de Cuba. However, local Spanish colonial troops defeated him and forced him to withdraw or face becoming a prisoner. In late 1760, two Royal Navy frigates, and HMS Boreas cut out the French privateers Vainquer and Mackau, which were hiding in the bay. The French were also forced to burn the Guespe, another privateer, to prevent her capture. During the Spanish–American War of 1898, the U.S. Navy fleet attacking Santiago needed shelter from the summer hurricane season. They chose Guantánamo because of its excellent harbor. U.S. Marines landed with naval support in the invasion of Guantánamo Bay in June 1898. As they moved inland, however, Spanish resistance increased and the Marines required support from Cuban scouts. Guantanamo Bay interested U.S military planners due to its geographical location in the Caribbean. It became a strategic location in defending the Panama Canal and the southern US coast. It was also a natural haven for naval vessels in the region. Due to other factors, it pushed the US to consider the area as a suitable location for a Naval Base. The Guantanamo Bay Naval Base surrounds the southern portion of the bay. The naval base, nicknamed "GTMO" or "Gitmo", covers on the western and eastern banks of the bay. It was established in 1898, when the United States took control of Cuba from Spain following the Spanish–American War. The newly-formed American protectorate incorporated the Platt Amendment in the 1901 Cuban Constitution. Tomás Estrada Palma, the first President of Cuba, offered a perpetual lease for the area around Guantánamo Bay on February 23, 1903. The 1903 Cuban–American Treaty of Relations held, among other things, that the United States, for the purposes of operating coaling and naval stations, has "complete jurisdiction and control" of the Guantánamo Bay, while recognizing that the Republic of Cuba retains ultimate sovereignty. In 1934, a new Cuban-American Treaty of Relations, reaffirming the lease, granted Cuba and its trading partners free access through the bay, modified the lease payment from $2,000 in U.S. gold coins per year to the 1934 equivalent value of $4,085 in U.S. dollars, and made the lease permanent unless both governments agreed to break it, or until the U.S. abandoned the base property. After the Cuban Revolution of 1953–1959, United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower insisted that the status of the base remain unchanged, despite the objections of Fidel Castro. Since then, the Cuban government has cashed