammunition was to be found, and referred