USS Maine (ACR-1)
Feb 15, 1898

Career: United States Navy Jack

Authorized: 3 August 1886

Laid down: 17 October 1888

Launched: 18 November 1889

Commissioned: 17 September 1895

Fate: Sunk by explosion 15 February 1898

General Characteristics

Displacement: 6,682 t

Length: 319 ft (97 m)

Beam: 57 ft (17.4 m)

Draft: 22 ft (6.7 m)

Speed: 17 knots (31 km/h)

Complement: 374 officers and men

Armament: 4 x 10 in (250 mm) guns, 6 x 6 in (150 mm) guns, 7 x 6 pounders (3 kg), 8 x 1 pounders (0.5 kg), 4 x 14 in (350 mm) surface torpedo tubes

USS Maine (ACR-1), the first ship of the United States Navy to be named for the state of Maine, was a 6682-ton second-class pre-dreadnought battleship originally designated as Armored Cruiser #1.

Congress authorized her construction on August 3, 1886, and her keel was laid down on October 17, 1888, at the New York Navy Yard. She was launched on November 18, 1889, sponsored by Miss Alice Tracey Wilmerding (granddaughter of Secretary Benjamin F. Tracy), and commissioned on September 17, 1895, under the command of Captain A.S. Crowninshield.

Her active career was spent operating along the U.S. East coast and in the Caribbean area. In January 1898, the Maine was sent from Key West, Florida to Havana, Cuba, to protect U.S. interests during a time of local insurrection and civil disturbances. Three weeks later, at 9:40 on the evening of February 15, a terrible explosion on board the Maine shattered the stillness in Havana Harbor. Later investigations revealed that more than five tons of powder charges for the vessel's six and ten-inch guns ignited, virtually obliterating the forward third of the ship. The remaining wreckage rapidly settled to the bottom of the harbor. Most of the Maine's crew were sleeping or resting in the enlisted quarters in the forward part of the ship when the explosion occurred. Two hundred and sixty-six men lost their lives as a result of the explosion or shortly thereafter, and eight more died later from injuries. Captain Sigsbee and most of the officers survived because their quarters were in the aft portion of the ship. On March 28, the US Naval Court of Inquiry in Key West declared that a naval mine caused the explosion.

The explosion was a precipitating cause of the Spanish-American War that began in April 1898 and which used the rallying cry, "Remember the Maine, to hell with Spain." At the time, it was used as pretext for war by those who were already inclined to go to war with Spain.

On August 5, 1910, Congress authorized the raising of the Maine to remove it as a navigation hazard in Havana Harbor. On February 2, 1912, she was refloated under supervision of the Army Corps of Engineers and towed out to sea where she was sunk in deep water in the Gulf of Mexico on March 16, 1912, with appropriate military honors and ceremonies.

In 1914, one of the Maine's six anchors was taken from the Washington Navy Yard to City Park in Reading, Pa., and dedicated during a ceremony presided over by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was then assistant secretary of the Navy.

In 1976, Admiral Hyman Rickover of the United States Navy published an investigation that concluded that the tragedy was self-inflicted, probably the result of a coal bunker fire. Some historians have disputed these findings, maintaining that failure to detect spontaneous combustion in the coal bunker was highly unlikely. Other people maintain that the Maine was the victim of sabotage or sacrificed to rally public opinion against Spain .

In an expedition in 1998, the National Geographic Society explored the wreck and commissioned a structural analysis by Advanced Marine Enterprises. They determined that the explosion could have been internal; the theory they embraced was that an undetected smoldering coal fire had ignited volatile coal dust in the air, creating a small explosion that touched off the nearby powder magazine. However, AME also said damage to the bottom plating and seafloor could be consistent with an external mine, thus hedging the findings.