U.S. sailors and Marines cut undersea telegraph cables at Cienfuegos on May 11, 1898.
The operation targeted Cienfuegos because the city was a major cable junction linking Cuba with Havana, Santiago de Cuba, Spain, and other Caribbean possessions. Disrupting those lines could isolate Spanish forces and make it harder for them to coordinate naval movements and receive outside support.
The cruiser USS Marblehead, gunboat USS Nashville, and revenue cutter USRC Windom supported the raid. Their small boats approached the shore while the warships fired on Spanish positions protecting the cable house. Sailors and Marines grappled the cables from the seabed and worked under rifle fire to cut them.
Two of the three cables were severed before mounting casualties forced the boats to withdraw; the remaining cable near shore was not fully cut. The action therefore did not erase every communications link, but it seriously disrupted Spanish communications and helped tighten the American blockade. Matanzas, Havana, and Santiago were important wartime locations, but the cable-cutting raid described here occurred at Cienfuegos.