"(Symonds 143).
Chance was not a factor at all for the United States Navy at the Battle of Manila Bay. If anything chance played a better role in helping the Spanish fleet regroup, after Commodore Dewey requested a retreat due to a false munitions report, about expending too many shells. However the report was false because they had expended only 15 shells, which was miniscule compared to what they had aboard all 4 of their protected cruisers. Unlike during revolutionary times and the civil war era of combat which consisted of firing as many shells and hoping they were hitting from afar, the strategy and gun captains aboard Dewey's ships were far more accurate than the de-commissioned 4.5 inch guns and 5.1 inch guns used by their predecessors. The Battle of Hampton Roads is a great example for how chance didn't play the role it did back then as compared to United States' New Navy. The clear victory of the United States at Manila Bay having only 1 death due to heat exhaustion can be compared to the luck of the Victory at the Battle of Lake Erie, where chance played a large role in the overall victory of the U.S. back in 1812. "The action terminated shortly after three o'clock and, of about one hundred men reported fit for duty in the morning, twenty-one were found dead, and sixty-three wounded."(Parsons 226) This excerpt from Parson's surgical account wasn't uncommon during the early 1800's and prior, but with the New Navy's technological advantage over the Spanish at Manila Bay in 1898, the reported 1 death in such a naval conflict had never been reported. "As the American captains came aboard, one by one, they reported the absence of casualties. Most of them offered this information diffidently, even apologetically. Raised in the age of wooden ships and ironmen, they became accustomed to the notion that the heroism of a ship's crew could be measured by its butcher's bill of killed and wounded.