Talk:Battle of Santiago de Cuba

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.
B	This article has been rated as B-Class on the quality scale.
Additional information: This article has been checked against the following criteria for B-Class status: Referencing and citation: not checked Coverage and accuracy: not checked Structure: not checked Grammar: not checked Supporting materials: not checked To fill out this checklist, please add the following to the template call: <!-- 1. It is suitably referenced, and all major points are appropriately cited. --> |B-Class-1=yes/no <!-- 2. It reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain major omissions or inaccuracies. --> |B-Class-2=yes/no <!-- 3. It has a defined structure, including a lead section and one or more sections of content. --> |B-Class-3=yes/no <!-- 4. It is free from major grammatical errors. --> |B-Class-4=yes/no <!-- 5. It contains appropriate supporting materials, such as an infobox, images, or diagrams. --> |B-Class-5=yes/no

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Cuba. For more information, visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.	Cuba Portal
B	This article has been rated as B-Class on the assessment scale.
Mid	This article is on a subject of Mid priority within the scope of Wikiproject Cuba.
Cuba To-do: edit  Task list New article announcements Requests: Sport in Cuba, Yaguajay Stubs: Dollar store (Cuba), Celia Sánchez Verify: History of Cuba, Fulgencio Batista Update: 2006 Cuban transfer of presidential duties NPOV: History of Cuba, Delfin Fernandez, Armando Valladares Copyedit: Bay of Pigs invasion, Julio Antonio Mella, Fabio Grobart, Armando Peraza Wikify: Merge: Cleanup: Bay of Pigs invasion, History of Cuba, War Against the Bandits, Abelardo Colomé Ibarra, List of Cubans, Máximo Gómez, Antonio Maceo Grajales Style: Fidel Castro Expand: Cuban-Soviet relations, Chivatos, Baseball in Cuba, Religion in Cuba, Havana's International Book Fair, Cuba-Venezuela relations, Antonio Sánchez de Bustamante y Sirven

[edit] Reliability issues

I'm afraid this article is not most reliable. See Talk:Spanish-American_War. Comparing with web sources, like http://www.spanamwar.com/santiago.htm (reliable-looking), the article contains some errors, and many "suspected" differencies.

I'm no expert at this subject, so I tried to fix obvious errors only:

• the second destroyer was Furor, not Terror
• the Cervera's ships were escaping west, not east; "Brooklyn" turned east, not west
• more correct designation for "Vizcaya" class is armored cruiser -it had side belt

The last paragraph, about Sampson with "New York" and "Massachusetts" chasing "Colon" is very doubtful - it was rather Schley with "Brooklyn" and "Oregon". Pibwl 23:43, 13 Nov 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Missing U.S. perspective

This is quite an entertaining and informative article. I've done some cleanup work, especially some rephrasing to avoid word repetition and to reduce some sentence complexity, as well as changing most occurrences of "American" to the more precise "U.S.".

The main lack I see in the current article is an absence of the U.S. perspective of the battle. It appears to be written from the Spanish POV, with mostly statistical nods toward the U.S. forces (aside from repeated citations of American "bewilderment" and ineptitude, which may very well be accurate, but does not encourage one to believe the article's NPOV-ness). I'd rather hold off on slapping an POV tag on the article until people can work in a little more of the U.S. view of this battle. I'd also hate to lose nice passages like this one:

Shortly thereafter, the Spaniard turned his attention to the burning wreck that was Vizcaya and saluted her.

Adios, Vizcaya?

At his words, the fires raging onboard Vizcaya reached her magazine, and she exploded, throwing bodies and debris for miles.

It was a fitting end to a sad day.

even though it's obviously POV, just for the sake of a more neutral point-of-view. Can some folks familiar with the subject broaden the perspective without losing the poignancy of the Spanish defeat? — Jeff Q 08:18, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)