On my obituary CD-ROM entitled "From Time into Eternity" I gave obituaries and notices relative to the death of Worth Bagley,
nephew of Willis Bagley, of Northampton County, NC.
The accounts related that he, a navy ensign, and three or four of his men were killed when the torpedo boat on which they were serving
was struck by a cannonade from a masked battery just off the shoreline near Cardenas, Cuba.
The articles also mentioned that Bagley, formerly a Raleigh resident, was the first American killed in "the present war."
Since then, I have found a biography of Worth Bagley in "The Spanish-American War: A Historical Dictionary" by Brad K. Berner c) 1998
[published by The Scarecrow Press, Inc.; Lanham, Md. & London 1998]. The entry reads:
BAGLEY, WORTH (1874-1898), Ensign (ESN), second in command of the torpedo boat Winslow.
A U.S. Naval Academy graduate from Raleigh, North Carolina, he was killed in a naval engagement at Cardenas, Cuba, on 11 May 1898.
Bagley was the first and only U.S. naval officer killed by the Spanish during the war.
Posthumously he achieved fame as over 2,000 soldiers and the entire community attended his funeral in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Josephus Daniels!
wrote The First Fallen Hero: A Biographical Sketch of Worth Bagley (1899).
Bagley became a martyr for the cause of a North-South Reunion. The Atlanta Constitution commented, in its editorial
"The First Blood of Two Wars" on 13 May 1898, that "the blood of this martyr freely spilled upon his country's altar seals effectively the covenant of
brotherhood between North and South."
Hence, not only was the first American casuality in the Spanish-American war, a North Carolinian,
the only naval officer killed in the war was a North Carolinian.
!according to the death notices Daniels was Bagley's brother-in-law, and was the editor of the News and Observer.
William S. Powell in "North Carolina" adds that Daniels was the secretary of the navy (page 459).
Click here to see a picture of the Winslow's deck where Bagley and comrades were brutally killed for their country.
from the Department of the Navy -- Naval Historical Center's website
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