THE SINKING OF THE USS MAINE:
A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
Dino Reschke
History 297: History Colloquium
April 20, 2015
Abstract
“Remember the Maine!” was the famous battle cry that stemmed from the mysterious explosion
and subsequent sinking of the USS Maine in the harbor of Havana, Cuba, on February 15, 1898.
While the majority of authors tend to agree that this disaster was the proximate cause for the
United States of America’s declaring war on Spain, the speculation as to why and how the USS
Maine exploded and its impact on diplomacy has been debated among an assorted group of
historians, writers, journalists, engineers, scientists, and former military members. Depending on
their interest, some authors dedicated entire monographs to the study of the ship and its sinking,
including opinions and technical reports explaining their overall conclusions, while others only
depicted the ship’s sinking as a lead-in to the larger story when discussing the Spanish-American
War. Meanwhile, another group of authors looked at the USS Maine’s sinking by studying its
related press materials, like newspapers and political cartoons, as a way to understand the impact
of the press on diplomacy, politics, and public sentiment. Even with its vast amount of literature,
the specific cause of the USS Maine’s sinking may never be known or agreed upon.
1
The 1898 sinking of the United States Ship (USS) Maine helped catapult the United
States of America into a global conflict with Spain, resulting in the very short-lived SpanishAmerican War and its accompanying battle cry, “Remember the Maine.” Since its day of infamy,
the USS Maine’s historiography has developed into a catalog that comprises of scholars
remembering its sinking in both self-contained monographs and as a part of the larger story when
discussing the Spanish-American War. Although the remnants of the USS Maine have been
resting at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean for over a century now, its mysterious initial
explosion, diplomatic and political ramifications, and press coverage have continued to spark
interest and debate among a widely diverse group of intellectuals. Therefore, there is no shortage
of literature on the sinking of the USS Maine.
The steel-armored cruiser USS Maine was commissioned into service in the United States
Navy on September 17, 1895. Like several other ships of its time, the USS Maine was
constructed in an effort to modernize America’s fleet. The second-class battleship’s design was
based on the Brazilian battleship Riachuelo, which was constructed by the British and was
considered to be the “most powerful warship in the Western Hemisphere.”1 Though the USS
Maine looked similar to the Riachuelo, it was much greater in size and had “thicker armor and
heavier guns than the Riachuelo.”2 The USS Maine stretched 319 feet long and contained four
ten-inch guns and six six-inch guns. Coal supplied power to the steam-producing boilers,
allowing the 6,682-ton water-displacing ship to reach a top speed of seventeen knots. With these
capabilities, the USS Maine was assigned to the U.S. Navy’s North Atlantic squadron. In 1898,
1
Ivan Musicant, Empire by Default: The Spanish-American War and the Dawn of the American
Century (New York: Henry Holt and Company, Inc., 1998), 116.
Laurence A. Arnot, “USS Maine (1887-1898) in Contemporary Plans, Descriptions, and
Photographs,” Nautical Research Journal 36, no. 3 (September 1991): 131.
2
2
as a result of growing tensions between native Cubans and their colonizer Spain, the USS Maine
was dispatched to Havana, Cuba, to help protect American interests on the island. It would be its
final tour of duty.
The USS Maine anchored in the Havana harbor on January 25, 1898. As security
precautions, two of the USS Maine’s boilers remained on, and ammunition was stored adjacent
to its guns for quick access. For almost three weeks, the battleship and its 355-member crew
remained without incident. Then, unexpectedly on the evening of February 15, 1898, an
explosion erupted, causing the ship to sink and the deaths of 266 sailors. Over the course of the
next few days, newspapers reported the tragedy throughout the world. While the majority of
these newspapers initially withheld judgment as to the cause of the USS Maine’s explosion,
several American newspapers immediately accused Spain with its destruction.3 The U.S. Navy
ordered a court of inquiry into the matter and simultaneously, a case for retaliation and war was
made against Spain in Congress. On March 20, 1898, the naval court of inquiry released its
findings that a mine caused the USS Maine’s explosion, but the court did not assign blame.
Regardless of the report, the U.S. and Spain ultimately traded war declarations against each other
in late April 1898, which marked the beginning of the Spanish-American War. The war was
short-lived. The participants agreed to end the fighting on August 12, 1898, and the Treaty of
Paris later established its official ending on December 10, 1898.
By 1910, the sinking of the USS Maine was largely forgotten by the American public;
however, patriotic organizations continued to petition the U.S. Congress to reinvestigate the
cause of the ship’s sinking and to recover any human remains that were still trapped inside its
hull. Congress approved these requests and appropriated the necessary funding for the raising of
Dolores Gomez, “A Comparative Study of the Sinking of the Battleship ‘Maine’ as Reflected in
a Selection of National and Foreign Newspapers” (master’s thesis, University of Georgia, 1983), 2.
3
3
the ship, which still lay in the Havana Harbor. In order for investigators to view the underneath
of the ship, a cofferdam was constructed around the wreckage, so that the standing water could
be pumped out and removed.4 On November 10, 1911, nearly thirteen years after the end of the
Spanish-American War, a second court of inquiry into the sinking of the USS Maine
commenced. In addition to personal observations of the wreckage by board members,
photographs, models, and drawings were utilized during the investigation, which ultimately
concluded that black powder ignited and exploded inside the ship’s ammunition storage area,
thus causing the USS Maine to sink.
The history of the sinking of the USS Maine, its two conflicting naval courts of inquiry,
and embellished reports in newspapers led to the development of a rather diverse historiography.
Authors of the key secondary sources on the topic originated from a variety of professions,
including historians, writers, journalists, engineers, scientists, and former military members. The
hodge-podge blend of authors can be divided into three groups based on their interests. The first
group, such as Admiral H.G. Rickover, Peggy Samuels, Harold Samuels, and John E. Weems,
focus solely on the USS Maine and debate its reason for exploding. The second group, like
Michael Blow, Gregory Mason, Alden March, Ivan Musicant, and G.J.A. O’Toole, do not debate
the cause of explosion but instead, simply reference the sinking of the USS Maine during their
review of the Spanish-American War. The third group, which contains Virginia M. Bouvier and
Dolores Gomez, analyze the newspaper accounts and political cartoons that were published
immediately following the sinking of the USS Maine as a way to understand the impact of the
press on diplomacy, politics, and public sentiment. Finally, there are several authors and
historians who do not fit into any of these groups because they purposely omitted discussion on
4
John E. Weems, The Fate of the Maine (New York: Henry Holt and Company, Inc., 1958), 157.
4
the sinking of the USS Maine and the Spanish-American War, like social historian Michael E.
McGerr, whose 2003 monograph on the Progressive Era made no reference to either event.5
For many of the authors in the first group, the mystery surrounding the cause of the
sinking of the USS Maine and debate as to the overall origin of the explosion led to them
developing entire monographs on the subject. For example, in his 1958 book, The Fate of the
Maine, American historian and journalist John E. Weems states, “Curiosity about the subject,
more than anything else, led me to compile the story of the Maine.”6 The former U.S. Navy
lieutenant senior grade then explains how he “suspected that many such popular stories were
based on rumor and not fact, and this was true in many cases.”7 Weems was the first author to
bundle the complete history of the USS Maine into one book. His monograph begins by
providing background information as to why it was necessary to construct the USS Maine,
followed by the life of the ship, including its commissioning, orders to Havana, and the
mysterious explosion, along with analyses of the two naval courts of inquiry. In his conclusion,
Weems asserts that the actual cause of the explosion remains unknown, but the people living in
1958 who were studying the sinking of the USS Maine may be able to convince themselves to
5
Michael E. McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in
America, 1870-1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
6
Weems, 177. Weems has written, contributed, and edited several books and periodicals on many
topics. As a biographer of Commander Robert Peary, the first man to reach the North Pole, Weems was
praised in the Virginia Quarterly Review summer 1967 edition for the quality of his research and writing
of Peary: The Explorer and the Man (Los Angeles, CA: J. P. Tarcher, 1988). Moreover, Weems authored
a four-volume series on Texas history that was used by Texas school children. Unless otherwise noted,
biographical information on Weems and other authors cited in footnotes can be found in Contemporary
Authors Online. Contemporary Authors Online, s.v. “John Edward Weems,” accessed April 15, 2015,
http://go.galegroup.com.ezproxy.umw.edu/ps/ i.do?id=GALE|H1000104272&v=2.1&u=viva_mwc&it=r
&p=GLS&sw=w&asid=de3690fe4aed611d3d764d2cdd6e6aac.
7
Ibid.
5
believe a certain conclusion over time.8 Regardless of the cause, Weems believes the explosion
was an accident.9
Nearly sixteen years after Weems provided his conclusion, a matter of happenstance
triggered a new investigation along with renewed debate into the cause of the USS Maine’s
explosion. Admiral H.G. Rickover, a former American naval officer, nuclear engineer, and
author of the 1976 book How the Battleship Maine Was Destroyed, became interested in the
topic in 1974 after coming across an article in a newspaper regarding the sinking of the USS
Maine.10 During this time, Rickover was head of the naval nuclear propulsion program and could
not dedicate the necessary time for historical research, so he enlisted the aid of historians Francis
Duncan and Dana M. Wegner.11 Rickover’s review of their research steered him toward the
technical aspects of the previous naval courts of inquiry, resulting in him seeking the expertise of
Ib S. Hansen, an engineer, and Robert S. Price, a research physicist.12 Hansen and Price reviewed
the findings of the two previous courts of inquiry, including all of the past materials considered
by the board members, and they discovered that both inquiries lacked technical explanations in
their conclusions.13 Therefore, Hansen and Price conducted the very first technical analysis into
the cause of the sinking of the USS Maine, leading Rickover to conclude that the evidence
8
Ibid., 178.
9
Ibid.
10
H.G. Rickover, How the Battleship Maine was Destroyed, 2nd ed. (Annapolis, MD: Naval
Institute Press, 1995), ix. Rickover came across the Washington Star-News article, “Returning to the
Riddle of the Explosion that Sunk the Maine” by John M. Taylor, published September 1, 1974. Rickover
founded the atomic submarine school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
11
Ibid., ix-x.
12
Ibid., xi.
13
Ibid., xiii-xv.
6
supported an internal explosion within the ammunition storage areas of the ship, not an explosion
from an outside mine.14
Although Rickover’s conclusion supported the findings of the 1911 naval court of inquiry
and eliminated the theory that the USS Maine’s explosion was caused by a mine, not everyone
was convinced that these findings were accurate. Nineteen years after Rickover’s findings were
published, Drew University English professor Peggy Samuels and her husband Harold Samuels,
a writer, released their own analysis of the ship’s sinking, which asserts error in Rickover’s
findings and contains a new explosion theory. In their 1995 monograph, Remembering the
Maine, the Samuelses state, “A look at the Rickover findings indicates the possibility of error.
His deductions were based on a mistake concerning the size of the mine, thus invalidating his
conclusions.”15 Like Weems, the Samuelses provide a brief background into the situation in
Cuba during the time period and then systematically launch into the life of the USS Maine,
followed by its demise. However, unlike Weems and Rickover, the Samuelses come to a
different conclusion as to the cause of the explosion and believe “the culprits were Spanish
fanatics who obeyed their charismatic leader, General Weyler. They had the opportunity, the
means, and the motivation, and they blew up the Maine with a small low-strength mine they
made themselves.”16 The Samuelses’ monograph is more inclusive than the previously
mentioned works of Weems and Rickover, which is likely due to them having easier access to
the numerous primary and secondary sources that were already compiled by preceding authors.
14
Ibid., 91.
15
Peggy Samuels and Harold Samuels, Remembering the Maine (Washington, DC: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1995), 3. The Samuelses are a married couple and have coauthored several books on a
variety of topics, including nineteenth-century art, artists, painters, and sculptors, President Theodore
Roosevelt, and the USS Maine. In addition to writings, the Samuelses are art dealers.
16
Ibid., 309-10.
7
The second group of authors has used the sinking of the USS Maine as a reference point
when discussing the events of the Spanish-American War. Gregory Mason's Remember the
Maine (1939) is the first monograph to emerge that included the USS Maine in its title. In his
book, Mason tells the story of the Spanish-American War while revolving around the sinking of
the USS Maine. He begins with an individual’s first person account of learning of the ship’s
sinking from the Boston Herald.17 In the following chapter, it is revealed that the suspected
cause of the explosion was a submarine mine and that the “whole American people wanted to
believe that Spain had done it.”18 Mason explains that the result of America’s assumption
eventually became the very popular and now-famous slogan, “Remember the Maine!”19
However, contrary to its title, Remember the Maine departs quickly from the sinking of the USS
Maine and ventures into the Spanish-American War and Spain’s eventual defeat.
Other authors have devoted additional analysis of the USS Maine’s sinking in their
versions of the history of the Spanish-American War. Unlike Mason, author and journalist Alden
March waits until the last few chapters of his 1970 book The History and Conquest of the
Philippines and Our Other Island Possessions to discuss the ship’s sinking and relation to the
Spanish-American War.20 March provides a thorough reporting of the initial U.S. Navy court of
inquiry’s findings and many other facts about the USS Maine’s explosion that were excluded
from Mason’s book, but he does not reference any post-Spanish-American War findings
regarding the USS Maine’s sinking, such as the 1911 U.S. Navy court of inquiry or the Hansen-
17
Gregory Mason, Remember the Maine (New York: Henry Holt Company, Inc., 1939), 1.
18
Ibid., 31.
19
Ibid.
20
Alden March. The History and Conquest of the Philippines and Our Other Island Possessions
(New York: Arno Press & The New York Times, 1970).
8
Price analysis.21 However, such omission is common as not every Spanish-American War author
or historian is focused on determining or debating the cause of the sinking of the USS Maine.
Even Ivan Musicant, an accomplished American naval historian and former U.S. Marine
who published several works on or related to this topic, made the conscious decision not to
discuss the conflicting naval inquiry reports and Rickover’s findings in Empire by Default: The
Spanish-American War and the Dawn of the American Century (1998). While it is evident that
Musicant had knowledge of this information as indicated by his bibliography, like March, he was
only concerned with the sinking of the USS Maine in that its sinking sparked the beginning of
the Spanish-American War.22 The rest of his monograph avoids any further discussion of the
sinking of the USS Maine and focuses on the actual war and its political implications.
The remaining two authors from the second group continue to discuss the sinking of the
USS Maine in their renditions of the Spanish-American War and both conclude the cause of the
ship’s sinking is questionable. In 1984, former Central Intelligence Agency officer and American
writer G.J.A. O’Toole published The Spanish War, an American Epic, which provided a more indepth review of the sinking of the USS Maine and the Spanish-American War than March’s The
History and Conquest of the Philippines and Our Other Island Possessions.23 In his monograph,
21
Ibid., 311-38.
22
Musicant, 669. Musicant is an accomplished writer and American naval historian. He has
contributed to many periodicals and he has written several books related to this topic, including U.S.
Armored Cruisers: A Design and Operational History (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1985);
Battleship at War: The Epic Story of the USS "Washington" (San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
1986); The Banana Wars: A History of United States Military Intervention in Latin America from the
Spanish-American War to the Invasion of Panama (New York: Macmillan, 1990); Divided Waters: The
Naval History of the Civil War (New York: Harper Collins, 1995); The Spanish-American War and the
Dawn of the American Century (New York: Henry Holt 1997).
23
G.J.A. O’Toole, The Spanish War, an American Epic (New York: W.W. Norton & Company,
Inc., 1984). O’Toole has published both fiction and nonfiction books. He is also a contributor to several
periodicals, including Intelligence Quarterly, New Republic, Harper's, New York Review of Books,
Saturday Evening Post, Twilight Zone, and Penthouse.
9
O’Toole tries to give a logical reason for why the USS Maine exploded in the Havana harbor, but
even he cannot do so as he concludes that “there seem to be but three answers to choose among:
God, chance, or the impatient hand of destiny.”24 Then, in 1992, Michael Blow emerged with his
review of the sinking of the USS Maine and the story of the Spanish-American War.
In A Ship to Remember: The Maine and the Spanish-American War (1992), Blow, a
former Airman in the U.S. Air Force, author, and journalist, expands on the history of the sinking
of the USS Maine and includes more information regarding the topic than March, Mason, and
O’Toole. 25 He takes a more systematic approach by breaking up his book into two parts: the
sinking of the USS Maine followed by the Spanish-American War. Blow’s approach is different
from Mason’s and March’s depiction in that he shines more of the spotlight on the USS Maine
and he uses a descriptive narrative to explain the two parts of his book. His review of the sinking
of the USS Maine includes the results of both naval courts of inquiry as well as the technical
analysis conducted by Hanson and Price in 1974. While Blow’s overall opinion was similar to
O’Toole’s, he reveals his uncertainty as to the cause of the USS Maine’s explosion, and states,
“It may have been treachery, an accident, or an act of God.”26
Aside from the two previously mentioned groups of authors, a third group chose to ignore
the debates regarding the cause of the USS Maine’s explosion or its place in the history of the
Spanish-American War. Instead, this group’s focus is on the newspaper articles and political
cartoons that were published immediately following the ship’s sinking as a way to understand the
24
O’Toole, 400.
25
Michael Blow, A Ship to Remember: The Maine and the Spanish-American War (New York:
William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1992). This book’s jacket states that Blow served in the U.S. Air
Force and has been book editor of Reader’s Digest magazine as well as an editor for American Heritage.
Also, according to Blow, his grandfather was a naval officer aboard the USS Maine when it exploded,
resulting in his death.
26
Ibid., 437.
10
press’ impact on diplomacy, politics, and public sentiment. In her 1986 master’s thesis “A
Comparative Study of the Sinking of the Battleship ‘Maine’ as Reflected in a Selection of
National and Foreign Newspapers,” journalist Dolores Gomez analyzes several newspapers and
reveals how their interpretations helped to shape the opinions of people around the world on the
facts of the sinking of the USS Maine.27 Gomez cites newspapers from the U.S., Spain, Mexico,
and Argentina in her analysis.28 Not surprising, she reveals that American newspapers “showed a
strongly favorable attitude to the United States. A very low percentage of items showed a proCuba attitude.”29 Moreover, the Spanish newspapers “showed a favorable attitude toward
Spain.”30 Throughout her analysis, Gomez utilizes the past works of Mason and Weems to
deliver background information to strengthen her argument.31
Like Gomez, Virginia M. Bouvier takes a related approach as she analyzes information
contained in political cartoons.32 In her research, Bouvier includes “satirical drawings, sheet
music, postcards, photographs, posters, and especially thousands of cartoons.”33 She discovered
numerous cartoons that made reference to the USS Maine’s explosion and notes that the cartoons
reveal “how certain representations (particularly of the Maine, the United States, Spain, and
Cuba) changed in accordance with the shifting contours of the international landscape, the
27
Gomez, 2.
28
Ibid., 4-5.
29
Ibid., 80.
30
Ibid.
31
Ibid., 88-89.
32
United States Institute of Peace, Experts Page, accessed April 18, 2015, http://www.usip.org
/experts/virginia-m-bouvier. Virginia M. Bouvier is currently the Senior Advisor for Latin America
Programs at United States Institute of Peace.
33
Virginia M. Bouvier, Whose America? The War of 1898 and the Battles to Define the Nation
(Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2001), [91].
11
trajectory of the war, and the imposition or removal of press restrictions.”34 Therefore, the press
was able to manipulate its readers into believing certain facts about the sinking of the USS Maine
that helped contribute to the basis for declarations of war by both countries.
There is a vast amount of literature on the sinking of the USS Maine that comes from a
very diverse group of authors and, as a result, conflicting conclusions have developed within the
historiography. There are differences in opinions that have permitted multiple interpretations of
the proximate cause for USS Maine’s explosion. The inability to define the cause of the
mysterious explosion may be the reason why some historians treat the sinking of the USS Maine
as just another part of the story when explaining the Spanish-American War and why they avoid
weighing in on the exact reason for its sinking. Regardless of their rationale, reviewing the facts
of the sinking today and its ensuing political actions by the U.S. reveals perhaps one certainty,
which is “it would appear that the accident aboard the Maine was successfully manipulated and
distorted to bring the United States into an unnecessary war.”35 In any event, the mystery
surrounding the sinking of the USS Maine led to new scrutiny of the past naval courts of inquiry
and creation of the Hansen-Price technical analysis, which have been helpful in ascertaining why
the ship sank. Despite the possible reasons for the ship’s sinking, an assorted grouping of
historians, authors, journalists, engineers, scientists, and former military members all seem to
agree on the fact that the USS Maine’s sinking resulted in the beginning of the SpanishAmerican War. Moreover, while the cause of the ship’s sinking will likely never be known as the
passage of time destroys evidence, the event most certainly defined and shaped the histories of
not just the United States, but the entire world.
34
Ibid., 116.
Michael Bernoncini, “The Sinking of the ‘Maine’: What Teddy Knew and Why He Didn’t
Tell,” New England Journal of History 49, no. 1 (January 1992): 55.
35
12
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Photographs.” Nautical Research Journal 36, no. 3 (September 1991): 131-47.
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New England Journal of History 49, no. 1 (January 1992): 52-56.
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Century. New York: Henry Holt, 1998.
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Rickover, H.G. How the Battleship Maine Was Destroyed. 2nd ed. Annapolis, MD: Naval
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13
Honor Pledge
I hereby declare upon my word of honor that I have neither given nor received unauthorized help
on this work. I note that I consulted with Jacob Ducey at the UMW Writing Center on April 16,
2015. Additionally, my wife, Jocelyn Reschke, read this work and provided general feedback to
me.
_//Signed Dino Reschke//________________________
Signature