Destruction of the U.S. Battleship Maine

Destruction of the U.S. Battleship Maine
February 16, 1898.
Editorial - Military History - February 1998

A CENTURY AFTER THE UNITED STATES BEGAN ITS RISE TO GLOBAL HEGEMONY, IT IS TIME ONCE MORE TO REMEMBER THE MAINE

Remember the Maine? Today, not many Americans do. In contrast, by April 1898 there was hardly one American who did not Competing newspaper magnates Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst saw to that. By the end of that month, the anger they exploited and stirred up had helped to drive the United States into a war with Spain. If it seems that the power of the news media is frightening today, the events that followed the destruction of the battleship Maine in Havana Harbor on February 15,1898, show just how far back that power dates.

What happened to Maine that night remains hypothetical, but in their book Remembering the Maine (Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C., 1995) Peggy and Harold Samuels sift through the available evidence to offer their own convincing conspiracy theory.

In the 1890s, the United States consolidated the last of its territorial dominion between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and bolstered by a prosperous economy, turned its attention abroad. Much of that attention focused on Cuba, where an independence movement had gained great popular sympathy in the United States, partly as a result of the brutal suppressive methods employed by Spanish General Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau and partly through the sensationalistic reporting on the guerrilla war by Pulitzer's New York Sun and Hearst's Journal. The U.S. government condemned Spain's policies in Cuba, and American arms smugglers and soldiers of fortune aided the guerrillas there. Washington's far-from-diplomatic consul in Havana, former Confederate Maj. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee, distrusted the Spanish and made no secret of his desire that they leave Cuba entirely—through American armed intervention, if necessary.

The assassination of conservative Spanish Prime Minister Canovas del Castillo by an Italian anarchist in August 1897 was followed by the election of a liberal, Práxedes Mateo Sagasta, to that position in October. One of Sagasta's first acts was to recall Weyler from Cuba, replacing him with General Ramón Blanco y Erenas. While Weyler departed—insisting that, had he been given only six more months, he could have crushed the rebellion—Blanco offered the Cubans concessions of home ruler under the Spanish flag, similar to Britain's arrangement with Canada since 1867.

Such measure came too late. The rebels had suffered too much under Weyler to settle for anything less than complete independence. Equally unwilling to accept compromise was a faction of conservative Spanish landowners and military officers, known as Weylerites, who saw Weyler as a hero betrayed, regarded the Cubans as dangerous political radicals, bitterly resented Yankee meddling in their colonial affairs and considered any negotiated concession to be an affront to Spanish honor. In the United States, President William McKinley resisted calls for armed involvement from Americans—ranging from people who had simply been stirred up by the press to those who saw the possibility of commercial opportunities arising in an independent Cuba (including Lee, who was still in Havana and still hostile toward Spain.)

In that volatile situation steamed Maine, the U.S. Navy's first battleship of the industrial age (story, P.20), on January 25,1898. Her official mission was one of good will; her actual purpose was intimidation. The Spanish authorities welcomed the warship to its berth with cool cordiality. The Weylerites, according to the Samuels, planned a hotter reception for her.

Whether planted under Maine's berth in advance or placed under her on the night of February 15, a mine—probably a crude homemade device—exploded under the ship, causing inward facing damage to the keel plates that served as the principal evidence of foul play. The Weylerites (if they did it) probably hoped only to cause enough damage to compel the battleship to limp ignominiously home. Instead, the explosion penetrated to Maine's magazines and she exploded, killing 267 officers and men.

Both the Spanish government and the U.S. Navy investigated the tragedy, but their less than conclusive findings became irrelevant as popular sentiment, particularly in the United States, outstripped diplomacy. If "Cuba libre" was not enough to stir up martial sentiments, a new slogan—"Remember the Maine and to Hell with Spain"—was.

On April 25, the U.S. Congress declared war on Spain. The American expansionists and the Spanish Weylerites had their war. The result finished what remained of Spain's overseas empire and set the United States on a new course as an international imperialist power—and, a century later, as the world's foremost power.

In the next few issue, Military History will examine more aspects of the Spanish American War, a relatively minor and now all but forgotten conflict that marked a turning point in American and world history. Then each reader can decide for himself or herself whether it is still appropriate to remember the Maine.

Logo

Organización Auténtica

Destruction of the U.S. Battleship Maine February 16, 1898. Editorial - Military History - February 1998 A CENTURY AFTER THE UNITED STATES BEGAN ITS RISE TO GLOBAL HEGEMONY, IT IS TIME ONCE MORE TO REMEMBER THE MAINE

Destruction of the U.S. Battleship Maine
February 16, 1898.
Editorial - Military History - February 1998

A CENTURY AFTER THE UNITED STATES BEGAN ITS RISE TO GLOBAL HEGEMONY, IT IS TIME ONCE MORE TO REMEMBER THE MAINE