When
wavering o’er your nation’s pride,
When moment of peace steal in;
When
fear and courage run side by side
At the thought of battle’s din,
Remember the
Maine!
When
reading sweet messages of peace,
When slumber falleth at night,
When
doubts and fears by day increase,
When asking of God for light
Remember the
Maine!
When
sighting across a bar of steel,
At devils who pose as man,
List
to our dead sailors’ mute appeal,
Remember, O comrades, then
Remember the
Maine!
April
15, 1898
Pub.
in B. Post,
Apr.
20. ‘98
Remember The Maine
It has
been a century since the storied dreadnought sank, but controversy has not yet
abandoned the ship
By Tom
Miller
SMITHSONIAN
MAGAZINE
FEBRUARY
1998
On February 15, 1898, a
mysterious explosion destroyed the American battleship Maine in
Havana Harbor and helped propel the United States into a war with Spain. The
USS Maine was in Cuba, officially, on a mission of friendly courtesy
and, incidentally, to protect American lives and property in the event that
Cuba's struggle for independence from Spain might escalate into full-blown
warfare. "Yet," writes author Tom Miller, "the visit was neither
spontaneous nor altruistic; the United States had been eyeing Cuba for almost a
century."
On board
the Maine that sultry Tuesday night were 350 crew and officers.
Shortly after 9 p.m. the ship's bugler, C. H. Newton, blew taps. The ship
bobbed listlessly, its imposing 100-yard length visible from stem to stern.
"At 9:40 p.m.," writes Miller, "the ship's forward end abruptly
lifted itself from the water. Along the pier, passersby could hear a rumbling
explosion. Within seconds, another eruption--this one deafening and
massive--splintered the bow, sending anything that wasn't battened down, and
most that was, flying more than 200 feet into the air.... In all, 266 of the
350 men aboard the Maine were killed."
The
American press was quick to point to an external explosion--a mine or
torpedo--as the cause of the tragedy. An official U.S. investigation agreed. On
April 25, 1898, Congress formally declared war on Spain. By summer's end, Spain
had ceded Cuba, along with the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam, to the United
States.
In 1976,
Adm. Hyman Rickover of the U.S. Navy mounted yet another investigation into the
cause of the Maine disaster. His team of experts found that the
ship's demise was self- inflicted--likely the result of a coal bunker fire.
There are those, however, who still maintain that an external blast was to
blame. Some people, it seems, just won't let you forget the Maine.
The Sinking of the Maine
By Richard
Cavendish
Published in History
Today Volume 48 Issue 2 February 1998
The United
States battleship was blown up in an explosion which killed 260 men on board on
February 15th, 1898. What caused the explosion and who was responsible?
At 9.40pm on the night
of February 15th, 1898 the United States battleship Maine, riding quietly
at anchor in Havana harbour, was suddenly blown up, apparently by a mine, in an
explosion which tore her bottom out and sank her, killing 260 officers and men
on board. In the morning only twisted parts of the huge warship’s
superstructure could be seen protruding above the water, while small boats
moved about examining the damage. The Maine had been showing the flag
in Cuba, where the Spanish regime was resisting an armed uprising by
nationalist guerrillas.
No one has
ever established exactly what caused the explosion or who was responsible, but
the consequence was the brief Spanish-American War of 1898. American sentiment
was strongly behind Cuban independence and many Americans blamed the Spanish
for the outrage. The yellow press, led by William Randolph Hearst and Joseph
Pulitzer, proprietors of the New York Journal and
the New York World, took every opportunity to inflame the situation with
the exhortation to ‘Remember the Maine’, publicize the alleged cruelties of
Spanish repression and encourage a belligerent hunger for action. They were
vigorously supported by hawkish senators and the Assistant Secretary of the
Navy, Theodore Roosevelt, who attacked President McKinley for trying to cool
the situation down. In the end the government in Spain declared war on the
United States on April 24th. The American Congress had already authorized the
use of armed force and the United States formally declared war on April 25th.
It was a
singularly unequal contest. An American fleet under Commodore Dewey annihilated
a Spanish fleet in Manila Bay in the Philippines with casual ease on May 1st
(the total American butcher’s bill was seven wounded). In June an American
expeditionary force landed east of the Cuban city of Santiago, the troops
sweating in the heavy woolen winter uniforms with which they had thoughtfully
been issued, and eating what was called ‘embalmed’ beef out of cans, which may
have caused more damage than enemy bullets.
On July
1st, Teddy Roosevelt’s volunteer ‘Rough Riders’, whooping and hollering, helped
Negro troopers of the 10th Cavalry to take the San Juan Heights above the city
of Santiago, which surrendered on the 17th. The Spanish Cuban fleet, which had
meanwhile fled Santiago harbor, was hunted down by American battleships ‘like
hounds after rabbits’ and destroyed in four hours. American troops took Puerto
Rico a few days afterwards and the Spanish government sued for peace.
Far more
Americans were killed by tropical diseases – typhoid, yellow fever and malaria
– in the course of the war than fell in battle (roughly 4,000 to 300). When a
peace treaty was signed in Paris in December, Spain lost its last colonies in
the New World. The United States took the Philippines, Puerto Rico and the
Pacific island of Guam, and achieved worldwide recognition as a great power.
Cuba gained independence, Theodore Roosevelt earned a hero’s reputation and the
tinned beef inspired the first Food and Drug Act.
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