Political Meddling in
Remember the Maine
February 2013

At the outbreak of the Spanish-American War, the Spanish Navy was woefully unprepared for what lay ahead of them. With the exception of their torpedo boats (which struck an almost irrational fear into American hearts), Spanish warships were either obsolete or in such bad repair that they should never have left port. This is the fleet the Spanish player commands in Great War at Sea: Remember the Maine.

One of those ships that should never have left port: officers of armored cruiser Cristobál Colón. Note the empty mount for a never-fitted 10-inch gun.

But while the U.S. Navy was in far better shape and went into action quickly and effectively, the U.S. Army was tiny and nowhere near ready to launch an overseas invasion. The National Guard and eager volunteers swelled the ranks of American ground forces quickly once war was declared, but political wrangling, lack of cooperation between the Army, National Guard and Navy, and overall poor planning kept U.S. ground forces landlocked until long after the outbreak of war.

It didn’t have to be that way. Just days after the commencement of hostilities, Brigadier General William Shafter received orders to assemble a force of six thousand troops at Tampa, Florida. Their objective was to sail to Cuba, march inland and link up with Cuban rebels. This “Reconnaissance in Force” would deliver American arms and supplies to the independentistas and join them in limited raids against Spanish positions. It would then withdraw and sail back to the U.S. with whatever intelligence it had gathered. Later developments (among them reports by gun runners that the Cuban rebels were much weaker than previously thought) expanded Shafter’s force mandate to 50,000 men, and changed his mission to the invasion and fortification of the port of Mariel as a beachhead for use in marching on Havana.

Spain’s best chance for naval victory: Admiral Cervera’s fleet in the Cape Verde Islands, April 1898.

Numerous factors conspired to prevent the Reconnaissance in Force from ever sailing, but it could have gone the other way. The naval blockade of Cuba could not intercept all Spanish supply shipments by itself, and the Army chafed under a constant stream of Navy demands for assistance on the island. President McKinley was under heavy political pressure to take strong early action, and the Spanish were counting on the courts of Europe to see prolonged U.S. Army inaction as a sign of weakness. Several weeks without an invasion of Cuba, or unanswered Spanish victories at sea, could bring Germany and other European powers into the war on the Spanish side — a nightmare scenario for the U.S. military and political establishments.

To simulate this uncertain situation, players may agree at game start to use the Political Meddling variant rules below. These rules are appropriate for Remember the Maine operational scenarios 1 through 4.

Variant Rule: Political Meddling

Every time Spanish forces sink a ship of any kind (warships, transports, and/or merchant ships sunk as a result of rolling on the Merchant Location Table, 10.2), the Spanish player immediately rolls two dice. Add +1 to the result for every three ships the Spanish have sunk so far in the scenario. Compare the modified result to the table below and implement the results. The same result may occur an unlimited number of times unless the table says otherwise.

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