 |
| REMEMBERING THE mAINE 1898
100th Anniversary |
|
USS MAINE (BB10) |
| February 15, will be the 100th anniversary of an
event which shook the world as tragically and effectively as did the Jap
sneak attack on Pearl Harbor that so unexpectedly broke the Sabbath calm
of December 7, 1941. At a little before 10 o'clock on that calm, black
night in 1898 a terrible blast occurred in Havana Bay which shattered
thousands of windows all over Havana, damaged fronts of many buildings
along the waterfronts and left the United States Battleship Maine a
twisted hulk filled and surrounded by the bodies of hundreds of dead and
wounded members of her crew of 354 officers and men. The dead numbered 261
and there were less than a dozen wounds or injury of any
kind. Key West, farthest southern speck of United States soil, has always played an important role in the military and naval actions of the country. The disaster in Havana struck Key West, and especially the naval establishment here, with especial force, since it was from Key West that the U.S.S. Maine had sailed for Havana only three weeks earlier; it was in Key West that the Maine had coaled and it was here she had been stationed for half the time during the two previous years, the families of many of the officers and men of the Maine being residents here at the time. Most of the wounded and many of the first bodies recovered in Havana were brought immediately to Key West, a number of the deaths actually occurring at the local Covent of Mary Immaculate, which was vacated as an educational institution and turned into an emergency hospital to care for them. MONUMENT MARKS SPOT The monument in the Key West cemetery marks the spot where a number of dead from the Maine were buried, and one of her turrets, set up in the yard of the Harris School, at Southard and Margaret Streets, is an interesting relic for Navy men of today to inspect, "Remember the Maine" became the national watchword for the recruiting of an Army dedicated to driving the remaining vestiges of Spain's power out of the Americas, just as "Remember Pearl Harbor" has spurred the nation to a new crusade to outlaw such treacherous aggressions from the world our children are to live in. When the Maine sailed from Key West for Havana late in January of 1898 relations between the United States and Spain had almost reached a breaking point, and Key West had long been a center of the cuban revolutionary movement, Spain charging that it was a point of departure for many of the armed expeditions taking men and arms to the island. To put a stop to any such activities the Maine and other ships had been based at Key West during 1896 and 1897. The Maine's visit to Havana was, officially, a courtesy visit, but the Spaniards, and especially the Cuban "Voluntaries," - Violently pro-Spanish and anti-United States Cubans,-became furious when the Maine sailed into Havana Harbor. Three weeks later almost three-fourths of her men were dead and she was a twisted hulk with parts of her decks barely awash and her bow pointed toward the sky. RAISED FROM BOTTOM Early in 1911 the United States government contracted for the raising of the Maine and the removal of her remains from Havana Harbor, for the three-fold purpose of getting rid of a menace to navigation, of recovering the remaining bodies of her dead and to permit a more complete examination of her hull. Cofferdams were built around her; the water inside was pumped out, leaving her on the dry bottom of the bay; her forward section, about 40 per cent of the ship, was cut off squarely, taken to sea and sunken in deep water after careful measurements and study. All her decks were covered by inches of foul bluish mud from which skulls, bones and the more resistant items of equipment were carefully removed. One or two of the crania recovered and a few handfuls of bones were put in each casket, the end of each box being stencilled "One-or two-Unknown Dead-U.S.S. Maine." On the morning of February 15, 1912, the Armored Cruiser North Carolina, the Scout Cruiser Birmingham, and the seagoing Navy Tug Osceola, all from Key West, arrived off Morro Castle, Havana, being received with 21-gun salutes from the Morro, Cabanas and LaPunta fortresses, and from Cuba's men-o-war in North Carolina, in special fulldress, and a picked division of Cuban Navy sailors, flanked the Caballeria Dock, where the bodies, and tons of flowers sent from all over the world, were loaded on the North "C's" boats and taken across the bay to her side, to be placed on her quarter-deck and covered with flowers and a Union Jack 40 by 60 feet, ready to lead the funeral procession to sea. Throughout the whole morning and part of the afternoon alternating bands played the Dead March from Saul, punctuated at half-hour intervals by the firing of a single gun from each ship and battery ashore. THE MAINE IS BURIED As the procession started seaward the sun, which had made the Marines' quilted, leather-collared full-dress coats a misery throughout the day, was mercifully hidden by a mantle of clouds. When the ships, including Cuban Navy units and passenger vessels, had taken their positions to form, with the Malecon on the landward side, a sort of hollow square with the Maine towed to its center, a group of officers put off from the Birmingham in a small-boat to open the sea-valves of the old warrior-ship, the harbor. Columns of Cuban Army troops bore the more than 70 boxes containing the bones of some 160 dead recovered from the hulk of the Maine and which had previously been deposited in the Cathedral. The Marine Guard from the North Carolina on which a jury-mast had been rigged to carry a 40 by 60 flag, her decks being covered with flowers. Her bow, the cut-off end, settled lower and lower, and the long-hidden sun suddenly dropped below the cloud lighting the whole scene with strange reflected light which seems to come from everywhere and cast no shadows. The Main's stern heaved up and she almost went under, but rebounded like a fisherman's cork almost pulled under by a fish, to make another plunge, a column of dust and rust rising high in the air as her giant flags spread along the surface of the sea for a moment, as though painted there, before following her down to her last resting place. Three volleys of rifle fire from the Marine Guard of the old North "C" crackled out smartly and their bugler played his softest and clearest "Taps," which echoed across the now empty square by bugles and cornets, in unison, playing on the deck of the Birmingham. The Navy units present, Cuban and United States, filed past the North Carolina and her stack of dead, firing their 21-gun salutes as they passed; then her bow pointed northeast-by-north and she was off on her voyage to the Chesapeake, where, after a transfer to the shallowerdraft Birmingham, the returning sailors of the Maine continued their voyage, up the history-filled valley of the Potomac, to their final rest in Arlington, ranged about the mainmast of their old ship, from which their flag still flies. |
 |