CLASH OF ARMS:
The go-order comes 1 July 1898:
wassareif... pausatura... badanada
centennial... titubadi... lauschbank
voseti...offendands... caraquiel
bicaraqzads... mumeratura... spoilable
appilante... depugnere... demidevit
monorilaba... atacharon... fashanadsem
elienatte... crencha... sparrwerk
alienatote...
Roosevelt
One doesn't know USNC Alpha-dog, but after Dewey's flag secretary loses the code-book; It takes the Captain of the USS Oneida, Commander Jesse M. Roper, an hour to crack the message with letter transposition schemes. "War with Spain" "Seek out Enemy" "Attack him immediately" "Eliminate Spanish forces" "Execute" Roper does not finally actually crack the message. He guesses. Roper tells Dewey that Roosevelt orders an attack on the Spanish fleet in the Philippines the very minute that war is officially declared... and that war is declared. Simple enough, right? Not really.
Except that this is July 1, 1898 and nobody has declared anything like war on the American side. The Paris negotiations are still in full sway.
McKinley's naval quarantine declaration for Cuba has been in decreed effect since March 20, 1898, but aside from stop and searches by the few US cruisers near Havana, there has been nothing like an effective American blockade in place, so the brigandage, smuggling, gun running and piracy around Cuba continues apace. The first American submarine attacks on ships in Cuban waters do not occur until August 1-2, 1898. Meanwhile, the Cortez, as irrational as the American Congress, goes through the motions of a debate. The naval blockade is declared null and void by the Spanish legislature on April Fool's Day, a formal declaration of challenge is legislated by the Cortez on April 30, 1898. That means Spanish warships will try to cross the US declared blockade line to test it at some unknown time in the future. The first US submarine goes to sea to hunt for such blockade runners on May 1,1898 and will have to wait for two months to see a Spanish warship put to sea to challenge the blockade. After the USS Chad torpedoes the Alfonso XII on August 1, 1898 and forces that ship to return to Havana for repairs, it is of course open season on anything and everything in the Caribbean (and the world) that flies the flag of Spain (official start of the war, according to International Law) but Dewey is off fighting the war in the Philippines a full week before it is officially declared on August 2, 1898!