CAVITE  , a fortified seaport, the

capital of the province of Cavite, Luzon, Philippine Islands, and the seat of the principal Asiatic naval station of the United States, on a forked tongue of land in Manila Bay, 8 in . S. of the city of Manila . Pop . (1903) 4494; with the barrios of San Roque and Caridad (on the main peninsula), which are under the municipal government of Cavite (15,630) . Cavite is the terminus of a railway which follows the shore of the bay from Manila . The northern part of the town, Sangley Point (one of the two forks of the main peninsula), is the principal coaling station of the U.S. fleet in Asiatic waters . The naval station proper and the old town of Cavite are on the south fork of the peninsula . Cavite's buildings are mostly of stone, with upper storeys of wood; its streets are narrow and crooked . It has five churches (one of these is an independent Filipino church), and is the seat of a provincial high school . Cavite has long been the principal naval base of the Philippine Islands, and one of the four Spanish penitentiaries in the Islands was here . During the 19th century Cavite was the centre of political disturbances in the Philippines; in 1896 on the parade ground thirteen political prisoners were executed, and to their memory a monument was erected in 1906 at the head of the isthmus connecting with the main peninsula . The town was nearly destroyed by an earthquake in 1880 .

It was taken from the Spanish by an

American squadron under Commodore George Dewey inMay1898 .