Spanish cruiser Infanta Maria Teresa

Infanta María Teresa and her sister ships and were authorized in Spain's 1887 naval program. Inspired by the British armored cruisers, they were built to a design drawn up by Palmers Shipbuilding and Iron Company of Jarrow, England. They had two funnels and were fast and well armed. Their main armament was mounted on the center line in single barbettes fore and aft. Their armor was poor: their guns had only lightly armored hoods, their Gonzalez Hontoria de 14 cm mod 1883| guns were mounted in the open on the upper deck, their armor belt was thin and protected only two-thirds of their length, and they had a high, unprotected freeboard that took much damage during the Battle of Santiago de Cuba; one source suggests that despite their classification as armored cruisers, their lack of protection made them more akin to fast, heavily armed protected cruisers than to true armored cruisers. Like other 19th-century warships, they were heavily furnished and decorated with wood, which the Spanish failed to remove prior to combat and which fed fires during the battle. of Infanta Maria Teresa at Sestao, Spain, on 30 August 1890. Infanta Maria Teresa, Almirante Oquendo, and Vizcaya were built by Sociedad Astilleros del Nervión ("Nervión Shipyards") at Sestao, Spain. While she was fitting out, the shipyard began to experience increasing financial problems during 1891, and these brought the construction of all three cruisers to a standstill in April 1892, prompting the Spanish government to intervene and appoint Capitán de navío (Ship-of-the-Line Captain) Pascual Cervera y Topete to serve as director of the shipyard. It was decided to move the three incomplete ships to Ferrol to complete fitting-out. Infanta Maria Teresa departed Sestao at 14:00 on 1 September 1893 and arrived at Ferrol on the morning of 2 September 1893, maintaining a constant speed of during the voyage with six boilers lit. She conducted official speed trials off Galicia on 18 September 1893, during which she was expected to reach at natural draft and at forced draft. She was delivered to the Spanish Navy in 1893. The construction delays caused the cost of each cruiser, set at 15 million pesetas when they were ordered, to rise to about 20 million pesetas each by the time of their completion. ==Operational history==

1893–1898 Assigned to the Training Squadron, Infanta Maria Teresa served as the flagship of a representative squadron — which also included the battleship and the protected cruiser — under the overall command of Contraalmirante (Counter Admiral) Fernando Martínez de Espinosa y Echeverri sent to represent Spain at the opening of the German Empire′s Kiel Canal, which linked the North Sea with the Baltic Sea. The ships departed Cartagena, Spain, at the end of May 1895 and arrived in Germany in early June. Once all six of the smaller warships had rendezvoused with the cruisers, several exercises took place highlighting simulated night attacks against the other ships by the torpedo boats. still lacking her main guns, left for Genoa, Italy, to have them installed, leaving Cervera with only Infanta Maria Teresa and the protected cruiser under his direct command. and reached São Vicente on 14 April. As more ships, including Almirante Oquendo and Vizcaya, arrived over the next few days, the squadron found that it had a shortage of stokers. The blockade wore on, with Infanta María Teresa and the others enduring occasional American naval bombardments of the harbor. Infanta María Teresa′s crew determined that 80 percent of the ammunition for her guns was defective. Some of her crewmen joined others from the fleet in a Naval Brigade to fight against a United States Army overland drive toward Santiago de Cuba. By the beginning of July 1898, the U.S. thrust threatened to capture Santiago de Cuba, and Cervera decided that his squadron's only hope was to escape into the open sea by running the blockade. The decision was made on 1 July 1898, with the break-out set for 3 July 1898. The crew of Infanta María Teresa spent 2 July 1898 returning from Naval Brigade service ashore and preparing for action. With Vice Admiral Cervera aboard, Infanta María Teresa was to lead the escape, sacrificing herself by attacking the fastest American ship, the armored cruiser , in the hope that this would allow the rest of the squadron to avoid action and run westward for the open sea. The Spanish ships got underway at 08:45 on 3 July 1898. The U.S. ships sighted the Spanish ships in the channel at about 09:35, and the Battle of Santiago de Cuba began. As lead ship in the Spanish line, Infanta María Teresa was the first ship to receive concentrated fire from the blockading U.S. Navy squadron. With Vizcaya close behind her and the other Spanish ships turning hard to starboard to flee to the west, Infanta María Teresa charged Brooklyn as if to ram, closing the range to by 10:05, forcing Brooklyn to turn to the east. Infanta María Teresa turned west, brushing past the last obstacle in her path, the armed yacht , as the battleship came up at a range of to port, with the battleships and close behind Iowa. A general engagement ensued, with the U.S. ships to starboard of Infanta María Teresa and both sides firing at maximum rates. One of the first shells Iowa fired hit the after main-battery turret of Infanta María Teresa, killing or wounding its crew and knocking out its gun. Infanta María Teresa had already taken many hits, and now Brooklyn and the battleship began to hit her repeatedly. Fires broke out, threatening to detonate her ammunition magazines. Seeing no hope for the ship and wishing to save as many of her crew as possible, Cervera at 10:20 ordered the ship beached. With her upper works swept by small arms fire and her decks ravaged by fire, she turned to starboard and ran aground at 10:25 in a small cove about west of Santiago de Cuba and just west of Punta Cabrera, coming to rest upright with her stern over deep water and her bottom pierced by rocks, one of which created a hole. Some of her crewmen made it ashore, although they had to beware of Cuban insurgents, who began to shoot the survivors of the wrecked Spanish ships. Others were rescued by American sailors who brought small boats alongside the wreck to take off survivors. The battle ended in the destruction of all of Cervera's ships, and the four cruisers beached at various points along the southern coast of Cuba. The war ended on 13 August 1898. ==Salvage and loss==

On 6 July 1898, the commander of the U.S. Navy's North Atlantic Squadron, Rear Admiral William T. Sampson, appointed a board chaired by Commodore John C. Watson to survey the damage to the Spanish ships lost in the Battle of Santiago de Cuba. Watson's assistant Naval Constructor Richmond Pearson Hobson became supervisor of wrecks and convinced President William McKinley to support salvage operations in Cuba, after which the U.S. Navy hired the Merritt & Chapman Derrick and Wrecking Company to do most of the salvage work. Surveys of the Spanish wrecks concluded that Infanta Maria Teresa — which the Americans referred to simply as "Teresa" — was the least damaged of the Spanish ships sunk in the Battle of Santiago de Cuba and the only one that could be salvaged. She was pulled gently off the beach and refloated on 24 September 1898 and the tug towed her to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for preliminary repairs. With these completed, the U.S. Navy repair ship and the Merritt & Chapman Derrick and Wrecking Company salvage vessel Merritt took Infanta Maria Teresa under tow and departed Guantánamo Bay in company with the collier Leonidas on 29 October 1898 headed for Norfolk, Virginia, where permanent repairs could be made. Merritt, Vulcan, and Infanta Maria Teresa formed a tow stretching for nearly , with Merritt leading and attached to Vulcan by a manila line and Vulcan in turn attached to Infanta Maria Teresa by a manila chain. Good weather allowed the ships to make as they headed eastward into the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti, with Infanta Maria Teresa assisting the tow by operating one of her steam engines. Good weather persisted on 30 October, and the ships rounded the northeastern tip of Cuba before 12:00 that day and headed toward the Bahamas. At around 20:00 that evening, however, the weather became unsettled, and it remained cloudy and squally on 31 October. On the morning of 1 November 1898, the three ships were in Crooked Island Passage in the Bahamas when a violent squall struck. The weather continued to deteriorate in the hours that followed as a tropical storm passed through the area. The tow's speed dropped to , and Infanta Maria Teresa began to roll heavily and was down by the bow, with the pumps unable to keep up with the ingress of water. By 13:30, the 114 men aboard her were abandoning ship, and a surfboat from Merritt rescued the last of them at 16:54. At 17:11 Vulcan cut the tow line, and Leonidas, Merritt, and Vulcan hove to while the abandoned Infanta Maria Teresa drifted out of sight. Merritt parted company with the other two ships at 19:00, presumably to transport Infanta Maria Teresa′s crew to either Nassau in the Bahamas or Key West, Florida. In the intensifying storm, Vulcan and Leonidas got back underway and zigzaged back down Crooked Island Passage to search for Infanta Maria Teresa but found no trace of her. Presuming she had sunk, they gave up the search at 09:00 on 2 November 1898 and set course for Norfolk. Infanta Maria Teresa in fact had remained afloat and drifted for until running aground, apparently with great force, between two coral reefs off Cat Island in the Bahamas less than south of Bird Point. Potomac and Vulcan rendezvoused off Bird Point on 3 November 1898 to begin a survey of the wreck. Infanta Maria Teresa′s bow pointed to the northwest, and both her anchors had been thrown off the bow, apparently by the force of her impact. The ocean washed over her at high tide, and her bottom had been crushed, with hull plating rivets shorn off and the hull's integrity destroyed. Deeming her beyond salvage, the U.S. Navy officially abandoned her wreck on 20 November 1898. ==Rediscovery of wreck==

The U.S. Navy retained few records of Infanta Maria Teresa, which it had never commissioned into service, and over time her wreck was largely forgotten, even locally in the Bahamas. In December 1999, however, a pilot who had been informed of the wreck's existence flew over the waters off Bird Point at an altitude of and spotted the outline of the submerged wreck. Three days later, scuba divers followed up by diving on the wreck site, finding the wreck surprisingly intact, with a clearly discernible bow and stern, and identifying three large guns, one of which was long and of caliber. ==Commemoration==

from Infanta Maria Teresa at Fort Griswold Battlefield State Park in Groton, Connecticut. The United States Navy salvaged several guns from Infanta Maria Teresa′s wreck. One gun is on display at Fort Griswold Battlefield State Park in Groton, Connecticut. Another gun, with battle damage, is on display at Veterans Memorial Park in Ottumwa, Iowa, and bears a commemorative plaque which reads, "This Cannon was taken from the battleship [sic] The Maria Theresa, flag ship of admiral Cervera's fleet in the war with Spain in 1898. Plaque donated by Jo Hayes Camp, Spanish War Veterans of Ottumwa." A third gun is on prominent display at the Minneapolis Veterans Home, a long-term care facility in Minneapolis, Minnesota, operated by the Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs. The Government of Cuba created Cuba's first underwater national monument, the Archaeological Park of the Natural and Cultural Underwater Heritage Battle of Santiago de Cuba, in 2015 along an approximately stretch of Cuba's southern coast to preserve the wrecks of the ships remaining there and pay tribute to sailors who died in the Battle of Santiago de Cuba. Wreck diving is permitted in the park. ==Notes==