text: Upon returning to the blockading fleet from the reconnaissance, Marblehead carried two Cuban officers who had been brought off to the ship from Leeward Point (the western side) of Guantánamo Bay. They had been sent to Admiral Sampson by General Calixto García (the same who figured with U.S. Lieutenant Rowan in the famous "A Message to Garcia") to report that the Cuban forces, whose outposts occupied positions on the coast from the mouth of the Yateras to a point  west of Santiago were at the disposition of the U.S. Commander-in-Chief. Commander McCalla thereafter maintained close liaison with General Pedro Pérez, commanding the Cuban forces around Guantánamo City, through the latter's Chief of Staff, Colonel Vieta, and thus received valuable advice and assistance.
  Marine assault landing
  With the decision to establish a base at Guantánamo Bay, the First Battalion of Marines, consisting of six companies of around 650 men (four infantry and one artillery company), was ordered to proceed in the converted transport , and join the fleet off Santiago.  The First Battalion, under the command of Lt. Col. Robert W. Huntington USMC, had been undergoing battalion exercises while awaiting orders at Key West.  USS Panther reached Santiago on 9 June 1898.  That same day, in advance of the battalion landing, Navy Commander Bowman H. McCalla of the , the officer in command of the landings, approved a camp site selected for the Marines by Lt. Col. Huntington. The site selected was a flat ridge on top of a hill, above the village on Fisherman's Point, and designated Camp McCalla.  In addition to an artillery company equipped with a battery of four 3-inch rapid-firing artillery pieces and two Model 1895 Colt–Browning machine guns, each marine was equipped with the Navy's new rapid-firing magazine rifle, the Model 1895 Lee Navy.  Both the Colt machine gun and the Lee rifles used a new high-velocity smokeless powder cartridge, the 6 mm Lee Navy.