1898 — Feb 15, battleship USS Maine explosion, Havana Harbor, Cuba                   –260-268

Compiled by Wayne Blanchard; last edit 3-20-2024 for upload to: http://www.usdeadlyevents.com/

—  268  PBS. Timeline. “February 16 1898:Battleship U.S.S. Maine Explodes.”

—  268  Wikipedia. “USS Maine (1889).” 3-10-2024. Accessed 3-20-2024.

—  266  US Dept. Navy, Naval Hist. Ctr. “FAQs: Casualties: US Navy…Marine…Personnel”

—  264  Nash, Jay Robert.  Darkest Hours. 1977, p. 691.

—  263  Benson. The Greatest Explosions in History.  1990, p. 9.

—  260  Fahey. Historian, US Naval History and Heritage Command. “Why did the USS Maine…”

Narrative Information

Fahey, John E.. Historian, US Naval History and Heritage Command. 2-7-2023:

“Few U.S. ships are as well remembered as the battleship Maine. Unlike Constitution, Monitor, or Enterprise, though, the ship is not famous for its wartime record, long career, or remarkable innovation. Rather, Maine is remembered for exploding in Havana harbor on 15 February 1898. The death of 260 crewmen and officers would be tragedy enough, but the explosion also sparked the Spanish-American War and all of its consequences, including the U.S. colonization of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. At the 125th anniversary of this shipboard catastrophe, it is worth reviewing why Maine blew up.

“The cause of Maine’s explosion has been hotly debated by press, politicians, naval experts, scientists, historians, and hobbyists for well over a century. Many theories have been proposed to explain the warship’s destruction, ranging from the ludicrous to the plausible. While structural failure, torpedo malfunction, boiler problems, sabotage, and many other explanations have been advanced, the debate generally revolves around two potential causes. The first is that a mine punctured Maine’s hull and sparked a catastrophic explosion in the ship’s magazine. The second is that an accident, most likely a coal bunker fire, set off the magazine. While the available physical and historical evidence overwhelmingly indicate Maine was destroyed by an accident inside the ship, let’s look at how this evidence was collected before evaluating the two main explanations.

“The U.S. Navy investigated the sinking of Maine on three separate occasions. The first investigation started on 21 February, less than a week after the battleship sank. A Court of Inquiry headed by Captain William T. Sampson explored the wreckage and collected eyewitness testimony that gives valuable insight into the human toll of the disaster. However, the investigation was handicapped by poor diving technology and extremely tense U.S.-Spanish relations.[1] The Sampson Board concluded on 21 March that Maine had been destroyed by a mine placed near Frame 18. The United States declared war on Spain 35 days later.

“In 1910, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built a cofferdam around Maine to recover bodies and remove the wreck from Havana harbor, which enabled the Navy to launch a second, more detailed investigation of the Maine. A Court of Inquiry led by Admiral Charles Vreeland took advantage of the now exposed ship to photograph the wreckage and explore the structural damage. It concluded that a mine placed between frames 28 and 31 destroyed the battleship.[2]

“Despite Vreeland’s conclusions, debates about Maine continued for decades, prompting Admiral Hyman Rickover to launch his own investigation in 1974. He contracted Ib S. Hansen and Robert S. Price, both of whom had years of experience analyzing ship damage caused by underwater explosions. Hansen and Price examined the photos taken by the Vreeland investigation. They in turn concluded that Maine had not been sunk by a mine but had been destroyed instead by an internal explosion, most likely sparked by a coal fire.[3]

“The Spanish government,[4] National Geographic,[5] Discovery Channel,[6] and others have also investigated Maine’s loss, but serious work on the topic to this day relies on the evidence and analysis of Sampson, Vreeland, and Rickover.

“The Sampson and Vreeland investigations concluded that Maine was destroyed by an underwater mine. While this explanation has a certain appeal, the physical state of the ship makes it effectively impossible. Proponents of the mine theory point to two main pieces of evidence. First, Maine’s keel ended up bent strangely, in the form of an upside-down V. The Sampson-led court of inquiry argued that this could have only been caused by a mine forcing the keel upward. However, the keel had no physical blast damage, nor was the rest of the ship distorted in a way consistent with a large underwater explosion. Any mine capable of forcing the keel up into this shape would have lifted the ship out of the water, which no witnesses saw. Second, Vreeland’s board found part of the hull, designated Section 1, which was folded up into the interior of the ship. The board argued this fold was caused by an external explosion forcing the section in. However, like the keel, Section 1 had no scarring or blast damage consistent with a mine. The fold is also wrong. According to the mine theory, a mine blew a hole in the hull and then detonated the ship’s 6-inch shell magazine. If that were the case, Section 1 would have been smashed flat against the outer hull of the ship by the magazine explosion. Instead, Section 1 was simply folded over and scarred on the inside, but not outside.

“If the physical evidence for a mine is lacking, the historical evidence is non-existent. A mine would have had to have been placed by one or more persons. There are plenty of mine conspiracy theories assigning blame to either to the Spanish government, fanatical Spanish officers loyal to General Valeriano “The Butcher” Weyler, Cuban insurrectionists trying to spark U.S. intervention on their behalf against Spain, or reporters trying to sell more papers. Simply put, no credible evidence of any such conspiracy has come to light in the last 125 years. Even Sampson and Vreeland never blamed any specific party for placing the mine they claimed had destroyed the ship.

“While we lack conspirators that hardly matters as the technical difficulties in placing a mine in Havana harbor were all but insurmountable. If the mine was placed before the ship arrived, the Spanish garrison would have been mining their own commercial harbor at great risk to their own shipping. If the mine was placed by fanatics or insurrectionists when Maine was at anchor, it would have been very difficult to set up under the watchful eyes of suspicious American sailors and Marines. Moreover, mines in that era were a problematic choice for anyone determined to sink the American battleship, owing to difficulties of fuses, placement, weapon endurance, and triggering. While it is impossible to prove a negative, the thought that an undetected, untraceable mine destroyed Maine while leaving damage to the ship’s hull unlike any other recorded underwater explosion, without any evidence of any perpetrators, is difficult to accept.  

“If not a mine, than what? The wreckage of Maine clearly indicates that the initial explosion occurred in the 6-inch shell magazine. Damage to the ship radiates out from there. Hansen and Price point out that any number of causes may have detonated the 6-inch magazine, but the wreckage simply does not support an external cause. They posited that a coal fire in bunker A-16 could have gone undetected long enough to heat up some 6-inch shells. Warming up these shells would have been easy, since there was only a 1/8 inch thick steel bulkhead between the coal and the shells. The shells in turn exploded, detonating the rest of the magazine. While there is no direct proof in support of this theory, it is the explanation that makes the most sense with the available evidence, including contemporary documentation that spontaneous coal fires were common on ships of the era. The main objection to the coal bunker explanation is that the crew would have detected a coal fire. However, the Sampson court of inquiry found that no one had inspected the relevant bunker or magazine since early in the morning, leaving almost 12 hours for a fire to smolder undetected. This was more than enough time to heat up adjacent shells.

“If the ship was blown up by an accident onboard, how do we explain Section 1 and the keel at Frame 18? When the magazine exploded, the hull burst out in many places. The ship sank rapidly, though, as water rushed into these new holes. The combination of moving water and the great mass of the ship above can easily bend steel and is the most likely cause of Section 1 folding back into the ship. After the explosion, the entire front section of the ship buckled, bent, and twisted, being connected to the aft section by only the keel. As a result, the keel ended up bent upward. While this can seem strange, it is consistent with underwater damage observed in World War II. We will never know for sure what sparked the magazine explosion that destroyed Maine. We can be sure, though, that the ship was destroyed by an internal explosion, likely caused by accident….”

PBS. Timeline. “February 16 1898:Battleship U.S.S. Maine Explodes.”

“At 9:40pm on February 15, 1898, the battleship U.S.S. Maine exploded in Havana Harbor, killing 268 men and shocking the American populace. Of the two-thirds of the crew who perished, only 200 bodies were recovered and 76 identified.

“The sinking of the Maine, which had been in Havana since February 15, 1898, on an official observation visit, was a climax in pre-war tension between the United States and Spain. In the American press, headlines proclaimed “Spanish Treachery!” and “Destruction of the War Ship Maine Was the Work of an Enemy!” William Randolph Hearst and his New York Journal offered a $50,000 award for the “detection of the Perpetrator of the Maine Outrage.” Many Americans assumed the Spanish were responsible for the Maine’s destruction.

“On March 28, 1898, the United States Naval Court of Inquiry found that the Maine was destroyed by a submerged mine. Although blame was never formally placed on the Spanish, implication was clear. Recent research suggests that the explosion may have been an accident, involving a spontaneous combustion fire in the coal bunker. Some conspiracy theorists have even suggested that sensational journalist William Randolph Hearst may have set the explosion in order to precipitate a war. While historians will never know exactly what happened the night the Maine went down, it is clear that the incident was a significant force that propelled the United States into the Spanish-American War.”

“Bibliography:

Dyal, Donald H.. Historical Dictionary of the Spanish American War. Greenwood Press: Westport, CT, 1996.

O’Toole, G.J.A., The Spanish War: An American Epic-1898. W.W. Norton & Company: New York, 1984.

White, Trumbull. Pictoral History of Our War With Spain. Freedom Publishing Company, 1898.”

US Navy: “Battleship USS Maine sank in Havana Harbor, Cuba, after the explosion of the forward magazine. 266 killed and 54 injured (sometimes attributed to hostile action. ). 15 Feb. 1898.” (US Dept. Navy. “Casualties: US Navy…Marine Corps Personnel Killed and Injured…”)

Sources

Benson, Ragnar. The Greatest Explosions in History: The Fire, Flash and Fury of Natural and Man-Made Disasters. Carol Publishing Group, A Citadel Press Book, 1990.

Fahey, John E. Historian, US Naval History and Heritage Command. “Why did the USS Maine explode?” 2-7-2023. Accessed 3-20-2024 at: https://usnhistory.navylive.dodlive.mil/Recent/Article-View/Article/3290776/why-did-the-uss-maine-explode/

Nash, Jay Robert. Darkest Hours – A Narrative Encyclopedia of Worldwide Disasters from Ancient Times to the Present. New York: Pocket Books, Wallaby, 1977, 792 pages.

PBS. American Experience. The Great Fever. “Timeline of Yellow Fever in America.” September 29, 2006. Accessed at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/fever/filmmore/index.html

PBS. Timeline. “February 16 1898:Battleship U.S.S. Maine Explodes.” Accessed 3-20-2024 at: https://www.pbs.org/crucible/tl10.html

Wikipedia. “USS Maine (1889).” 3-10-2024. Accessed 3-20-2024 at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Maine_(1889)

United States Department of the Navy. Casualties: US Navy and Marine Corps Personnel Killed and Injured in Selected Accidents and Other Incidents Not Directly the Result of Enemy Action.  Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center. 2008. Washington, DC: Washington Navy Yard. Accessed 3-20-2024 at:  http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/NHC/accidents.htm

[1] Fahey footnote: “For a discussion of the flaws of the Sampson Board, see Kenneth C. Wenzer, “The USB Maine Conspiracy,” Federal History 12 (April 2020): 75-98.”

[2] Cites: U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Report on the Wreck of the Maine, 62d Congress, 2d session, December 14, 1911, Document 310.

[3] Cites: H. G. Rickover, How the Battleship Maine Was Destroyed (Washington, DC: Naval History Division, 1976), 107-30.

[4] Juan Du Bosc, “Extract From the Report of the Spanish Commission on The Maine Catastrophe,” Documentary Histories: Spanish-American War. Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, D.C., https://www.history.navy.mil/research/publications/documentary-histories/united-states-navy-s/destruction-of-the-m/extract-from-the-rep-0.html

[5] Thomas B. Allen. “Remember the Maine?” National Geographic, 193, No. 2, February 1998, pp. 92-111.

[6] Unsolved History, season 1, episode 2. “The Death of the U.S.S. Maine,” directed by Robert Erickson, narrated by Kathleen Kern, aired October 16, 2022 in broadcast syndication, Discovery Channel.