Rear Admiral George Dewey's flagship, USS Olympia (lower left), fires on the Spanish fleet during the May 1, 1898, Battle of Manila Bay. (Courtesy of U.S. Naval Historical Center)

Dewey turned to Olympia’s Captain Charles Gridley and spoke the few words that doomed a Spanish squadron and opened the door to an American empire: ‘You may fire when you are ready, Gridley.’

In the early morning darkness of May 1, 1898, nine American warships sliced the weak chop of Boca Grande, one of two main passages into the Philippines’ Manila Bay. Distance and steel hulls attenuated the thumping of steam engines, and darkness swallowed the smoke from funnels as the ships’ crews crouched at their loaded guns, sweating in the tropical heat. Flanked by Spanish batteries on the islands of Caballo and El Fraile and tense with fear of mines thought to litter the channel, the American sailors were grateful for the darkness and the clouds that blocked moon and starlight.

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Then, just as the ships passed El Fraile, flames flared from the funnel of the revenue cutter Hugh McCulloch. Instead of the good Welsh anthracite taken on by other vessels in British Hong Kong, the cutter’s bunkers held bituminous coal from its last port of call in Australia. Soot from the soft coal accumulated in the funnel and periodically burst into flame. Sailors cursed McCulloch as muzzle flashes marked a Spanish battery on El Fraile, and shell splashes stirred the waters of Boca Grande.

Four of the American warships opened fire and quickly smothered the enemy battery with shells as the column broke from the passage into the bay proper. On the cruiser USS Olympia, flagship of the U.S. Asiatic Squadron and leader of the column, Commodore George Dewey watched. Orders already given, he spent long minutes waiting for gun flashes or dawn to reveal an enemy squadron. Perhaps Dewey filled a few of those minutes with memories of the past that had led him to penetrate the stronghold of his nation’s latest enemy.

Born in Montpelier, Vt., on Dec. 26, 1837, to Dr. Julius and Mary Perrin Dewey, George was the youngest of three boys. Mary died before George turned 6, so his upstanding and hardworking father became the central figure in his life. Other male figures also shaped Dewey, from public school teacher Z.K. Pangborn to his teachers at Norwich University and the professors and officers of the U.S. Naval Academy, to which he received an appointment in 1854.

George appeared to love neither the discipline nor the academics at Annapolis, as he piled demerits atop poor grades in his first year. Despite ranking just two places from the bottom of his class, he survived for a second year. Then, somehow, Dewey found a measure of maturity. Perhaps it was in the Bible classes he taught to local youths, in the letters he exchanged with his father or in the growing threat of civil war that haunted his nation. Whatever the reason, in June 1858 George and 14 others (all that remained of the 59 appointees of 1854) graduated. He, proudly, stood fifth in his class.

Following a two-year cruise on the steam frigate USS Wabash, flagship of the Mediterranean Squadron, Dewey took his examination for lieutenancy and was commissioned in the dark month of April 1861. Mere weeks later, he paced the deck of the steam frigate Mississippi, a 23-year-old executive officer untested in battle and assigned to blockade a rebellious Gulf coast. A year later, Dewey received his blooding, as Mississippi joined then-Captain David Farragut’s fleet in the assault on New Orleans.

Protected by a large garrison, the heavy guns of two forts and other batteries, and a small Confederate fleet that included the ironclad ram CSS Manassas—plus the Mississippi River currents, twists and treacherous snags—New Orleans seemed impregnable. But, as Dewey later wrote about the man who became his role model, “Farragut always went ahead.” From Farragut, Dewey learned not to overrate an enemy’s strength, enhanced as it usually was by fear and rumor. He also learned the import of decisive action when Manassas tried to ram Mississippi. Only a quick command from Dewey to the helmsman turned a potentially deadly direct hit into a glancing blow.

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