“Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain”

“Remember the Maine, to hell with Spain” USS Maine (ACR-1) She is best known for her catastrophic loss in Havana harbor which started the-Spanish American War that led to Teddy's charge up San Juan Hill with the "Rough Riders" USS Maine (ACR-1) was the United States Navy's second commissioned pre-dreadnought battleship,[Note 1] although she was originally classified as an armored cruiser. She is best known for her catastrophic loss in Havana harbor. Maine had been sent to Havana, Cuba to protect U.S. interests during the Cuban revolt against Spain.[2] On the evening of 15 February 1898, she suddenly exploded, and swiftly sank, killing nearly three quarters of her crew. Though then, as now, the cause and responsibility for her sinking were unclear; popular opinion in the U.S. blamed Spain, and the sinking (popularized in the phrase Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain!) was one of the precipitating events of the Spanish–American War.[3][4] Her sinking remains the subject of speculation, with various authors proposing that she sank due to the results of an undetected fire in one of her coal bunkers,[3] that she was the victim of a naval mine,[3] and that she was deliberately sunk for the purposes of driving the U.S. into a war with Spain. The cause of the explosion that sank the ship remains a mystery.Maine spent her active career operating along the East Coast of the United States and the Caribbean. In January 1898, Maine was sent from Key West, Florida, to Havana, Cuba, to protect U.S. interests during a time of local insurrection and civil disturbances. Three weeks later, at 21:40 on 15 February, an explosion on board Maine occurred in the Havana Harbor. Later investigations revealed that more than 5 long tons (5.1 t) of powder charges for the vessel's six and ten-inch guns had detonated, obliterating the forward third of the ship. The remaining wreckage rapidly settled to the bottom of the harbor. Most of Maine's crew were sleeping or resting in the enlisted quarters in the forward part of the ship when the explosion occurred. 266 men lost their lives as a result of the explosion or shortly thereafter, and eight more died later from injuries. Captain Charles Sigsbee and most of the officers survived because their quarters were in the aft portion of the ship. Altogether, there were only 89 survivors, 18 of whom were officers.[23] On 21 March, the US Naval Court of Inquiry in Key West declared that a naval mine caused the explosion.The explosion was a precipitating cause of the Spanish–American War that began in April 1898. Advocates of the war used the rallying cry, "Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!" The episode focused national attention on the crisis in Cuba but was not cited by the William McKinley administration as a casus belli, though it was cited by some who were 1 / 4 “Remember the Maine, to hell with Spain” already inclined to go to war with Spain over their perceived atrocities and loss of control in Cuba. The investigations In addition to the inquiry commissioned by the Spanish Government to naval officers Del Peral and De Salas, two Naval Courts of Inquiry were ordered: The Sampson board in 1898 and the Vreeland board in 1911. In 1976, Admiral Hyman G. Rickover commissioned a private investigation into the explosion and the National Geographic Society did an investigation in 1999 using computer simulations. All investigations agreed that an explosion of the forward magazines caused the destruction of the ship, but different conclusions were reached how the magazines could explode. 1898 Del Peral and De Salas Inquiry The Spanish inquiry, conducted by Del Peral and De Salas, collected evidence from officers of naval artillery who had examined the remains of Maine. Del Peral and De Salas identified the spontaneous combustion of the coal bunker that was located adjacent to the munition stores in the Maine as the likely cause of the explosion. Additional observations included that: had a mine been the cause of the explosion a column of water would have been observed the wind and the waters were calm on that date and hence a mine could not have been detonated by contact but using electricity, but no cables had been found no dead fish were found in the harbor as would be expected following an explosion in the water the munition stores usually do not explode when mines sink ships. 2 / 4 “Remember the Maine, to hell with Spain” The conclusions of the report were not reported at that time by the American press. 1974 Rickover investigation Admiral Hyman G. Rickover became intrigued with the disaster and began a private investigation in 1974. Using information from the two official inquiries, newspapers, personal papers and information on the construction and ammunition of Maine it was concluded that the explosion was not caused by a mine. Instead spontaneous combustion of coal in the bunker next to magazine was speculated to be the most likely cause. The Admiral published a book about this investigation, How the Battleship Maine Was Destroyed, in 1976. 1998 National Geographic investigation In 1998, National Geographic Magazine commissioned an analysis by Advanced Marine Enterprises. This investigation, done to commemorate the centennial of the sinking of Maine, was based on computer modeling, a technique unavailable for previous investigations. The conclusions reached were "while a spontaneous combustion in a coal bunker can create ignition-level temperatures in adjacent magazines, this is not likely to have occurred on the Maine, because the bottom plating identified as Section 1 would have blown outward, not inward," and "The sum of these findings is not definitive in proving that a mine was the cause of sinking of the Maine, but it does strengthen the case in favor of a mine as the cause."[31] Some experts, including Admiral Rickover's team and several analysts at AME, do not agree with the conclusion.[31] False flag hypothesis It has been suggested by some that the sinking was a false flag operation conducted by the U.S. · · Mikhail Khazin, a Russian economist who once ran the cultural section at Komsomolskaya Pravda, speaking in a 2008 Pravda interview of the need in troubled times to change the psychology of society, to unite it, said that "the Americans blew up their own battleship Maine." 3 / 4 “Remember the Maine, to hell with Spain” · · Eliades Acosta, a prominent Cuban historian, head of the Cuban Communist Party's Committee on Culture and former director of the Jose Marti National Library in Havana, offered the standard Cuban interpretation of the sinking of the Maine: that the United States itself probably did it, in an interview to The New York Times. But Dr. Acosta adds that "Americans died for the freedom of Cuba, and that should be recognized. But others wanted to annex Cuba, and that should be criticized. If relations with the United States improve, all these things can be re-examined more fairly". · Cuban officials argue that the U.S. may have deliberately sunk the ship to create a pretext for military action against Spain. The wording on the Maine monument in Havana describes Maine's sailors as "victims sacrificed to the imperialist greed in its fervor to seize control of Cuba", which "alludes to the theory that U.S. agents deliberately blew up their own ship to create a pretext for declaring war on Spain".· (The United States occupied Cuba between 1898 and 1902 and, as promised in the Teller Amendment, did not attempt to annex the island.) 4 / 4.

Load more