PoliticalWarfare.org

Contractors cut Cuba cable

by Aaron Linderman
Serviam magazine, May-June 2008

Though it took place more than a century ago, the Spanish-American War was the occasion for a sophisticated communications and information strategy employed by the United States through undersea telegraphic cables. The Navy relied heavily on the private sector. The U.S. government tapped the advice of industry experts, used machinery provided by leading corporations, chartered civilian vessels, hired civilian telegraph operators, and even benefited from the use of a Chicago newsman’s private yacht.

When war with Spain broke out in 1898, the telegraph was just a half-century old. The first telegraphic message went from Baltimore to Washington, D.C., in 1844; the first transatlantic cable was laid in 1858. In spite of these developments, the telegraph was an underappreciated method of military communication until Ulysses S. Grant, whom military historian John Keegan calls “a master of telegraphic method during the Civil War,” took command of the Union armies in 1864. Britain soon ran with the idea, laying cables to the distant corners of the Empire. By 1900, the French government would observe that “England owes her influence in the world perhaps more to her cable communications than to her navy.”

Thus, when the USS Maine exploded in Havana Harbor on February 15, 1898, and the United States found itself at war with Spain, it was logical that laying and cutting cables would be a part of the ensuing military campaigns. The American military leadership understood that a physical blockade of Cuba, which would prevent the landing of food and munitions, would be incomplete without an information blockade. Thus, early on, as war chronicler Herbert Wrigley Wilson wrote in 1900, “the Americans were anxious to cut the… telegraph cables which… kept up communication between Havana and Spain.”

The U.S. Navy contracted the privately owned passenger liner SS St. Louis to cut wartime undersea cables to Spain. Later during World War I, the Navy would requisition the ship outright as the SS St. Louis.

The U.S. military, however, was wholly unprepared to conduct oceanic cable operations at the outbreak of war. Col. James Allen, chief signal officer of the Army of Puerto Rico, noted in an official report at the time, “There was no cable ship under the American flag, and efforts to procure a suitable foreign ship were unavailing. The stock of available deep-sea cable in the United States was limited to small amounts held by different companies for repairs, and the cable factories were all working to their full capacity on orders already given by the War Department.”

The government turned to the private sector. James A. Scrymser, a telegraph baron with connections to several major companies, received a wire from a government official in Washington asking for a meeting the very next morning. “I found the high official very much excited,” Scrymser wrote in his 1915 memoir. “He told me that the Army was about to be dispatched from Florida to Santiago [Cuba] and that the President had no means of communicating with it when it reached there. He confided to me that the Government had thought of the possibility of using the British cable…. ‘In this emergency,’ said my distinguished visitor, ‘the Government has given me authority to purchase the British cable outright.’ I listened until he had fully outlined the Government’s plans and then was obliged to point out to him the fact that inasmuch as the cable in question was a British-owned cable, it would be a distinct violation of neutrality for the United States Government to make use of it, even should the Government buy every share of the British Cable Company…. My visitor saw the truth of this contention and, in desperation, asked me if I could not solve the problem.”

As it turned out, Scrymser could. He knew of a French cable running from New York to Santiago via Haiti. As an industry insider, Scrymser also knew that American policy required foreign cables landing in the United States to give reciprocal usage rights to American companies. Instead, the French Cable Company had exclusive rights to the West Indies and, as a result, had been brought to court by the Grover Cleveland administration. The French, however, had deftly covered themselves, setting up a dummy American company, the United States & Hayti Cable Company, incorporated in West Virginia, to which ownership of the cable had been passed. Thus, Scrymser recommended that the U.S. government seize the cable, which it did. The French ambassador protested this violation of neutrality, only to be shown an affidavit from the prior court case, testifying that the cable was owned by an American company. This still left a minor problem—the fact that Santiago, the southern end of this cable line, was in Spanish hands. However, the cable could be cut offshore of Santiago and brought ashore to wherever American troops landed, thereby putting them in touch with Haiti, New York, and Washington.

Businessman Helped Disrupt Cable to Philippines The same businessman who helped the U.S. military cut Spanish access to cables to Cuba also assisted on the Philippine front. Telegraph baron James A. Scrymser provided intelligence and operational support to isolate Spain from its Southeast Asian colony. Commodore George Dewey, famous for the Battle of Manila Bay, believed that he had cut the cables to the Philippine capital, but a short time later Scrymser’s Galveston manager reported that Spanish instructions for a privateer to raid American vessels had passed from Manila through Galveston to Valparaiso, Chile. The cable had not been cut after all. Scrymser, according to his memoirs, notified Washington and explained that Dewey had probably inadvertently picked up the small Manila-Cavite cable instead of the Manila-Hong Kong cable. It would now, however, take a week or more to reach Dewey, an unacceptably long time. The government asked Scrymser what could be done, and once again, the businessman had the answer. “I suggested that the simplest and surest way was to officially protest to Great Britain against this violation of neutrality on the part of Spain and this Washington did at once. Within 48 hours the seals of Her Britannic Majesty’s Government were placed on the Hong Kong end of the cable and the danger of Spanish communication with the world was stopped.”

Shortly after war broke out, the commercial passenger liner SS St. Louis was in Southampton, England. She was chartered for American naval service and was “specially outfitted with heavy drag lines in order to destroy undersea cable communications,” according to the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. In May 1898, she moved into action, cutting cables between San Juan, in Spanish Puerto Rico, and St. Thomas, in the Danish West Indies (the future U.S. Virgin Islands). The liner would go on to cut cables between Cuba, Puerto Rico, Haiti, and Jamaica, often under enemy fire.

At the same time, Col. Allen chartered and equipped the privately owned SS Adria in New York, a job that would earn him the Distinguished Service Cross. Through the Western Union Company, Allen was put in communication with Scrymser, who placed all of the Mexican Telegraph Company’s machinery at the colonel’s disposal. This equipment was installed on the Adria under the direction of Mexican Telegraph officials. Cables themselves were acquired in Boston and New York.

Leading much of the work was Maturin Hellings, who had been a Mexican Telegraph Company engineer for many years. The Army gave Hellings, a civilian, the rank of lieutenant “in order that he might have authority over the soldiers and might not be interfered with,” according to Allen, who credited Hellings’ “experience and skill and untiring energy, under dangerous and difficult circumstances” for the success of the operation.

When the crew of cable hands that had originally been hired for the expedition got cold feet, Col. Allen acquired 10 volunteers from the First Artillery at Key West Barracks to replace them. This would be a major headache for Col. Allen, since these men lacked the technical expertise of the previous civilian crew: none of the 10 had seen a cable before and only one had ever been to sea. In spite of this setback, the Adria, like the St. Louis, would go on to cut a variety of cables, often under heavy fire and susceptible to attack by torpedo boats.

By June the American invasion of Cuba was imminent, and the U.S. military was now interested in establishing communications—its own—rather than destroying the enemy’s. Allen wrote in his report that he traveled to Haiti “to arrange with [the] French Cable Company for instruments to open an office at Guantanamo.” Over the next several days he went back and forth across the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti, eventually acquiring the right equipment. It took one week to repair the Guantanamo-Haiti cable, which the St. Louis had cut just a short time before. The line was reopened in time to carry a report to Washington about the arrival of General William Rufus Shafter’s army.

When U.S. forces landed at Ponce, Puerto Rico, they were followed shortly by Col. Allen, who reported, “The [enemy] cable was cut and instruments placed on both lines.” Once again, the military tapped the commercial sector to run the new American communications hub; Allen sailed to St. Thomas to arrange for the West India & Panama Corporation to open an office in Ponce. The deal was agreed, but only one operator could be spared from St. Thomas, so it was decided to find another in Santa Cruz, Mexico. Rather than sending any official government personnel, Henry B. Chamberlain of the Chicago Record volunteered to go to Santa Cruz on his personal yacht, dropping off the West India & Panama operator at Ponce on his way.

By August, the thoroughly defeated Spanish sued for peace. In December, the formal treaty was signed and Spain lost the last vestiges of her colonial empire.

Throughout the telegraphic cable operations, the private sector played a leading role. James Scrymser’s expert advice, the physical machinery provided by Western Union, the private ships (St. Louis and Adria) chartered by the Navy, the services rendered by West India & Panama telegraph operators, and the personal assistance provided by Henry Chamberlain of the Chicago Record all contributed to the successful communications strategy of the American forces. Though the Adria’s crew may have been squeamish about participating in the actual expedition to Cuba, not all civilians were. In his report, Col. Allen wrote that “Mr. E. H. Strickland, an expert operator of the Western Union Telegraph Company, is entitled to great praise for valuable services rendered at Key West and during the entire expedition.” Several journalists helped the Signal Corps in the war effort. Allen also praised Chamberlain and reporters from the Associated Press, New York Sun, and New York Herald, probably owing to their practical experience with cabling messages.

Why this high degree of public-private cooperation? First, America’s entire system of cable communications at the time of the war depended upon the private sector. In his Personal Reminiscences, Scrymser wrote, “The Mexican Telegraph Company and the Central & South American Telegraph Company, comprising altogether a system of nearly seventeen thousand miles and connecting Washington, telegraphically, with Mexico and all of the Central and South American Republics, have given to the Government, gratuitously, an all-American cable system, the value of which is inestimable. I say ‘gratuitously,’ for the United States Government has never contributed one cent to the establishment of this great system to the South of us.” Thus, both knowledge and equipment relating to international cable communications abounded in private hands and were placed at the disposal of the U.S. military.

Second, is the traditional American approach to war. Typically, the United States has engaged in a massive buildup at the beginning of a war and an extensive demobilization at its end. Though the Spanish-American War was much smaller and shorter than the American Civil War or World War I, the same basic model was followed. There is much to criticize about this approach, but there is much that recommends itself, not least of which is low peacetime costs. However, the result is that the U.S. military often needs a helping hand from the private sector when new conflicts arise, where specialists carry out operations for which the military is not trained or equipped.

Aaron Linderman is a historian pursuing a doctoral degree at Texas A&M University. He holds a Master’s Degree in Statecraft and National Security from the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C..

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From the May/June 2008 issue of Serviam.

by Aaron Linderman
Serviam magazine, May-June 2008

Though it took place more than a century ago, the Spanish-American War was the occasion for a sophisticated communications and information strategy employed by the United States through undersea telegraphic cables. The Navy relied heavily on the private sector. The U.S. government tapped the advice of industry experts, used machinery provided by leading corporations, chartered civilian vessels, hired civilian telegraph operators, and even benefited from the use of a Chicago newsman’s private yacht.

When war with Spain broke out in 1898, the telegraph was just a half-century old. The first telegraphic message went from Baltimore to Washington, D.C., in 1844; the first transatlantic cable was laid in 1858. In spite of these developments, the telegraph was an underappreciated method of military communication until Ulysses S. Grant, whom military historian John Keegan calls “a master of telegraphic method during the Civil War,” took command of the Union armies in 1864. Britain soon ran with the idea, laying cables to the distant corners of the Empire. By 1900, the French government would observe that “England owes her influence in the world perhaps more to her cable communications than to her navy.”

Thus, when the USS Maine exploded in Havana Harbor on February 15, 1898, and the United States found itself at war with Spain, it was logical that laying and cutting cables would be a part of the ensuing military campaigns. The American military leadership understood that a physical blockade of Cuba, which would prevent the landing of food and munitions, would be incomplete without an information blockade. Thus, early on, as war chronicler Herbert Wrigley Wilson wrote in 1900, “the Americans were anxious to cut the… telegraph cables which… kept up communication between Havana and Spain.”

The U.S. Navy contracted the privately owned passenger liner SS St. Louis to cut wartime undersea cables to Spain. Later during World War I, the Navy would requisition the ship outright as the SS St. Louis.

The U.S. military, however, was wholly unprepared to conduct oceanic cable operations at the outbreak of war. Col. James Allen, chief signal officer of the Army of Puerto Rico, noted in an official report at the time, “There was no cable ship under the American flag, and efforts to procure a suitable foreign ship were unavailing. The stock of available deep-sea cable in the United States was limited to small amounts held by different companies for repairs, and the cable factories were all working to their full capacity on orders already given by the War Department.”

The government turned to the private sector. James A. Scrymser, a telegraph baron with connections to several major companies, received a wire from a government official in Washington asking for a meeting the very next morning. “I found the high official very much excited,” Scrymser wrote in his 1915 memoir. “He told me that the Army was about to be dispatched from Florida to Santiago [Cuba] and that the President had no means of communicating with it when it reached there. He confided to me that the Government had thought of the possibility of using the British cable…. ‘In this emergency,’ said my distinguished visitor, ‘the Government has given me authority to purchase the British cable outright.’ I listened until he had fully outlined the Government’s plans and then was obliged to point out to him the fact that inasmuch as the cable in question was a British-owned cable, it would be a distinct violation of neutrality for the United States Government to make use of it, even should the Government buy every share of the British Cable Company…. My visitor saw the truth of this contention and, in desperation, asked me if I could not solve the problem.”

As it turned out, Scrymser could. He knew of a French cable running from New York to Santiago via Haiti. As an industry insider, Scrymser also knew that American policy required foreign cables landing in the United States to give reciprocal usage rights to American companies. Instead, the French Cable Company had exclusive rights to the West Indies and, as a result, had been brought to court by the Grover Cleveland administration. The French, however, had deftly covered themselves, setting up a dummy American company, the United States & Hayti Cable Company, incorporated in West Virginia, to which ownership of the cable had been passed. Thus, Scrymser recommended that the U.S. government seize the cable, which it did. The French ambassador protested this violation of neutrality, only to be shown an affidavit from the prior court case, testifying that the cable was owned by an American company. This still left a minor problem—the fact that Santiago, the southern end of this cable line, was in Spanish hands. However, the cable could be cut offshore of Santiago and brought ashore to wherever American troops landed, thereby putting them in touch with Haiti, New York, and Washington.

Businessman Helped Disrupt Cable to Philippines The same businessman who helped the U.S. military cut Spanish access to cables to Cuba also assisted on the Philippine front. Telegraph baron James A. Scrymser provided intelligence and operational support to isolate Spain from its Southeast Asian colony. Commodore George Dewey, famous for the Battle of Manila Bay, believed that he had cut the cables to the Philippine capital, but a short time later Scrymser’s Galveston manager reported that Spanish instructions for a privateer to raid American vessels had passed from Manila through Galveston to Valparaiso, Chile. The cable had not been cut after all. Scrymser, according to his memoirs, notified Washington and explained that Dewey had probably inadvertently picked up the small Manila-Cavite cable instead of the Manila-Hong Kong cable. It would now, however, take a week or more to reach Dewey, an unacceptably long time. The government asked Scrymser what could be done, and once again, the businessman had the answer. “I suggested that the simplest and surest way was to officially protest to Great Britain against this violation of neutrality on the part of Spain and this Washington did at once. Within 48 hours the seals of Her Britannic Majesty’s Government were placed on the Hong Kong end of the cable and the danger of Spanish communication with the world was stopped.”

Shortly after war broke out, the commercial passenger liner SS St. Louis was in Southampton, England. She was chartered for American naval service and was “specially outfitted with heavy drag lines in order to destroy undersea cable communications,” according to the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships. In May 1898, she moved into action, cutting cables between San Juan, in Spanish Puerto Rico, and St. Thomas, in the Danish West Indies (the future U.S. Virgin Islands). The liner would go on to cut cables between Cuba, Puerto Rico, Haiti, and Jamaica, often under enemy fire.

At the same time, Col. Allen chartered and equipped the privately owned SS Adria in New York, a job that would earn him the Distinguished Service Cross. Through the Western Union Company, Allen was put in communication with Scrymser, who placed all of the Mexican Telegraph Company’s machinery at the colonel’s disposal. This equipment was installed on the Adria under the direction of Mexican Telegraph officials. Cables themselves were acquired in Boston and New York.

Leading much of the work was Maturin Hellings, who had been a Mexican Telegraph Company engineer for many years. The Army gave Hellings, a civilian, the rank of lieutenant “in order that he might have authority over the soldiers and might not be interfered with,” according to Allen, who credited Hellings’ “experience and skill and untiring energy, under dangerous and difficult circumstances” for the success of the operation.

When the crew of cable hands that had originally been hired for the expedition got cold feet, Col. Allen acquired 10 volunteers from the First Artillery at Key West Barracks to replace them. This would be a major headache for Col. Allen, since these men lacked the technical expertise of the previous civilian crew: none of the 10 had seen a cable before and only one had ever been to sea. In spite of this setback, the Adria, like the St. Louis, would go on to cut a variety of cables, often under heavy fire and susceptible to attack by torpedo boats.

By June the American invasion of Cuba was imminent, and the U.S. military was now interested in establishing communications—its own—rather than destroying the enemy’s. Allen wrote in his report that he traveled to Haiti “to arrange with [the] French Cable Company for instruments to open an office at Guantanamo.” Over the next several days he went back and forth across the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti, eventually acquiring the right equipment. It took one week to repair the Guantanamo-Haiti cable, which the St. Louis had cut just a short time before. The line was reopened in time to carry a report to Washington about the arrival of General William Rufus Shafter’s army.

When U.S. forces landed at Ponce, Puerto Rico, they were followed shortly by Col. Allen, who reported, “The [enemy] cable was cut and instruments placed on both lines.” Once again, the military tapped the commercial sector to run the new American communications hub; Allen sailed to St. Thomas to arrange for the West India & Panama Corporation to open an office in Ponce. The deal was agreed, but only one operator could be spared from St. Thomas, so it was decided to find another in Santa Cruz, Mexico. Rather than sending any official government personnel, Henry B. Chamberlain of the Chicago Record volunteered to go to Santa Cruz on his personal yacht, dropping off the West India & Panama operator at Ponce on his way.

By August, the thoroughly defeated Spanish sued for peace. In December, the formal treaty was signed and Spain lost the last vestiges of her colonial empire.

Throughout the telegraphic cable operations, the private sector played a leading role. James Scrymser’s expert advice, the physical machinery provided by Western Union, the private ships (St. Louis and Adria) chartered by the Navy, the services rendered by West India & Panama telegraph operators, and the personal assistance provided by Henry Chamberlain of the Chicago Record all contributed to the successful communications strategy of the American forces. Though the Adria’s crew may have been squeamish about participating in the actual expedition to Cuba, not all civilians were. In his report, Col. Allen wrote that “Mr. E. H. Strickland, an expert operator of the Western Union Telegraph Company, is entitled to great praise for valuable services rendered at Key West and during the entire expedition.” Several journalists helped the Signal Corps in the war effort. Allen also praised Chamberlain and reporters from the Associated Press, New York Sun, and New York Herald, probably owing to their practical experience with cabling messages.

Why this high degree of public-private cooperation? First, America’s entire system of cable communications at the time of the war depended upon the private sector. In his Personal Reminiscences, Scrymser wrote, “The Mexican Telegraph Company and the Central & South American Telegraph Company, comprising altogether a system of nearly seventeen thousand miles and connecting Washington, telegraphically, with Mexico and all of the Central and South American Republics, have given to the Government, gratuitously, an all-American cable system, the value of which is inestimable. I say ‘gratuitously,’ for the United States Government has never contributed one cent to the establishment of this great system to the South of us.” Thus, both knowledge and equipment relating to international cable communications abounded in private hands and were placed at the disposal of the U.S. military.

Second, is the traditional American approach to war. Typically, the United States has engaged in a massive buildup at the beginning of a war and an extensive demobilization at its end. Though the Spanish-American War was much smaller and shorter than the American Civil War or World War I, the same basic model was followed. There is much to criticize about this approach, but there is much that recommends itself, not least of which is low peacetime costs. However, the result is that the U.S. military often needs a helping hand from the private sector when new conflicts arise, where specialists carry out operations for which the military is not trained or equipped.

Aaron Linderman is a historian pursuing a doctoral degree at Texas A&M University. He holds a Master’s Degree in Statecraft and National Security from the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C..

_______
From the May/June 2008 issue of Serviam.

Human Terrain program takes first KIA in Afghanistan

The US Army's innovative Human Terrain Systems program in Afghanistan offered up its first fatality last week, with 31 year-old civilian contractor Michael Bhatia losing his life along with two soldiers near Khost.

Bhatia (pictured), a doctoral candidate at Oxford University who grew up in Massachusetts, was a civilian contractor for BAE Systems assigned to the 4th Brigade Combat Team of the Army 101st Infantry (Air Assault) division in hot al Qaeda/Taliban territory alog Afghanistan's eastern border with Pakistan. He died in an IED blast on his humvee, along with two soldiers.

Bhatia was a civilian social scientist. The experimental and extremely important Human Terrain System (HTS) program is operated by the US Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) to coordinate cultural anthropologists and social scientists and improve the troops' knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the local populations in parts of Iraq and Afghanistan.

HTS in general, and Bhatia in particular, are credited with saving hundreds, perhaps thousands, of American, Afghan and Iraqi lives. Steve Fundacaro, HTS project manager, told reporters that Bhatia was "a hero in every sense of the word."

"I can't think of a better example of what being an American was all about," said Fundacaro in a WCVB-TV report from Boston. "Here was a civilian, a civilian scholar who was very comfortable in his personal situation -- he gave up all of that to volunteer his services to be a participant in what we were involved in, and assumed all the risks every one of those soldiers assumed. He gave his life for exactly what he believed in."

"Michael is a hero. The Army didn't go looking for him to ask him for his service -- he came looking for us because he was committed to make things better. Our nation is better, as are the people of Afghanistan, because of his devotion and brilliance. He will not be forgotten," said Gen. William S. Wallace, TRADOC commander.

Khost, south of Tora Bora and one of Afghanistan's furthest points into Pakistan, is a hot area. I was down there in December with Blackwater and the 82nd Airborne, aboard low-altitude ammunition supply flights to drop shipments of mortar rounds to our troops in small forward operating bases on the PakThe border. The remote, mountainous area, along a broad plain, is the site of heated Taliban activity, along with smuggling people, weapons and narcotics.