Battle of Santiago de Cuba - Aftermath

Aftermath

The battle was the end of any noteworthy Spanish naval presence in the New World. It forced Spain to re-assess its strategy in Cuba and resulted in an ever-tightening blockade of the island. While fighting continued until August, when the Treaty of Paris was signed, all surviving Spanish capital ships were now husbanded to defend their homeland leaving only isolated units of auxiliary vessels to defend the coast. Uncontested U.S. control of the seas around Cuba made resupply of the Spanish garrison impossible and its surrender inevitable.

The U.S. ships at Santiago, for their part, suffered many hits in the battle but very little serious damage. The small armed yacht Vixen was nearly sunk, but casualties on the American side of the affair were remarkably light; only one man was killed, Yeoman George Henry Ellis of Brooklyn. Spanish casualties numbered nearly 500, including Captain Villaamil of Furor, the highest-ranking Spanish officer to lose his life in the battle. All six vessels of the Spanish squadron were lost. The 1,612 Spanish sailors rescued, including Admiral Cervera, were sent to Seavey's Island at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, where they were confined at Camp Long from July 11, 1898 until mid-September 1898.

In the aftermath of the battle, General Chambers McKibbin, originally of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, was selected as Military Governor of the City of Santiago de Cuba.

Two of the Spanish ships, Infanta Maria Teresa and Cristóbal Colón, were later re-floated and taken over by the U.S. Both eventually foundered and were lost. The Reina Mercedes, abandoned in Santiago Bay because of engine troubles, was an unprotected cruiser captured by the U.S. Navy and used as a receiving ship until 1957 as the USS Reina Mercedes.

All of the various flags, warship pennants, national combat flags, the royal standard, admirals' flags and so on retrieved from the Spanish ships in the days following the battle, are part of the United States Navy Trophy Flag Collection at the U.S. Naval Academy Museum in Annapolis, Maryland. The collection was given to the care of the U.S. Naval Academy by an act of Congress in 1849. In 1998, in recognition of the hundredth anniversary of the battle and the Spanish-American War, the U.S. Secretary of the Navy authorized the return of the National Combat Flag from the Spanish flagship Infanta Maria Teresa to the Spanish Navy via their Chief of Staff, who was to meet with the U.S. Navy Chief of Naval Operations in Newport, Rhode Island. However, the return of the flag was aborted when the curator of the Naval Academy Museum, citing the congressional language from 1849, refused to surrender the banner due to politics.