Talk:Battle of Santiago de Cuba

Reliability issues

I'm afraid this article is not most reliable. See Talk:Spanish-American_War. Comparing with web sources, like http://www.spanamwar.com/santiago.htm (reliable-looking), the article contains some errors, and many "suspected" differencies.

I'm no expert at this subject, so I tried to fix obvious errors only:

• the second destroyer was Furor, not Terror
• the Cervera's ships were escaping west, not east; "Brooklyn" turned east, not west
• more correct designation for "Vizcaya" class is armored cruiser -it had side belt

The last paragraph, about Sampson with "New York" and "Massachusetts" chasing "Colon" is very doubtful - it was rather Schley with "Brooklyn" and "Oregon". Pibwl 23:43, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

The main reference for this article, "A Dirty Little War by A. Bagosy," is a mystery work. There are no copies available for sale on any number of new and used book sites in both the U.S. and Europe. It can't be found on WorldCat nor in the Library of Congress catalog, etc. Basically, one has to question an article that depends almost exclusively, by the author's own admission, on a single unknown, unobtainable source - given the fairly obvious bias noted by this and other readers, one wonders if a potential reader wouldn't be better off being told to look elsewhere for information on this subject. By the way, the standard academic work on the war is Trask's "The War with Spain in 1898" - generally available new, used, in libraries, etc. jmdeur 02:52, 31 Oct 2007 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.158.231.130 (talk)

Missing U.S. perspective

This is quite an entertaining and informative article. I've done some cleanup work, especially some rephrasing to avoid word repetition and to reduce some sentence complexity, as well as changing most occurrences of "American" to the more precise "U.S.".

The main lack I see in the current article is an absence of the U.S. perspective of the battle. It appears to be written from the Spanish POV, with mostly statistical nods toward the U.S. forces (aside from repeated citations of American "bewilderment" and ineptitude, which may very well be accurate, but does not encourage one to believe the article's NPOV-ness). I'd rather hold off on slapping an POV tag on the article until people can work in a little more of the U.S. view of this battle. I'd also hate to lose nice passages like this one:

Shortly thereafter, the Spaniard turned his attention to the burning wreck that was Vizcaya and saluted her.

Adios, Vizcaya?

At his words, the fires raging onboard Vizcaya reached her magazine, and she exploded, throwing bodies and debris for miles.

It was a fitting end to a sad day.

even though it's obviously POV, just for the sake of a more neutral point-of-view. Can some folks familiar with the subject broaden the perspective without losing the poignancy of the Spanish defeat? — Jeff Q 08:18, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Hard to reproduce the "American POV" on a passage like this one, considering that none of the American ships blew up. Albrecht (talk) 01:58, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Not sure what is meant by "reproduce" immediately above - did the commentator mean reduce? If so, it would be hard to imagine how "American POV" could be reduced any further in this article. jmdeur 04:00 13 June 2008 (UTC)

No, not "reduce." Please read again: Reproduce. Reproduce: "to produce again, to cause to exist again or anew, to present again, to make a representation, to revive mentally." The Vizcaya, I imagine, meant a great deal to the Spanish sailors, and its destruction, from their perspective, was traumatic. The article should, and does, communicate that. If no such passage exists from an American point of view, it may be because none of the American ships sunk. The suggestion, therefore, that the writers breached neutrality or conspired to erase the American point of view is not correct and not welcome. Albrecht (talk) 21:20, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I'm familiar with the definition of reproduce - just couldn't figure out what you were trying to say as that word doesn't really fit the occasion. I think the word you're searching for is "introduce" not "reproduce," as in: anything that could introduce a little American POV to this article would help balance out its present overpowering Spanish POV in general. There's no dispute that the Spanish losses in this battle were horrendous, but it doesn't follow that the entire article should only reflect the Spanish view of the proceedings. There are plenty of places where adding a little of the American viewpoint, which can be just as poignant (even if no American ships "blew up"), could balance things out a little. As an example, to quote a more evenhanded webpage describing the battle:

"As the Viscaya headed for the shore, the Brooklyn and Texas stopped firing on her. The Texas moved in for a closer look to see if anything could be done for the survivors. Flames were leaping from the deck as high as the funnel tops, and from where he was Captain Philip could hear the shrieks of the sailors caught in the fire. Panic-stricken seamen, some with their uniforms ablaze, were throwing themselves into the water, or crawling to the side and rolling overboard. Others could find no escape from the flames. As was traditional, the crew of the Texas let out a victory cheer, but Captain Philip stopped it at once, saying, 'Don’t cheer, boys! Those poor devils are dying!'

"By the time the Viscaya had run aground the Iowa was approaching, and Captain Evans saw a new threat to the Spanish sailors emerge. 'The Cuban insurgents had opened fire on them from the shore, and with a glass I could plainly see the bullets snipping up the water around them. The sharks, made ravenous from the blood of the wounded were attacking them from the outside.' Evans sent a boat to the shore, warning the rebels to stop firing or to be themselves fired upon - by the big guns of the battleship. The Iowa stayed on the scene and rescued 200 officers and crew from the Viscaya."

Unfortunately, it would be a long row to hoe here as this article has pretty much gone round the bend in the other direction (nothing beats mixing metaphors) - hence, the earlier recommendation that the interested reader look elsewhere for a well-rounded description of events. jmdeur 05:15, 27 Sep 08 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.186.204.95 (talk)

Just checked what the definition of "B article" means in this forum, I hate to disagree, but this article sure doesn't appear to meet these criteria:

1. "suitably referenced" - the text appears to be based on a single obscure reference (see my note above). points are not cited.

2. "does not contain major omissions or inaccuracies" - the reviewer above notes several inaccuracies and another reviewer has pointed to the bias towards one side of the battle.

3 and 4. okay, it has sections and appears to be grammatically correct.

5. images again repeat the one-sided viewpoint of the author, a diagram might have helped him get the geography straightened out. jmdeur 13:39, 31 Oct 07 (UTC)

"due to politics"

The article ends with "...citing the congressional language from 1849, refused to surrender the banner due to politics." That "due to politics" is a cryptic and uninformative bit. Can someone expand/explain? --Jfruh (talk) 22:09, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

The source for this cryptic, if not just plain silly comment, is uninformative as well - where can this interview with Charles Hart be found? Who conducted it? A reporter? A historian? An eighth grader? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.158.61.141 (talk) 17:35, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

The final sentence still lacks an explanation and citation.

"However, the return of the flag was aborted when the curator of the Naval Academy Museum, citing the congressional language from 1949, refused to surrender the banner." 92.40.196.103 (talk) 15:19, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Citations

I notice the unwieldy referencing system seems to take up a lot of space and get in the way. You could concentrate more on content if that were fixed. The policy is against repeating book specifications. There are a few ways to fix it. I'm used to the Harvard Referencing System so I can start you converting to that. I appreciate the work some editor did to repeat all those specifications but there are better ways to do it. WP keeps changing all the time. Also, that first note is a lollapalooza (spelling?). Strictly speaking the policy requires page numbers there. A lot of that work is viewable on Amazon inside cover view. I suggest we go over to Harvard ref and start finding the page numbers. No doubt some of the page numbers will be the same. In that case we can apply the naming system to the same pages of harvnb. Thanks.Botteville (talk) 06:49, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

OK I see the page numbers on the letters of Note 1. If we were to carry this system to the other notes then we would have a lot fewer references of huge size. I don't know if I agree with that. It is actually a confusing system. Moreover, it is not the way references are done generally. In the interest of transparency, I am seeing this as a clumsy and thought-provoking system. We do not want to provoke thought on the format of the notes, I think, only on the material referenced. But this is a different topic from the use of harvnb to avoid multiple book specifications. Why don't you think about it and express an opinion. Meanwhile I can proceed with the Harvard system to simplify the specifications. Then we will be in a position to decide which is better. 20-30 letters hung on the same note or multiple harvnb's for the same reference. Ciao.Botteville (talk) 07:35, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

I'm taking the leap to go entirely over to harvard ref. I find all these superscript numbers very confusing. I'm sure superscript page numbers are of use somewhere, but here they represent a confusing mixed system.Botteville (talk) 09:32, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

OK, I'm finished with fixing the citations. There were 4 references of books without page numbers so I placed "page needed." Other than that I think we are all taken care of. You can get back to the content, although I think the article is pretty good, myself. I did make a few explanatory additions, entirely minor. I flew in here and now I am flying out.Botteville (talk) 02:02, 9 December 2019 (UTC)