Editor’s note: Mark Bushnell is a Vermont journalist and historian. He is the author of “Hidden History of Vermont” and “It Happened in Vermont.”
[T]he Spanish-American War wasn’t so much a battle between nations as one between “the village of Montpelier and the kingdom of Spain.” Or at least that’s how one Vermont orator put it. The quip was in response to the exploits of two local men. One was Adm. George Dewey, who had led the American fleet in crushing the Spanish fleet at the Battle of Manila Bay in the Philippines. Dewey was lionized for his conduct in what was an almost embarrassingly one-sided victory — U.S. forces suffered no battle deaths and only eight injuries, compared to the Spanish, who lost 167 dead and 214 wounded. If Americans remember any hero of the war, other than future president Teddy Roosevelt, it is Dewey.
Charles E. Clark hasn’t been so lucky. His portrait hangs in the Statehouse, but visitors often mistake him for Dewey. He is largely forgotten, except by historians and residents of his hometown of Bradford; his family moved to Montpelier only after he’d left home.
Briefly, however, Clark’s fame rivaled Dewey’s. For weeks, as the nation headed toward what seemed an inevitable war, the nation’s attention was riveted on Clark and his ship, the USS Oregon. The vessel, one of the country’s newest battleships, had been docked in San Francisco Bay in March 1898, preparing to steam to Cuba to join other American ships in a blockade of the Spanish fleet. Clark had just been promoted to ship commander, because the vessel’s original captain had fallen gravely ill. As the new captain, Clark had to oversee the arduous work of quickly loading coal and other vital supplies before steaming out.
Then, once out of the bay, the Oregon was out of contact with the rest of the world for long periods. In the days before radio, Clark had to bring his ship into various ports to learn if war had yet been declared and if there was any sign of Spanish ships lurking about in those parts.
The Oregon’s mission was no mystery to the Spanish. American newspapers, which had shamelessly pushed the case for war, trumpeted the mission as vital to national security. The papers updated the public each time the Oregon pulled into a port for news and supplies. The Oregon’s route was a 14,000-mile loop around South America to Florida, where it would join the North Atlantic Squadron. Some historians suggest that the ship wasn’t actually needed on the East Coast. Instead, they say, its mission and the dramatic news reports surrounding it were meant for a purpose having nothing to do with the expected war: to dramatize the need for a canal through Central America.
To maximize the ship’s speed, the chief engineer suggested using all the fresh water on board — the sailors’ drinking water — in the boilers. Fresh water would allow the boilers to work more efficiently than would salt water. Clark liked the idea, but asked his men for their permission. This was a lot to ask. As they sailed through the tropics, the men would be drinking warm water that had passed through the boiler, but they agreed to make the sacrifice. Clark also opted to skip a scheduled stop for coal in Valparaiso, Chile, to save time.
The Oregon steamed through the hazardous Straits of Magellan, a shorter route than sailing around Cape Horn, the southern tip of South America. The weather in the straits lived up to its fierce reputation. The Oregon ran into an intense gale. As the ship neared the end of the slender passage, Clark decided to anchor for the night to ride out the storm. Morning found the winds slackening and the ship intact. The Oregon exited the straits and headed north. The whole way, Clark kept the guns manned, on the lookout for a Spanish torpedo boat rumored to be in those waters.
With such challenges, Clark might have wondered what he was doing in the Navy.
Charles Clark had grown up dreaming of joining the Army. He had been born in Bradford in 1843 and enjoyed an adventurous childhood, as he told it in his entertaining autobiography. As in seemingly all war heroes’ memoirs, Clark’s childhood was full of pranks and near misses. He wrote: “I was very young indeed when I established a military post on the roof of our house. I was working out some ideas in fortification, when my foot slipped, and I began a rapid slide towards the eaves. I must have gone headfirst, for I still have a picture in my mind of a neighbor, who, with her arms upraised in horror at my performance, seemed to me to be walking on her hands.” Clark managed to grab onto the waterspout and avoid a head-first landing.
He also describes how he tested the theory of the parachute by stepping out of a second-story window with an umbrella. “All went well for one brief second,” he wrote. “Then the umbrella collapsed, and when I recovered consciousness, my faith in parachutes had collapsed likewise.”
Having read of the exploits of Hannibal, Napoleon and other great generals, Clark decided at the age of 16 that he wanted to attend West Point. He asked his father to write to an acquaintance, U.S. Sen. Justin Morrill of Vermont, asking whether he could secure him a spot. Even years later, Clark claimed he could recall Morrill’s response verbatim: “There is no vacancy from this district at West Point, as I have just appointed Dr. Rockwell’s son, of Brattleboro.” He had also just offered a spot at the Naval Academy to a judge’s son, but the young man was hesitant to accept. “Should he decline,” Morrill wrote Clark’s father, “I should be glad to let your son have it. Would he like to be a sailor boy?”
When the judge’s son declined, Morrill remained good to his word, thus launching Clark’s naval career. Among his experiences was training aboard the famed USS Constitution and serving during the Civil War with Adm. David Farragut at the Battle of Mobile Bay. Three decades later, in late May 1898, Clark was guiding the Oregon to its destination in Key West. The Oregon, 66 days at sea, had averaged a speed of 11 knots, an impressive clip at the time. War had already broken out, as Clark had learned a month earlier by a cable from Washington while anchored for supplies in Rio de Janeiro.
Two weeks after arriving in Florida, the Oregon joined the Navy squadron blockading the Spanish inside Santiago Bay. Spain’s antiquated ships would be no match for the Americans. If they weren’t going to surrender, their only sensible alternative was to run. After being hemmed in the harbor for a month, they saw their chance. Hoping to catch the Americans without their boilers lit — and therefore unable to reach full speed quickly — the Spanish made a break on the morning of July 3.
The ploy almost worked. But unlike other captains, who had shut down their boilers to conserve coal, Clark had kept the Oregon’s stoked. As she sped past the USS Iowa, the Oregon threw up a bow wave that one observer likened to a “great white bone in her teeth.” The Oregon and the quick USS Brooklyn were the first to catch the Spanish. Just as in Manila two months earlier, it was a lopsided affair. The Spanish squadron was destroyed while the Americans lost no ships and suffered few casualties.
The Oregon proved to be the last vessel Clark commanded. He contracted some type of tropical fever and was relieved of command. Clark would eventually attain the rank of rear admiral, but all his assignments would be on land.
Clark might have been thankful never to see battle again. He later described the events of that day more as a necessary evil than as the glorious victory portrayed in the press.
“I could feel none of the exultation that is supposed to come with victory,” he wrote. “If I had seen my own decks covered with blood, and my men and officers dying around me, perhaps resentment would have supplied the necessary ingredient, but as it was, the faces of the women and children in far-away Spain, widows and orphans of this July 3rd, rose before me so vividly that I had to draw comfort from the thought that a decisive victory is … more merciful than a prolonged struggle.”
