on the evening of February 15, 1898, an explosion sank the USS Maine in Havana Harbor, Cuba. Navy a glimpse of the Marine Corps of the future.Īt approximately 9:40 p.m. 1 The First Marine Battalion's action in the Caribbean and its favorable press coverage gave the American public and the U.S. The battalion yielded one Medal of Honor recipient, and two of the unit's officers would later serve as commandants of the Marine Corps. They could also claim that of the six marines killed in action in the Spanish-American War, five were from their unit. By war's end, the First Marine Battalion could boast they had fought in the first land battle in Cuba and had been the first to raise the American flag on the island. Long ordered the commandant of the Marine Corps, Charles Heywood, to organize one battalion of marines for expeditionary duty with the North Atlantic Squadron. On April 16, 1898, five days before war began between the United States and Spain, in preparation for what he believed was an inevitable conflict, Secretary of the Navy John D. Huntington (commander of the First Marine Battalion), and Capt.
