The terms of settlement of the trouble were that the Virginius should be surrendered to an American warship, with the survivors of those who had been captured with her, and that on December 25 the United States flag should be saluted by the Tornado.  The surrender was made in the obscure harbor of Bahia Honda, December 16, the Spanish having taken the Virginius there to avoid the humiliation of a surrender in Santiago or Havana, where it should have been made.  Captain W. D. Whiting, the chief of staff of the North Atlantic Squadron, was appointed to receive the surrender of the Virginius, and the gunboat Dispatch was sent to Bahia Honda with him for that purpose.  Lieut.  Adolph Marix was the flag lieutenant of the Dispatch, the same who was afterwards the judge-advocate of the court of inquiry on the Maine disaster.  The Virginius was delivered with the flag flying, but she was unseaworthy, and, struck by a storm off Cape Hatteras, was sunk on her way to New York.  The salute to the flag that had been arranged was waived by the United States because the attorney-general gave an opinion that the Virginius had no right to fly the American flag when she was captured.

Major Moses P. Handy, afterwards famous as a journalist, was present at the surrender of the Virginius to the American men of war in the harbor of Bahia Honda, and gives a graphic account of the circumstances attending that ceremony.  In concluding the tale he says:  “The surrender of the surviving prisoners of the massacre took place in the course of time at Santiago, owing more to British insistence than to our feeble representation.  As to the fifty-three who were killed, Spain never gave us any real satisfaction.  For a long time the Madrid government unblushingly denied that there had been any killing, and when forced to acknowledge the fact they put us off with preposterous excuses.  ‘Butcher Borriel,’ by whose orders the outrage was perpetrated, was considered at Madrid to have been justified by circumstances.  It was pretended that orders to suspend the execution of Ryan and his associates were ‘unfortunately’ received too late, owing to interruption of telegraph lines by the insurgents, to whose broad and bleeding shoulders an attempt was thus made to shift the responsibility.

“There was a nominal repudiation of Borriel’s act and a promise was made to inflict punishment upon ‘those who have offended,’ but no punishment was inflicted upon anybody.  The Spanish government, with characteristic double dealing, resorted to procrastination, prevarication and trickery, and thus gained time, until new issues effaced in the American mind the memory of old wrongs unavenged.  Instead of being degraded, Borriel was promoted.  Never to this day has there been any adequate atonement by Spain, much less an apology or expression of regret for the Virginius massacre.”

The amount of money paid to the United States government for distribution among the families of American sufferers by this affair was $80,000.  And that is the extent of the reparation made for the shocking crime.