DO YOU REMEMBER THE MAINE

All was well until just after 2140 on Tuesday, 15 February, when suddenly and without warning the MAINE was ripped by a violent explosion. Immediately the Spanish lent assistance, the cruiser ALFONSO XII rescuing survivors.  In spite of this 260 of MAINE's 358 officers and men died.  The Spanish authorities in Havana proved helpful and cooperative in the days that followed, but from the start Americans suspected sabotage.  A Court of Inquiry chaired by CAPT William T. Sampson determined that the MAINE explosion "could have been produced only by...a mine situated under the
bottom of the ship."  When this news reached the United States there were immediate calls for war.  Any remaining pacific voices were further quelled by the earlier release of a private memo written by the Spanish ambassador in Washington, Dupuy de Lome, that characterized President McKinley as a
"small-time politician" who was too inept to discover Spanish duplicity in their intentions over Cuba.  These coincident events prompted the US to declare war on Spain on 21 April 1898. In truth Spain had little to gain and everything to lose by provoking the US.  In 1975 ADM Hyman Rickover and a panel of experts reexamined evidence and photographs of the salvage efforts and concluded that the MAINE was likely the victim of an accidental internal explosion. It is theorized that spontaneous combustion in a bituminous coal bin burned through a bulkhead into a magazine. Though the battle cry "Remember the MAINE!" may have been based on a misconception, the subsequent successes of the US Navy in the
Spanish-American War served to announce the emergence of our Navy as a true world power.  In recognition of this the salvaged mast of MAINE, still contorted from the blast, has been mounted at the Naval Academy in Annapolis.  Sent to me by a friend. "A second look, too late, found the truth."