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<img src="https://cdn.kahimyang.com/resources-29/US-assiatic-squadron.webp" alt="Period illustration of the U.S. Asiatic Squadron in line of battle at Manila Bay, guns firing amid heavy smoke, May 1, 1898." loading="lazy" />
<figcaption>The U.S. Asiatic Squadron under Commodore George Dewey engages the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay on the morning of May 1, 1898, in this period illustration.
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The battle shattered more than three centuries of Spanish naval power in the Pacific. It also did something almost no one in Washington had planned for: it made the United States, almost overnight, a colonial power in Asia, and it set in motion the chain of events that would end Spanish rule in the Philippines only to replace it with American rule.

<h2>
A Fleet Placed on a War Footing
</h2>

The road to Manila Bay began not in the Philippines but in Cuba, where a Spanish colonial war against Cuban independence fighters had drawn growing American sympathy and press attention. On <time datetime="1898-02-15">February 15, 1898</time>, the battleship USS Maine exploded and sank in Havana harbor, killing more than 260 American sailors. The cause was never conclusively established - a later investigation pointed to an internal magazine fire, though at the time an external mine was widely assumed - but the disaster inflamed a public already primed by sensationalist newspapers to blame Spain, and it pushed the two countries toward war.


Ten days after the Maine went down, and nearly two months before war was formally declared, Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt used a quiet Friday afternoon, while his superior was away from the office, to cable Commodore George Dewey, commander of the U.S. Navy's Asiatic Squadron. Roosevelt ordered Dewey to gather his ships at Hong Kong, keep them fully coaled, and - should war come - to see that the Spanish squadron in Philippine waters could not escape, and to begin offensive operations against it. It was a bold, arguably unauthorized use of Roosevelt's temporary authority, and Dewey, unsure what to make of such specific instructions from an assistant secretary, is said to have quietly confirmed them with President <a href="/articles/3270/mckinley-assimilation-and-the-philippine-american-war" class="news_link">William McKinley</a> before acting on them. Roosevelt had also lobbied for Dewey's appointment to the Asiatic command the previous October, believing the Navy needed an aggressive officer in the Pacific if war broke out.


The United States declared war on Spain on <time datetime="1898-04-25">April 25, 1898</time>, with Congress backdating the state of war to April 21. Because Hong Kong was a British possession and Britain had declared neutrality, the Royal Navy ordered Dewey's squadron out of the harbor once word of war arrived. Dewey moved his ships a short distance up the Chinese coast to Mirs Bay, took on a final store of coal and ammunition - including a resupply run by the cruiser Baltimore, which Roosevelt had specifically dispatched from Honolulu - and, on April 27, set out across the South China Sea for Manila.

<h2>
Two Fleets, Two Eras
</h2>

What Dewey commanded and what Montojo commanded were, on paper, not wildly unequal in size, but they belonged to different generations of naval technology. Dewey's Asiatic Squadron consisted of four modern protected cruisers - his flagship, USS Olympia, along with USS Baltimore, USS Raleigh, and USS Boston - plus the gunboats USS Concord and USS Petrel, the armed revenue cutter USS Hugh McCulloch, and two unarmed colliers, Zafiro and Nanshan, carrying coal and supplies. All told, roughly nine vessels sailed into the bay, six of them built for combat, mounting around fifty-three guns on steel hulls with, in several cases, armored decks.


Montojo's Spanish squadron was older and more improvised. Its core combat strength was seven vessels: the flagship Reina Cristina and the wooden-hulled cruiser Castilla, the protected cruisers Isla de Cuba and Isla de Luzón, and the gunboats Don Juan de Austria, Don Antonio de Ulloa, and Marqués del Duero - with several smaller gunboats and a transport rounding out the fleet. Their combined firepower, around thirty-seven heavy guns on unarmored ships, was outdated compared to Dewey's force, and Castilla was in such poor condition that she had to be towed into position because her engines could no longer be trusted.


Montojo had initially planned to make his stand at Subic Bay, roughly thirty miles northwest of Corregidor, where the terrain offered a naturally defensible anchorage. But when his ships arrived there just before the American fleet's approach, he found the promised defenses barely begun - only a handful of mines had actually been laid, and shore guns meant to cover the bay were still sitting on the beach, not mounted. Frustrated, Montojo turned his squadron back toward Manila and anchored it in the shallows off the Cavite naval station, south of the city. The shallow water was a deliberate choice: if his ships were sunk, as he privately feared they might be, they would settle on the bottom rather than plunge to the depths, giving his crews a better chance of survival, and his position would remain under the protection of shore batteries at Cavite and Manila.

Battle Between US and Spain Took Place in Manila Bay

Explore the causes, key moments, and lasting impact of the 1898 Battle of Manila Bay — the naval clash that ended Spanish rule in the Philippines.

May 1, 1898: the naval battle between the United States and Spain took place in Manila Bay