Article: Olympian fire: Commodore George Dewey and the birth of the modern U.S. Navy.(Battle of Manila Bay)

In the early morning darkness of May 1, 1898, nine American warships sliced the weak chop of Boca Grande, one of two main passages into the Philippines' Manila Bay. Distance and steel hulls attenuated the thumping of steam engines, and darkness swallowed the smoke from funnels as the ships' crews crouched at their loaded guns, sweating in the tropical heat. Flanked by Spanish batteries on the islands of Caballo and El Fraile and tense with fear of mines thought to litter the channel, the American sailors were grateful for the darkness and the clouds that blocked moon and starlight.

Then, just as the ships passed El Fraile, flames flared from the funnel of the ...

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