(upbeat music) (projector clicking) - Have you ever wondered where the television signal you're watching is coming from?

♪ I love to go a wanderin' (projector clicking) ♪ along the mountain track - Welcome to True North.

(upbeat music) (mysterious music) - Good evening and welcome to Mainewatch (upbeat music) (projector clicking) Welcome to From the Vault, a celebration of 60 years of Maine Public Television.

On this episode, we look at an important day in American history and its connection to our state.We are going back to 1998 for "Remember The Maine" It was February 15th 1898 when an explosion caused the Battleship Maine to sink to the bottom of Havana harbor 260 crew members were killed, including 6 of the 8 sailors from Maine.

But was this an enem attack or a tragic accident?

Either way, it inflamed public opinion and contributed to the outbreak of the Spanish American War.

This special, produced for the 100th anniversay, looks at the events leading up to that fateful day, the people involved and the legacy of that historic event.

We will travel to Florida, Arizona, Philadelphia, Washington and, of course, Maine and we will also see some incredible film from 1911.

So, from 1998, this is Remember the Maine (bright engaging music) - [Narrator] February 15th, 1898, the United States Navy battleship Maine was at anchor in Havana Harbor, Cuba.

The officers and crew were trying to get to sleep.

It was a hot humid night, still, quiet, too quiet for the officer of the deck, Lieutenant John Blandin.

- [Blandin] Everything was normal as I made my rounds.

Some of the crew were singing on deck.

It was dark, overcast, and threatening to rain.

I was hoping to have new orders by then, maybe a promotion.

It was quiet, so quiet for that harbor.

Lieutenant John Blandin, USS Maine.

(explosions burst) - The American people were shocked by what happened to the battleship Maine, with a tremendous loss of life.

This was the greatest naval disaster in our nation's history up until Pearl Harbor.

- I think the Spanish-American War really is a turning point a watershed, if you will in American history.

- [Narrator] America put the divisive Civil War behind it and the newly united country moved to the first rank of nations.

The United States' smashing victory in the Spanish-American War set the stage for many of the crucial events of the 20th Century.

100 years later, there are many reasons to remember the Maine.

(engaging music) - [Newsy] Extra, extra read all about it.

Maine sunk in Havana Harbor, extra.

Extra, extra, read all about it.

- [Narrator] The Maine's long journey to Havana began more than a decade before that fateful February night.

The US Navy, the most powerful in the world at the end of the Civil War, had been neglected.

The few ships left in the Navy were mostly old sailing ships with a few ironclads like the famous Monitor of the Civil War, but to the world, the American Navy was that of a minor power.

- The United States Navy, while it had steam-propelled worships still kept all the full masts, yards, rigging, sails on them.

They were still using the old breech-loading cannons that had been used in the Civil War.

In fact, when American ships made port calls over in Europe, local people came on board them as though they were visiting some kind of maritime museum.

- Chester A. Arthur began this process in his first annual address in 1881, where he said that he couldn't urge more strongly the absolute need for a revitalized Navy, that the security, and honor, and economy of the nation required it.

- Technical developments in the late 19th Century, as far as the naval architecture, and naval armaments, and so on we're really rolling.

I mean, it was a slower pace, but equivalent of the feedback from the Space Race, a lot of new technical innovations, new ideas, new machineries, new ways of doing things.

- And one of the big move things changed in building of the Maine was using electricity.

I mean, electricity was not a commodity back then.

It's kind of hard to conceive of that, but it wasn't.

They had a generator and they made electricity and that was, you know, a very great step forward.

- That's what NASA tries to sell today, the civilian benefits to the NASA program, but with the Maine, they really were civilian benefits.

- [Narrator] And the state of Maine saw benefits from the naval arms buildup of the 1890s.

As the battleship Maine was under construction at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York, a shipyard in Maine built its first steel warships for the Navy.

That company was called the Bath Iron Works.

Two of its vessels were successes, the gunboats Machias and Castine, but the ram ship Katahdin was not.

- Oh, the Katahdin couldn't catch anything.

It was simply an iron pachyderm that cost too much money and could not accomplish what it was designed to do.

- When people think of a battleship now, they think of World War II type battleships, the Iowa class or North Carolina, huge ships, Maine wasn't a huge ship.

No, she was a second-class battleship by the time she even went into the fleet and it was at that point that let's say the developments in naval armaments we're going so fast.

- [Narrator] While, naval technology was improving, the Maine was evolving, she came off the drawing board as an armored cruiser designed to have sails as well as steam power, but with better weapons and improved machinery, she became a battleship, but a series of mishaps led some sailors to brand the Maine as a hoodoo ship Navy slang for a ship with bad luck.

- Early on at the construction site, the New York Navy Yard, the hull of the Maine somehow caught fire and she burned.

It was a significant throwback for the whole project.

On the launch date, as Ms. Wilmerding broke the champagne bottle on the plimsoll line of the Maine, a photograph was taken at that exact moment, and she broke the bottle on the line number 13, which was not a very good sign either.

- [Narrator] The ship's reputation was not helped by a near collision on the Hudson River in New York, nor by the loss of three crewmen at sea.

- [Deckhand] Man overboard, man overboard!

- [Crewman] What happened?

- [Deckhand] Hey, we got another one.

- [Crewman] Where?

Get a line, quick, get the Captain!

- [Deckhand] Man overboard!

- [Captain] All engines stop, away the boat.

Clear the deck, clear the deck.

- [Crewman] There they are.

- [Narrator] Two men were rescued from the raging sea but three were dead, the first casualties aboard the battleship Maine.

- Sailors are notoriously superstitions individuals.

Some of the earlier unlucky events that occurred to the ship happen to all ships to a lesser or greater degree, I think were the Maine shows itself to be particularly unlucky, if you will, is in her explosion in Havana Harbor.

♪ McKinley called for volunteers ♪ ♪ Then I got my gun ♪ The first Spaniard I saw coming ♪ ♪ I dropped my gun and run ♪ It was all about that battleship the Maine ♪ - [Narrator] While some of the sailors on the Maine were concerned about the ship, there was also growing concern with the storm clouds of war gathering over Cuba.

- 'Cause there were concentration camps and people were dying of malnutrition, maltreatment, poor hygiene and so on in these reconcentratos that they were doing down there.

There were atrocities on both sides.

Civilians were being blown up by rebels and villagers were being slaughtered by government troops.

- [Narrator] Spanish General Valeriano Weyler's policies as Governor General of Cuba outraged many Americans and the newspapers branded him "The Butcher" as Spanish troops killed rebels as well as women and children.

The papers published stories and drawings of the alleged atrocities.

Some were true, some were total fabrications.

- He was a very professional military man and he was ordered to put an end to the insurrection and he did it in a very brutal, but a very military way.

And by the way, it's the same thing that the United States did a few years later in the Philippines and 60 years later in Vietnam.

- Whether that policy indeed was effective, it certainly was brutal, very cruel to the Cuban peasants who were starved literally in these concentration camps.

- The biggest factor cited typically in the history books is the competition between Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst for circulation, and one way to increase circulation is to sensationalize, and so they spent their correspondents down there to investigate what was happening in Cuba under Weyler.

♪ Just think of Cuba trampled, crushed ♪ ♪ She strives for liberty ♪ She looks to us and calls for aid ♪ ♪ She struggles to be free - [Narrator] Throughout America there was moral outrage fueled by the tabloid newspapers in New York, two in particular, the New York Journal owned by William Randolph Hearst and the New York World led by Joseph Pulitzer.

The papers engaged in a war for readers.

The battleground was Cuba.

Their lurid stories and sensational headlines earned a nickname, yellow journalism.

- [Davis] They searched them thoroughly even to the length of taking off their shoes and stockings.

And 15 minutes later, when at last the three girls stood on the deck of an American vessel, the Spanish officers followed them there and demanded that a cabin should be furnished to them, to which the girls might be taken, they were then again, undressed and searched for a third time, Richard Harding Davis, the New York Journal.

- [Creelman] No man's life, no man's property is safe.

American citizens are in prison or slain without cause, the horrors of the barbarous struggle for the extermination of the native population are witnessed in all parts of the country, blood on the roadsides, blood in the fields, blood on the doorsteps, blood, blood, blood!

James Creelman, the New York World.

- [Narrator] But there were solid economic reasons underlying United States policy, America had surpassed Spain as the major trading partner of Cuba.

- Some of the sugar planters actually sent their kids up here to Westbrook College because the Cubans and Maine had a very close economic relationship, and as a matter of fact, the J.B. Brown fortune, which later melded into the Payson fortune, was based in considerable part on sugar imports into Portland.

- These people had the most to lose from Spain granting any particular freedom to the Cuban people because they had a very special place in Cuba.

They were the bureaucrats, they were the merchants.

They didn't wanna lose that place.

So as Spain began to give more autonomy to the Cuban people, these people, these Spanish volunteers fought back.

- Spain has been an American power for 400 years.

So we felt very American, we didn't see why the United States should intervene in something so Spanish as Cuba.

- US businessman had invested a lot in Cuba and they wanted, they were worried about their investments, and they wanted them protected.

The other part of the agenda was the the imperialist, the jingoists like Teddy Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, who saw this as an opportunity to acquire an empire.

- And Jose Marti, the Cuban patriot who touched off those embers again in '95, stimulated in part by an economic downturn in Cuba, and so they started a new war for independence, 1895, this time supplied quite powerfully and very usefully by Cuban exiles in Key West, New York, and other places in the United States.

- [Narrator] And while the revolution was gaining momentum in Cuba, the battleship Maine was coming to life.

(festive music) At the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the Maine was finally commissioned seven years after her keel was laid.

The Maine's first captain was A.S. Crowninshield.

- [Crowninshield] I have been commanded by the Secretary of the Navy to take command of the US steel-armored cruiser, Maine, first-rate.

Captain A.S. Crowninshield.

- [Ham] While we stood at attention for hours, the Captain and some of the officers did not arrive until just before the ceremony.

My new ship is impressive.

I can't wait to move aboard.

Semen Ambrose Ham, USS Maine.

- [Narrator] The armored-cruiser Maine was re-rated as a battleship second-class shortly after commissioning, but crew members found life aboard a battleship little different from life on any Navy ship.

- Life on board Navy ships in the 1890s, exactly parallels life on board ships, American warships today.

Rather boring, long periods of nothing to do but talk to people, do little projects, write letters, read, punctuated by drills.

- [Peggy] You had a caste system.

I imagine you still do aboard ships I mean, the, the officers had a mess, whatever you call it there, but they had linens and they had china, dishes.

- [Historian] You had to have cleaning duty, which on a coal-fired battleship was all the time because you had coal smoke everywhere.

You had the coal dust everywhere.

- Space aboard the warships of the 1890s was at a premium.

Oftentimes, sailors had to use one area of the ship for more than one function.

For example, after eating at these tables, they then folded up the tables and unrolled the hammocks for the night.

- [Historian] Some of the crewman who played instruments would find a spot on the deck and strike up a tune and others would gather around to listen, some would start dancing, by 9:00 p.m they would call for "Taps" and the crew were supposed to go below and bed down for the evening.

(bell tolls) - [Narrator] One of the first assignments for the warship was to visit her namesake state.

Arriving in Casco Bay in late November of 1895, officers speculated on what the state of Maine's gift to the ship would be.

Several hoped Maine would follow the lead of San Francisco, which had presented a splendid silver punchbowl with goblets to that cruiser, surely with Maine a state, the gift would be grander, but Maine was then dry, a prohibition state, the silver service presented to the ship was a soup tureen with matching vegetable dishes.

- [Crowninshield] The Governor and the Mayor presented the gift at city hall.

It was quite a formal affair.

The silver service is handsomely ornamented with silver pine cones and needles.

Captain A.S. Crowninshield.

- [Ham] I did not much care for the port.

I went ashore once, but I did not enjoy the liberty as it snowed most of the time.

Seaman Ambrose Ham.

- The next time Ham and the Maine visited the state the weather was much warmer.

In August of 1897 the battleship visited both Portland and Bar Harbor.

The battleship Maine often anchored here in Key West Harbor, particularly under the protective guns of Fort Zachary Taylor, but the crew loved Key West for more than the protection of the fort, they loved to take shore leave here in Key West.

(jaunty music) - The Navy has been here in Key West for 175 years and I'm sure they have been entertained onshore for 175 years, but these men had a special affinity, the men on the Maine had a special affinity with the people of Key West, they were very well received.

(jaunty music) There were a number of teams here, one in particular called the Boys, B-O-Y-S, often played the crew of the Maine.

From what we know the team of the Maine in 1898, January of 1898 was very good and they did win the North Atlantic Squadron Championship here in a wild game.

- [Ham] It was an enjoyable liberty.

It was a relief after being at sea, but then it turned cold.

One day we wore overcoats and it is a strange thing to wear overcoats in Key West, Seaman Ambrose Ham.

- And the newspapers sent correspondents down, and again, oftentimes, well at least sensationalize if they didn't manufacture the news and created a great interest, and I think true, sincere sympathy on behalf of the American public for the Cubans and their situation.

- The media played up the idea of Cuban insurgent struggling for freedom, and the media played up the cruelty of the Spanish regime.

You know, the image in the black hat of the treacherous Spaniard, this became a kind of icon that one would see everywhere.

- There were many anti-American demonstrations at what seemed to be a grasping, greedy, deliberate intention to capture the last remnants of the Spanish Empire.

- [Narrator] Those pushing for war, often called jingos, found a powerful ally in Theodore Roosevelt, Undersecretary of the Navy, later war hero and President of the United States.

- [Roosevelt] Soon after I began work as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, I became convinced that the war would come.

The revolt in Cuba had dragged its wary length until the conditions on the island had become so dreadful as to be a standing disgrace to us for permitting them to exist, Theodore Roosevelt.

- [Narrator] At about the time Teddy Roosevelt went to the Navy Department, Charles Dwight Sigsbee took over as the Maine's second and last captain.

Usually commands were strictly determined by seniority, but Sigsbee's reputation was so outstanding, he was promoted over several other officers.

- [Sigsbee] I had worked out a code with General Lee, our Counsel in Havana, if he sent a telegram that included the phrase $2, that would mean we were needed.

I ordered the boilers fired and the ship made ready.

I ordered a gunfire to recall the crew from Key West, Captain Sigsbee, USS Maine.

(cannon fires) - [Seaman] That was the signal, quick back to the ship.

Just drop everything, let's go.

Come on, hurry!

- [Narrator] The Maine weighed anchor, January 23rd, 1898, never to return to Key West.

The ship went west to Tortugas and joined the rest of the North Atlantic squadron.

And then less than a day later, orders were received onboard the Maine.

She was to sail to Havana.

Her mission, protect American lives and property.

- The Maine arrived in Havana on the 25th of January.

As she approached the north coast of Cuba, the Havana area, Captain Sigsbee actually slowed the Maine down.

He wasn't going to steam into the harbor.

He had all the flags flying, all of his men on deck in their best uniforms, a large number of men were hidden in the gun turrets ready for any danger.

- [Andrews] When orders were received to proceed to Havana, we saw that all guns were in good order, cylinders filled, shot and shell out, and the decks almost cleared for action.

Everything was ready for business, Seaman Frank Andrews.

- They were very worried, everybody in a hidden way.

They had every sailor at a defense post.

They didn't know whether they were gonna be shot at going to be shot or welcomed.

- [Sigsbee] I could have taken the ship in myself, but I knew the Spanish disliked the refusal of a pilot.

I accepted one as evidence of goodwill, Captain Charles Sigsbee, USS Maine.

- He didn't wanna surprise the people of Havana.

He approached the port very slowly and at a particular time in the morning, 10 o'clock when certainly the wharf was filled with people and people were out on the shoreline.

So they could see 'em coming from a long way off.

and they certainly, as he approached, could take a look at this proud American vessel and see that its intentions were peaceful.

- [Andrews] As we steamed in under the guns of Morro, we calculated how long it would take to silence it.

Our turret crews were standing out of sight, of course, while the rest of the crew was around the deck.

At the first shot from the Spanish, they would have soon found their places, Seamen Frank Andrews.

- [Elmer] The Spaniards have a couple of gunboats and a cruiser and there are two German gunboats.

The guns of Morro Castle are pointed at us as I write.

The whole bottom of the harbor is covered with torpedoes so that if they did not want to let us out, we would not be able to go very well.

Seaman Elmer Meilstrup.

- There were warnings to Sigsbee all the time saying, watch your ship, you're going to be blown up, or terrible Yankees.

♪ Anchored at Havana, on the Cuban shore ♪ ♪ Conscious of no danger, dreaming love-days o'er ♪ - [Narrator] While some were concerned.

The Maine might be in a trap.

Lieutenant John Blandin wrote a very different letter to his wife.

- [Blandin] My dearest, everything is quiet here and no trouble is looked for.

The ship is to go to Mew Orleans on the 15th for the Mardi Gras, don't be worried by the newspapers for we are all right, Lieutenant John Blandin.

- [Narrator] It was warm in Havana Harbor and even though the rioting had ended, no crew members were allowed ashore, but the Maine received visitors, including Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross.

She had come to Havana to help the sick and injured from the long-running revolution.

- [Barton] Captain Sigsbee's launch courteously came from me.

His officers received us.

His crew strong, ready, and bright, went through their drill for our entertainment, and the lunch at those polished tables, the glittering china and cut-glass with the social guests around will remain ever in my memory as a vision of the Last Supper, Clara Barton.

- [Narrator] The crew and the officers got into a routine of cleaning, and polishing, and doing paperwork, getting ready to go to the Mardi Gras, but the Maine would not leave Havana Harbor for 14 years.

- [Joseph] The day that the explosion occurred on the 15th of February, 1898, was a routine working day for the ship.

The crewmen went through their normal drills, and cleaning, and so forth throughout the day.

- The last picture of the Maine, a photograph taken about four o'clock in the afternoon, shows the Maine with canvas rolled down and by evening, the men had been told by eight o'clock in the evening, the men had been told that the day was done.

- It's not very clear, but if you look up and they forward fighting top on the ship, there's a lookout up there.

So here on the very day, at the closing hours of daylight, they still had a man aloft watching the ship and watching small boats coming and going.

So they were ready but nervous I think.

- [Ham] I went up to see Mill up on the bridge, Quartermaster Millard Harris.

He was from Maine, Boothbay Harbor, I believe.

We took turns brewing coffee and I asked him if he was going belong or did he want me to do it?

He says, "Well, it's a little early yet.

"Better we wait awhile."

So I went down myself to see if there was any coffee already brewing, and there was some in the galley, Seaman Ambrose ham.

- Captain Sigsbee often spent time in the Admiral's cabin.

No Admiral was aboard the Maine and it gave him some extra space to work in.

It was in the Admiral's cabin that he was writing when the battleship Maine blew up.

("Taps" plays) - [Sigsbee] I laid down my pen to hear the notes of the bugle, which were singularly beautiful in the oppressive stillness of the night, The bugler, Newton, who was given to fanciful effects was evidently doing his best.

During his pauses the echos floated back with distinctness, repeating the strains fully and exactly, Captain Charles Sigsbee.

- By about 9:40, some of the men were probably asleep.

Some were sitting around talking, laying around talking.

Some of the men were not sleeping in their proper bunks.

They had sought out little secret places where it might be a little cooler or it might a little more private for them to sleep.

So they were scattered here and there forward in the ship.

("Taps" plays) (explosions burst) - [Sigsbee] It was a bursting, rending, crashing roar of immense volume, I felt the whole ship tremble.

The lights went out in my cabin and I heard shouting outside, Captain Charles Sigsbee.

(men yell in distress) - [Blandin] I heard a sharp explosion, a perfect train of missiles of all descriptions from huge pieces of cement to blocks of wood, steel railings and fragments of gratings rained down around me, I was hit by a piece of cement, but I got to my feet.

Lieutenant John Blandin.

(men yell in distress) - [Narrator] Many Americans were in Havana and heard the explosion and its aftermath.

Clara Barton was in her hotel room writing when the blast reverberated across the bay.

- [Barton] Suddenly the table shook from under our hands, the great glass door on the veranda facing the sea flew open.

Everything in the room was in motion or out of place.

The deafening roar was such a burst of thunder as perhaps one ever heard before, off to the right out over the bay the air was filled with a blaze of light, Clara Barton.

- [Narrator] Harper's Weekly correspondent, George Bronson Ray was relaxing at a bar near the harbor.

He rushed to the waterfront after hearing the blast.

- [Ray] There were great masses of twisted and bent iron plates, and beams were thrown amid ships.

The bow had disappeared.

The foremast and smokestacks had fallen.

The massive wreckage of midships was on fire, George Bronson Ray, Harper's Weekly.

- [Sigsbee] One of the smokestacks was lying in the water on the starboard side.

I could see white forms on the water and hear faint cries for help, with the fire threatening the forward magazines, I ordered the men to the boats, Captain Charles Sigsbee.

- [Barton] The men had been crushed by timbers, cut by iron, scorched by fire, and blown sometimes high in the air, sometimes driven down through the red hot furnace room and out into the water senseless.

Their wounds were all over them.

Heads and faces terribly cut, Clara Barton.

- [Sigsbee] I sent a telegram to the Secretary of the Navy, "Maine blown up in Havana Harbor "at 9:40 tonight and destroyed.

"Many wounded and doubtless more killed or drowned.

"Wounded and others onboard "Spanish Man of War and Ward Lines steamers.

"Send lighthouse tenders from Key West for crew.

"Public opinion should be suspended until further report.

"All officers believed to be saved.

"Jenkins and Merritt not yet accounted for.

"Many Spanish officers, including representatives "of General Blanco, now with me "to express sympathy, Captain Charles Sigsbee."

- 250 men lost their lives that evening and of course the Maine within 15 minutes had sunk to the bottom of the harbor.

It was a great American tragedy.

- [Narrator] The wounded were treated in Havana.

Some were transferred to Key West.

Several died and were buried there.

Townspeople commissioned a statue for the cemetery, one of 100s of memorials to the Maine.

♪ And shall our country let it pass ♪ ♪ This deed of foul intent ♪ And shall our country dare believe ♪ ♪ It was an accident ♪ Out out upon the craven ones ♪ So deaf to honor's law ♪ America has willing sons ♪ To avenge her wrongs in war - Spain offered, of course the United States refused to have this investigation done jointly, because as Teddy Roosevelt pointed out to President McKinley, nobody in the United States would have believed a joint commission.

But then Spain offered an international investigation and the United States turned that down too.

So an international investigation would have been unimpeachable, but at that time, when the Maine exploded, the war had started, nobody could have stopped it.

- [Narrator] The news of the sinking of the Maine caused protests in the streets, not only in the state of Maine, but across the country.

Marchers demanded the Spanish pay for what most everyone believed was a deliberate act of war.

Army and Navy recruiting stations were swamped with men seeking to join up and beat the Spanish, and in many communities across both the North and the South, grizzled veterans of the Civil War tried to enlist as they displayed their medals.

But President McKinley was not so sure.

He ordered a Navy Court of Inquiry and personally chose its members.

- [Roosevelt] War became inevitable.

A number of peace at any price men, of course, promptly assumed the position that she had blown herself up, but investigation showed that the explosion was from the outside and in any event, it would have been impossible to prevent war, Theodore Roosevelt.

- [Narrator] And war it was.

♪ Rouse ye, my countrymen, rouse ♪ ♪ Let his death not be in vain ♪ Strike down the cowardly fiends ♪ ♪ Who slaughtered the crew of the Maine.

♪ - [Narrator] Less than two months after the Maine blew up, the United States was at war with Spain.

It was a short conflict with the American Navy avenging the Maine by virtually destroying the Spanish fleet in battles off Cuba and in the Philippines.

♪ It was all about that battleship of Maine ♪ ♪ At war with that great nation Spain ♪ ♪ When I get back from Spain I want to honor my name ♪ ♪ It was all about that battleship of Maine ♪ - [Narrator] The mostly volunteer army defeated the Spaniards in Cuba and captured Puerto Rico with few casualties.

Less than six months after the Maine was destroyed, the Splendid Little War was over.

♪ At war with that great nation Spain ♪ ♪ Remember the Maine ♪ When I get back from Spain I want to honor my name ♪ ♪ It was all about that battleship of Maine ♪ (gavel pounds) - [Marix] If the court will come to order.

- The Naval Court of Inquiry took their job very seriously.

They began on February 17, quickly moved to Havana for onsite inspection and under the commands of Secretary of the Navy, they were given free rein to question whatever individual, whatever crew member, whatever support they needed was given them to conduct that inquiry.

- After the Court of Inquiry completed its investigation of the wrecked battleship Maine in Havana Harbor, they moved the investigation back to Key West, first meeting in the Customs House, and then they moved the investigation here to Fort Zachary Taylor, where the entire crew, the survivors of the battleship Maine were assembled to give their testimony to the court.

- [Marix] Is there a present any officer or a man who has any complaint to make or fault to find with any officer or a man belonging to the Maine as to the care or guarding of that ship in the Harbor of Havana previous to her destruction on February 15th, 1898?

If any such officer has complaint to make or fault to find, let him step to the front.

No one having stepped forward, this court is adjourned.

(gavel pounds) Lieutenant Commander, Adolph Marix, member of the Court of Inquiry into the Loss of the USS Maine.

- They began by believing that it had been an accident on the Maine and they were pointed because the government would have wanted a finding of an accident because that would have avoided war, but Samson misread the debris that he could see from the top of the ocean, a piece of the bottom of the ship was raised above the water, raised 40 feet and to him that could only have come from a mine under the Maine at that point.

- Once she was moored there, it would have required someone, somehow to get an explosive device underneath the ship to cause the kind of damage that happened, there's no evidence that any such activity occurred, at least none has been revealed.

There's always a possibility that somebody pulled it off.

If you really want to get to something or to somebody, and you can figure out a way to do it.

- You had substantial systems of mines in place in our own country, in Fort Knox, for instance, down here in the river, had a mine field right under what is now the Waldo Hancock Bridge.

So that all you really had to do under the circumstances was push a button and the mine blew up, and so you have that kind of technology.

It's a question simply if somebody getting their hands on one of these, putting it underneath the anchorage at this point, and then being able to touch it off with an electronic device from shore.

- [Narrator] Admiral Hyman Rickover is best known as the father of the Navy's modern submarine fleet.

But in the 1970s, he became fascinated by the unsolved mystery of the destruction of the Maine.

He decided to apply modern methods of research to the findings of earlier Navy studies.

- We say that a coal bunker fire is the most likely source of the explosion of the ship's magazines.

No one disagrees that the portions of the forward magazines of the Maine exploded and that's what created the huge devastation and loss of life on the ship.

The question is what caused those magazines to explode?

And we concluded that the most likely mechanism for causing the forward magazines to explode would have been a coal bunker fire.

- I spoke with an ordinance expert a while ago regarding this and he pointed out that black powder ignites at between four and 500 degrees.

That wood, the wood like the wood frames that the ordinance would have been stored in the magazine combust at about 500 degrees, not below that.

The bulkhead on which the wooden frames were adjoined would have to have been extremely hot, perhaps white hot.

- It can ignite very rapidly, in less time than between when the Maine's bunkers were checked and its magazines were checked and the explosion occurred.

There was ample time for a fire actually to start, and to heat the bulkhead, and to ignite the contents of the magazine.

The other problem, and they knew about it at the time, was that the fire alarms or the temperature sensors that they put in the bunkers trying to detect these fires before they got out of hand didn't work very well.

- Those bulkheads were made of steel.

If there had been a fire on the other side of it, it would clearly have been noticed.

- The explosion occurred somewhere in this area forward of the battleship, approximately at frame 16 to 18.

At that point, the first Naval Court of Inquiry found an indentation in the bottom of the harbor that indicated a explosion external to the vessel that of course made a hole in the harbor floor itself and probably was the cause of the Maine being lifted in the bow area.

(explosions burst) - As we have learned in the late 20th Century after we've studied airplane crashes, like the one that went into Long Island Sound, these things are very complex, and we probably will never know for sure.

- [Narrator] The mystery over what caused the Maine to blow up continues to this day.

Was it a big mine or a small mine placed to scare the Americans?

Was it a fire in a coal bunker?

Was it sabotage?

For every theory there are arguments and facts that throw cold water on one explanation while not providing a clearer picture of why the Maine blew up in Havana Harbor.

- We have all these different views, but I don't think that we have really persuasive evidence, the final absolutely irrefutable evidence that we're all looking for that would say, yes, it was a mine, yes, It was a fire in the coal bunker.

I think it's sort of like TWA Flight 800, where at the end we're left uncertain as to what happened.

- These theories will go on forever because nobody has been able to prove one thing or the other definitively.

But I think what is very important in this Centennial is to remember that it was not caused by the Spanish government.

Spain did not order the explosion of the Maine.

(delicate piano music) - [Narrator] After the Spanish-American War, veterans groups agitated for the Maine to be refloated in Havana Harbor.

It took a decade, but Congress responded with funds to raise the ship, again investigate the cause for its loss and provide burial for those victims still entombed in the wreck.

- A huge cofferdam was built around the Maine, the water was pumped out from that cofferdam exposing the vessel completely, and the area around the Maine on the floor of the harbor.

The inquiry board then went into the battleship, inspected all of the areas of that battleship.

- When the Vreeland people got the Maine de-watered and looked in it, they found that there was a hole in the ship, at the bottom of the ship and that the edges of the hull were blown in.

- The hull they found that had the inward things was going into the magazine, so that you had a mine placed in exactly the right spot, if you knew there was a magazine there.

- It would be consonant with the facts to say that it was a Weylerite fanatic, not a military officer who put the mine where it was and exploded it.

- [Peggy] There's luck, there's happenstance.

There's a lot of things have to do with this, yes, and it could just be that it was never intended to do what it did.

- [Narrator] After carefully inspecting the de-watered wreck, the so-called Vreeland Commission concluded a mine had caused the Maine to blow up.

♪ Buried in a foreign land ♪ In an unknown grave ♪ Where the bells of liberty ♪ Soon must ring to save ♪ Peacefully he slumbers still ♪ Beneath the torrid sun ♪ And through all time will bleed for him ♪ ♪ This heart, this heart he won ♪ ♪ And through all time will bleed for him ♪ ♪ This heart, this heart he won ♪ (mournful music) - [Narrator] While the last victims of the Maine were laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery, 100s of cities and towns and scores of veterans groups sought pieces of the ship, memorials to the Maine and her crew in the hope that future generations would always remember the Maine.

(mournful music) - The ship was enigmatic.

Everybody wanted a piece of the action.

The bow crest of course wound up in Bangor.

The mast wound up down in Arlington, if I'm not mistaken, and various other pieces of the ship have found their way into parks and other facilities throughout the country.

- Remember the Maine, the people of this country certainly did remember the Maine and communities everywhere.

- [Narrator] Few recognized at the time that the phrase remember the Maine would go down in history.

While generations forgot about the war it spawned, the battleship Maine has been remembered for that phrase.

Its popularity was only enhanced when a new Naval tragedy hit the United States and Remember Pearl Harbor became the cry across the nation.

♪ Gone to their last long sleep ♪ ♪ Down in the angry deep ♪ Well may a nation weep ♪ But not in vain ♪ Brave gallant lads in blue ♪ Died for our country true ♪ All the world mourns for you ♪ And the wreck of the Maine - All this has gone into the past, besides, you know, the war, the defeat, the Spanish defeat started in Spain an extremely important movement of regeneration.

And so the attention of the intellectuals in Spain, the attention of any cultivated person was devoted to see what was wrong in Spain.

What had been so wrong in Spain that we had suffered such a terrible defeat?

- The United States felt that basically the Cuban was ours and that kind of mentality carried through the first half century of Cuba's so-called independence and created as a backlash, a nationalism, which gave rise to Fidel Castro.

- Wow, America's come of age.

We are now up there.

We're playing hardball with the big boys.

And from there, it was just a continuation of the growth of America's consciousness as not merely the manifest destiny in North America, protector of the Southern hemisphere, but as a player in the great game of the world.

- [Roosevelt] It was the dastardly Spaniards that destroyed the Maine, of that I am convinced and will remain convinced.

If this country had not fought the Spanish War, all mankind would have been the loser, like the new century we were on our way to a new America, Theodore Roosevelt.

- [Narrator] Spain was no longer a world power and the United States, despite opposition of many, had become a major world power with possessions from Puerto Rico to the Philippines.

America was no longer the source of raw materials for other nations.

It was the producer of steel and consumer products shipped around the world.

It was a nation to be reckoned with, a future superpower, and the turning point was the Spanish-American war, a war sparked by the destruction of the battleship Maine.

(bugle plays) On March 16th, 1912, the hulk of the once proud battleship Maine was towed from Havana Harbor to her final resting place beneath the sea.

- [O'Brien] It fell to me to pilot the Maine on her last voyage.

When I got aboard, I looked across the desolate deck and arose in my mind a picture of it bristling with cannon and crowded with strong sailor men.

I never felt so much like crying my life.

As we went through the entrance, there were people everywhere ashore.

The port was the harbor, whose whole population seemed to be thronging the roofs and sea walls.

(cannon fires) I took one last look around me.

Then I signaled to the pilot boat to come alongside, dropped into it and waited for the end, Johnny O'Brien, Pilot.

(mournful rendition of US National Anthem) - She floats desolate, but flying her national ensign above the rusted hull.

Again and again, the waves incline her very gently.

Thus, she bows to her fate.

At last, she pauses for a moment on her deepest incline and then glides down to her eternal grave, Admiral Charles Sigsbee.

(mournful music) (bright engaging music) ♪ What cries of horror rend the air ♪ ♪ For help when none may save ♪ And many a gallant sailor lad ♪ ♪ Has found a watery grave ♪ In one brief moment has been born ♪ ♪ A world of care and pain ♪ And broken hearts at home must mourn ♪ ♪ The martyrs of the Maine ♪ Gone to their last long sleep ♪ ♪ Down in the angry deep ♪ Well may a nation weep ♪ But not in vain ♪ Brave, gallant lads in blue ♪ Died for our country true ♪ All the world mourns for you ♪ And the wreck of the Maine