Centenary of the destruction of USS Maine - A technical and historical review

The USS Maine exploded in Havana harbor on February 15, 1898 with the loss of 266 lives. Its loss sparked the battle cry "Remember the Maine," it became one of the causes of the Spanish-American War, and the ship and the event now symbolize an era. The ship has grabbed the public's interest and fascination for one hundred years, in large part due to the perceived mystery surrounding the cause of the disaster. The official investigations at the time blamed a mine, but this was not universally accepted. Lingering doubts resulted in much speculation without putting the "riddle" to rest. Admiral Hyman Rick-over became interested and assembled a team to see what could be determined from the original evidence when modern knowledge of explosion damage was applied. The results, which were published in his book of 1976, dispelled the main part of the mystery-there was no mine. A new foreword and a new addendum to the technical appendix of the book were provided by the authors of this article when a new edition was published in 1995. The verdict is still the same. Among several magazine articles occasioned by the centenary of the disaster, the National Geographic Magazine reports on the result of a new study they commissioned. That study maintains that the "riddle" still persists. This article summarizes the historical background and the technical factors which lead to the conclusion that a mine did not cause the destruction of the Maine.