George Washington's Ghost

Worse, at some stage in the hours before the attack the cruiser Emden, only surrendered to the Dominicans days before, had been spirited out of San Juan Bay, and a Kaiserliche Marine commerce raider, the Weser used as a fire ship to prevent the ironclad San Miguel intervening.

Needless to say, both the Weser and the San Miguel were among the wrecks now littering the anchorage!

Nobody knew what had become of the former SMS Emden, which had not been in Dominican hands long enough to be re-christened, ‘Santissima Trinidad’.

As for the Hispanic squadron Gravina had sent to the Eastern Caribbean to draw the Royal Navy back into the periscope sights of his patrolling submarines, those idiots had allowed themselves to be trapped between the rising sun and a massively superior English cruiser force and consequently, shot to pieces without ever being able to see, let alone hit back at its attackers.

In retrospect, baiting a new trap for the Royal Navy’s big ships had proved wholly fruitless. After the Indomitable had been hit and the Ulysses set on fire, there had been no similar successes and ominously, one by one the submarines operating west of Havana – four to date – had ceased to radio in their daily position reports.

The English, with no little fanfare, had announced they planned to land the first of four hundred-and-twelve men they had pulled from the sea after the battle in the waters west of Montserrat, in New England in the next few days.

“I am honoured to receive you on board my flagship, Your Excellency,” Gravina bowed, before leading his visitors off the quarterdeck of the Nuevo Leon, the former SMS Breitenfeld, down one deck to his day cabin. A battery of fans, and the air filtering in through the open port holes was a cool relief after the blistering heat of the open deck.

The heavy cruiser was moored alongside the south pier, dwarfed by the great Hamburg-Atlantic liner Friedrich der Grosse, currently preparing to get under way, transporting the Kaiserliche Marine crews of the Nuevo Leon and the Sonora (formerly the SMS Lutzen) back to Europe.

Gravina had turned out well over half the crew of the flagship to greet Santa Anna even though the visit had been announced at less than twelve hours’ notice.

The High Admiral of the Fleets of the Triple Alliance threw a thoughtful look at Rodrigo Altamirano.

“Rodrigo is my personal scientific advisor, Don Carlos,” Santa Anna said, his tone implying that his companion was their advisor. “All three of us in this room,” he smiled apologetically, “cabin, know from hard-won experience that war always throws up surprises and that things often go wrong. The Navy has distinguished itself with great credit against a formidable foe. I am not here to rake over what happened in Santo Domingo, or in the Leeward Islands, or why the performance of our submersibles has been so disappointing after such an encouraging start. Setbacks, such as the one our Cuban and Hispanic allies suffered on that stupid little island, Little Inagua, shortly after the outbreak of hostilities are to be expected. Let us be thankful for all the things which have gone well. We have much to discuss today.”

Gravina nodded, saying nothing.

“In fact, if any of us in this cabin,” Santa Anna observed wryly, “were truly the God-fearing men our confessors would have us be, I would be tempted to conclude that He has a perverse sense of humour.”

Gravina frowned: “I don’t understand, Your Excellency?”

“Don Rodrigo has recently returned from a survey mission to the Sonoran Desert north of the old demilitarised zone.  We now believe that up until as recently as two to three years ago,” Santa Anna explained, suddenly deadly serious, “the English were testing atomic bombs. The test range Don Rodrigo discovered covered many tens of square miles of territory; we can conclude that as it was abandoned long before the current war, that the English had no further use for it. From which it follows that they have mastered the technology necessary to build atomic bombs, and to harness the power of the atom for both civil and military applications.”

Visibly, the colour drained out of Gravina’s face.

“They ignored the Submarine Treaty,” he murmured, his psyche pummelled from all sides by the literally earth-shaking implications of the revelation.

“Yes,” Santa Anna agreed urbanely. “It may well be that quite soon, the English will be fighting the Germans and that,” he shrugged, “they will need to settle with us or face a World War. A war on several fronts which they cannot possibly win, or survive with their precious Empire intact.”

[The End]

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