Sinking of The Maine
Havana,Cuba, Spanish-American War
| Date | February 15, 1898 |
|---|---|
| Location | Havana,Cuba, Spanish-American War |
| Description | "Remember the Maine" - a sudden sinking the nature of which remains subject to debate |
USS Maine was a United States Navy ship that sank in an explosion in Havana Harbor on February 15, 1898, contributing to the outbreak of the Spanish–American War in April. The phrase "Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!" became a rallying cry for action. The Maine explosion served as a pretext which accelerated the events leading up to the war.
War pretext
U.S. newspapers claimed that the Spanish were responsible for the ship's destruction. The New York Journal and New York World, owned respectively by William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, sensationalized the Maine incident with intense press coverage, employing tactics that would later be labeled "yellow journalism". Both newspapers exaggerated and distorted much of the information they obtained, sometimes even fabricating news to fit their agendas. For a week following the sinking, the Journal devoted a daily average of eight and a half pages of news, editorials and pictures to the event. Its editors sent a full team of reporters and artists to Havana, including Frederic Remington, and Hearst announced a reward of $50,000 "for the conviction of the criminals who sent 258 American sailors to their deaths.".[1]
Inquiries
In addition to the inquiry commissioned by the Spanish government, two naval courts of inquiry were ordered: the Sampson Board in [1898]] and the Vreeland board in 1911. In 1976, Admiral Hyman G. Rickover commissioned a private investigation, and the National Geographic Society investigated in 1998, using computer simulations. All investigations agreed that an explosion of the forward magazines caused the destruction of the ship, but different conclusions were reached regarding the exact cause of the explosion.[2][3]
Problems with narratives
The timing of the explosion was conspicuously providential for an accident.
