about three o'clock in the afternoon
The thunder of the shot sounded far over the water and found an echo among the houses at Corpus Christi . `` Now they 're even shooting at the ambulance flag , '' roared Ben Wood , who was rushing about on the deck of the _ President Cleveland _ and exhorting the crew to hoist the anchor as fast as possible so as to get out to the field of battle . But as the boiler-fires were low , this seemed to take an eternity . At last , about three o'clock in the afternoon , they succeeded in reaching a spot where a few hundred men were clinging to the floating wreckage . The rest had been attended to by the enemy 's shots , the sea and the sharks . The enemy had wasted only a few shots on the transport-steamers , as a single well-aimed explosive shell was quite sufficient to entirely destroy one of the merchant-vessels , and the battle with the _ Olympia _ had lasted only a very short time , as the distance had evidently been too great to enable the American shots to reach the enemy . That was the end of the _ Olympia _ , Admiral Dewey 's flag-ship at Cavite !