<Ul> <Li> 1st Cardenas </Li> <Li> 2nd Cardenas </Li> <Li> 3rd Cárdenas </Li> <Li> 1st Cienfuegos </Li> <Li> USS Merrimac </Li> <Li> Guantánamo Bay </Li> <Li> Fort Toro </Li> <Li> 2nd Cienfuegos </Li> <Li> Las Guasimas </Li> <Li> 1st Manzanillo </Li> <Li> Tayacoba </Li> <Li> Aguadores </Li> <Li> El Caney </Li> <Li> San Juan Hill </Li> <Li> 2nd Manzanillo </Li> <Li> Aguacate </Li> <Li> 1st Santiago </Li> <Li> 2nd Santiago </Li> <Li> 3rd Manzanillo </Li> <Li> Nipe Bay </Li> <Li> Manimani </Li> <Li> 4th Manzanillo </Li> </Ul> <Li> San Juan Hill </Li> <P> The Battle of Santiago de Cuba was a naval battle that occurred on July 3, 1898, in which the United States Navy decisively defeated Spanish forces, sealing American victory in the Spanish--American War and achieving nominal independence for Cuba from Spanish rule . </P> <P> The battle marked the culmination of the Cuban Wars for Independence that had been waged by Cuban revolutionaries against Spanish imperial power for several decades . The United States had political, economic, cultural, and ideological interests in Cuba . Within this larger context, many American political leaders, pushed by interventionist public opinion, were outraged by the publication of a private letter by the Spanish Minister Enrique Dupuy de Lôme critical of President William McKinley and by the destruction of the American battleship USS Maine, for which a naval court of inquiry and American yellow journalism blamed Spain . </P>

During the spanish american war of 1898 the united states navy decisively defeated enemy fleets in