USS Maine

1898

Havana harbor, remember the Maine Location: Havana harbor, Cuba · Coordinates: 23.13°N 82.34°W · Casualties: 266 · Survivors: 89 · Depth: 11 m (raised 1911) · Cause: explosion · disputed — Detonated at her anchor at 21:40 on 15 February 1898, tearing open the forward third of the ship. The Navy court of inquiry blamed a Spanish mine; modern forensic reconstructions overwhelmingly favour a spontaneous coal bunker fire adjacent to the magazine. The cause remains officially unresolved. · Fate: raised · scuttled in deep water 1912 · Type: armored cruiser · Tonnage: 6,682 tons · Crew: 355 · Flag: United States · Launched: 1889 U.S. Navy armored cruiser, sent to Havana to protect American interests during the Cuban War of Independence. Exploded at her anchor at 21:40 on 15 February 1898; her forward third was torn open and she sank in shallow water. 266 dead, two-thirds of her crew. 'Remember the Maine' became the war cry that pushed the United States into conflict with Spain two months later, though modern analysis suggests the explosion was almost certainly a spontaneous coal bunker fire rather than a Spanish mine. The Vessel USS Maine (ACR-1) was a second-class armoured cruiser of the United States Navy, commissioned on 17 September 1895 at the New York Navy Yard. She was 98 metres long, 6,682 tons, with a main battery of four 10-inch guns in two twin turrets. Her design and construction had been one of the most prolonged and contentious projects in late nineteenth-century American naval procurement: she was laid down on 17 October 1888, and the seven years between laying and commissioning represented the slowest construction of any American warship of her generation. The delays had resulted from Congressional funding arguments, armour-plate contract disputes, and continuing technological changes in her specification. By the time of her commissioning she was already partially obsolete; her class had been planned as the American answer to the 1880s British and European protected cruisers, but naval technology had advanced faster than her construction programme. The Maine was classed as a second-class battleship in her contemporary records and as an armoured cruiser in her modern classification. She was considered the pride of the 1890s American fleet, but she was also the slowest and least militarily effective capital ship in the service. Her captain at the end of her service was Captain Charles Sigsbee, 52, a career naval officer who had previously commanded the USS Kearsarge and the USS Detroit. Sigsbee was a respected officer and a published marine geophysicist; the Sigsbee Abyssal Plain of the The Disaster The explosion of the USS Maine at 21:40 on 15 February 1898 was felt throughout Havana and recorded on the seismographs at Vieques, Puerto Rico, and at New Orleans. The blast destroyed the forward third of the ship: the forward magazine, the forecastle, and the upper half of the armoured belt were blown away. The ship settled immediately, burning, into the shallow harbour bottom. 266 of the 354 men aboard died. 94 survived, of whom several had been ashore or were able to swim clear. Captain Sigsbee survived, as did most of the officers whose cabins were located aft of the main magazine. The majority of the enlisted crew, quartered in the forward compartments, died in their hammocks or in the seconds immediately following. The cause of the explosion was contested from the first hours. The Spanish harbour authority's initial investigation, conducted on 16 February, suggested an internal accident. An American Court of Inquiry convened by the Navy Department on 21 February, under Captain William Sampson, produced its report on 21 March 1898: the findings identified the immediate cause as an external mine that had detonated under the forward magazine. The American Court did not identify the party responsible for placing the mine. The American press did not require the Court to name a Spanish perpetrator. The Hearst and Pulitzer papers had been running "Remember the Maine, and to hell with Spain" as a standing editorial line since the week of the explosion. President McKinley's war