When, on May 26, Commodore Schley, with the Flying Squadron, arrived off the entrance to Santiago harbor, and began the blockade of that port, the great need of his vessels was a safe and sheltered coaling-station. The heavy swell raised along the southern coast of Cuba by the prevailing easterly winds makes it often dangerous and always difficult to lay a collier alongside a battle-ship in the open sea and transfer coal from one to the other. Understanding and appreciating this difficulty, Secretary Long telegraphed Admiral Sampson on May 28 to consider the question whether it would not be possible to "seize Guantanamo and occupy it as a coaling-station." Sampson replied that he thought it might be done, and immediately cabled Commodore Schley off Santiago as follows: "Send a ship to examine Guantanamo with a view to occupying it as a base, coaling one heavy ship at a time." The official correspondence thus far published does not show whether Commodore Schley received this order in time to act upon it before Sampson arrived or not; but as soon as the latter came he caused a reconnaissance of Guantanamo Bay to be made, decided that the lower part of it might be seized by a comparatively small land force if protected by the guns of a few war-ships, and immediately sent to Key West for the first battalion of marines, which was the only available landing force at his command. Meanwhile the auxiliary cruiser _Yankee_ bombarded and burned a Spanish blockhouse situated on a hill near the entrance to the lower harbor of Guantanamo, and on June 8 Captain McCalla, in the _Marblehead_, seized and occupied--as far as he could do so without a landing force--all that part of the bay which lies between the entrance and the narrow strait leading to the fortified post of Caimanera.
The marines, under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Huntington, arrived on the steamer _Panther_, Friday, June 10, and proceeded at once to disembark. The place selected for a landing was a low, rounded, bush-covered hill on the right, or eastern, side of the bay, about a quarter of a mile from the entrance. On the summit of this hill the Spaniards had made a little clearing in the chaparral and erected a small square blockhouse; but inasmuch as this blockhouse had already been destroyed and its garrison driven to the woods by the fire of the _Yankee_, all that the marines had to do was to occupy the abandoned position and again fortify the hill. In some respects this hill, which was about one hundred and fifty feet in height, made a strong and easily defended position; but, unfortunately, it was covered nearly to the summit with a dense growth of bushes and scrub, and was commanded by a range of higher hills a little farther to the eastward. The enemy, therefore, could not only creep close up to the camp under cover of the dense chaparral, but could fire down upon it from the higher slopes of the wooded range which runs parallel with the bay on its eastern side.