Remember the Maine - Beyond the Slogan
Remember the Maine - Beyond the Slogan
The intent of this article is to provide some context on the origins of the Spanish American War, the circumstances that placed the USS Maine in Havana Harbor in February of 1898 and provide a little color to the prelude to war often overlooked.
Spain and Cuba:
In 1898, rioting in the capitol of the Spanish Cuba threatened U.S. commercial and diplomatic interests, and led to the United States dispatching the USS Maine, Armored Cruiser No. 1, to Habana (Havana) harbor; in the sub-tropical heat, Maine sat at anchor, below the guns of the Moro Castle, showing the flag of the United States to Spaniards and Cubans ashore.
USS Maine
The U.S. had significant interests in Cuba.[1] In the 1830s and 1840s, the southern U.S. and Cuba were linked by the transportation and trade in slaves, and southern plantation owners sought the comfort of expanding their plantation economy offshore. U.S. merchants in the northeast sought additional markets for their wares in Cuba. By the 1880s, 90% of Cuban exports wound up in the U.S., and 40% of U.S. exports found their way to Cuba.
Yet Cuba was far from a stable trading partner, having experienced three extended uprisings since 1868. Also, Cuba was plagued by filibusters; foreigners (Americans) sought to overthrow the legitimate government so that one friendly to U.S. business interests could be installed.
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, Cuba and other Caribbean islands increased in their strategic significance. In the Columbian province of Panama, the establishment of rail service from the Caribbean to the Pacific, made the approaches to the isthmus key in controlling sea lanes. The potential of a trans-isthmus canal, allowing for unfettered sea travel from the east to the west forced strategic thinkers to consider incursions by great powers, such as Britain and Spain, as a bigger threat than merely economic competition. To protect the American rail line in Panama, and ultimately the canal, the U.S. would need a fleet with forward bases in the islands, for maintenance and coaling purposes.
The U.S. also had a history of running up against the Spanish in Cuba directly. In 1873 the SS Virginius, a U.S. flagged filibuster was captured by the Spanish near Cuba, and the crew put to death as pirates. The U.S. reacted as well as it could, mustering an ad hoc fleet, but was obviously out gunned by the Spanish fleet of the day. A black eye for the country and the Navy, only ended by British intervention, it was a kernel of motivation to rebuild the U.S. fleet.
The newest threat to U.S. interests in the region stemmed from the most recent rebellion in Cuba. In 1896, Spain dispatched General Valeriano Weyler to crush the latest rebellion in Cuba. His heavy-handed tactics so shocked American stakeholders in Cuba, that they sought President Grover Cleveland’s intervention.[2] American newspapers feasted on the conflict, holding Jose Marti, the new head of the revolution against the Spanish, as a heroic rebel underdog, and the Cuban people as the victims of unspeakable torture at the hands of Weyler and his thugs. As Weyler moved Cuban farmers into concentration camps[3], Americans up and down the east coast raised funds for Marti and the Cuba Libre movement.
Jose Marti
In a scorched earth strategy, the rebels turned to the destruction of plantations regardless of the owners’ allegiance and U.S. business interests became progressively supportive of American intervention. Spain recalled Weyler, but many thought it was clear that the U.S. and Spain would come to blows. The new presidential administration of William McKinley maintained a cool attitude towards the rebellion, but war planners acted on the potential of conflict, putting together plans to defend the harbor cities of the east and gulf coasts, and to raid Spanish commerce nearer to Iberian shores.
In January 1898, with an ongoing threat to U.S. interests posed by Spain, the Navy Department dispatched the USS Helena to Lisbon, the USS Cincinnati and USS Castine to a station off the coast of Brazil, and the USS Maine to Habana, in case the need for action greater than diplomacy arose. No U.S. ship had visited Habana in recent years, and Maine arrived to a dubious welcome on January 25, 1898.[4] In port liberty was not on the schedule.
The U.S. Navy in 1898:
For the better part of the 19th century U.S. naval strategy relied on the dispatch of individual ships to foreign ports, showing the flag in defense of American commercial and diplomatic interests. Closer to home the Navy maintained heavily armed and armored monitors, which lacked sea-legs, but were thought effective when deployed in tandem with torpedoes (naval mines) and Army coastal artillery, in defense of American harbors. The post-Civil War Navy was not one designed for fleet engagements on the high seas.
The Navy had fallen far from the height of the Civil War. By the end of the war, the Navy had 671 ships on the rolls. In 1869 only 203 ships were on the rolls, and only forty-three were assigned to the squadrons. Then Secretary of the Navy Robeson judged that only EIGHTEEN of these vessels were “in condition for real service”. For the next decade the Navy would languish for the lack of appropriations. When Congress finally approved a “war navy”, war scares had highlighted the need for the development and acquisition of modern warships.
By 1898, the U.S. Navy well on the way to a genuine transformation. In 1883 Congress approved the purchase of what would become the ABCD ships; three modern iron cruisers for the “war navy”; the USS Atlanta, USS Boston, USS Chicago, and a high-speed dispatch ship, the USS Dolphin were harbingers of a “New Navy”. In 1886 Congress recommended and authorized the construction of an “armored cruising and battle ship” which would become the USS Maine, the first of her kind for the U.S. Navy.
In August of 1888, construction of the Maine began at the New York Navy Yard in Brooklyn. Commissioned in 1895, and displacing 6,682 tons, she was armed with four 10in/30-caliber guns positioned in pairs in two turrets offset from the centerline, the forward turret to starboard, the rear turret to port and designed with a ram bow. Her secondary armament consisted of sixteen six-inch guns. Smaller arms, such as .45-70 Gatling Guns, and Hotchkiss 37mm rotary cannon provided close-in protection. Her triple expansion engines were the first of their kind employed on a U.S. ship, and she was wired for electrical lighting.
USS Maine
Holding with tradition preferred by Admiral David Dixon Porter, who ran the Navy for a period following the Civil War, Maine was originally designed with masts, spars, rigging and sails, to minimize the need for coal, but by the time of her commissioning, more modern minds prevailed.[6] Unfortunately for the Navy, naval and armor technology of the era progressed more quickly than Maine’s protracted construction; nine years on the ways meant that ships whose keels were laid at later dates were in service ahead of Maine, equipped with more up to date powerplants, guns, and armor. Maine was quickly relegated to being a second-rate battleship as she entered fleet service.
More importantly than the physical fleet itself was the institutional knowledge developed by forward thinkers in the Navy of the era. The establishment of a Torpedo School at Newport, Rhode Island, the establishment of the Office of Naval Intelligence, the founding of the United States Naval Institute and the opening of the Naval War College gave the Navy the competencies needed for strategic and tactical fleet thought. These institutions built on the education all Navy officers were receiving at the Naval Academy, providing for a fully professional officer class.
In 1898 Captain Charles Dwight Sigsbee, USN, commanded USS Maine. A crew of two hundred ninety sailors, thirty-nine Marines, twenty-five Navy officers and one Marine officer manned the ship. Born in Albany, New York, Sigsbee entered the United States Naval Academy in 1859, and graduated in 1863, when the academy was displaced from Annapolis to Newport, Rhode Island for the duration of the Civil War. During the last two years of the war, he served under both Admiral David Farragut, and David Dixon Porter, seeing action at Mobile Bay and at Fort Fisher.
Charles Sigsbee
Following the war, he was assigned as an instructor at USNA for two tours and served in both the U.S. Coast Survey Office and the U.S. Navy Hydrographic Office for nearly two decades. In April of 1897 he took command of the USS Maine, relieving his academy classmate, Captain Arent S. Crowninshield, USN.
The Marine Detachment aboard USS Maine was commanded by 1st Lt. Albertus W. Caitlin, USMC. Catlin, the son of a stonemason[7] from Gowanda, New York, followed the typical path for Marine officers commissioned in the 1880s and 1890s. He entered the United States Naval Academy in 1886 and graduated in 1890. Academy graduates electing to stay in the naval service after graduation were required to spend two years at sea as a midshipman, and Catlin spent his tour aboard the USS Charleston, one of the first cruisers built after the ABCD ships.
USS Charleston[8]
Catlin was commissioned in 1892 and trained with the second class to go through the School of Application at the Washington Barracks. This course prepared newly minted lieutenants in the ways of the Corps, providing them with the basics they would require leading Marines. Graduating at the head of his class, Catlin was promoted to 1stLieutenant, and transferred to the Marine Barracks at League Island, in Philadelphia. Two years later he joined USS Cincinnati cruising in the Caribbean, enforcing neutrality laws regarding the Cuban revolution and interdicting filibusters. When Catlin left Cincinnati for the brand-new Maine, he was relieved by Lieutenant John Archer Lejeune, USMC.
Albertus Catlin
1st Sergeant Henry Wagner, two sergeants, four corporals, a fifer, a drummer, and thirty privates were responsible for maintaining order aboard ship and manning several of the six inch secondary batteries.[9] Upon the discretion of the ship’s CO, the Marine Detachment would land alongside sailors equipped to act as infantry, “Blue Jackets”, to secure U.S. interests ashore. The Marines hailed from all over; they came from seven states in the U.S., two counties in Ireland, England, Germany, Russia, and Prince Edward Island in Canada.
The shipboard Marine’s duty uniform resembled today’s dress blues. Dark blue jacket, kersey blue trousers, which non-commissioned officers and officers adorned with a red stripe on the outer seam, and a blue kepi, or a blue barracks cover that had a short brim and low crown. For ceremonies, they were issued a tall black spiked helmet, with a white cotton cover for summer and tropical duty. Their web gear was black cotton web that faded to dark grey.
USS Maine Marine Detachment practicing skirmishers
Marines aboard Maine that January were armed with the M1895 Navy Lee, which replaced the Springfield Trapdoor two years prior. The Lee was a straight pull rifle, with a bolt that levered up and to the rear to reload from a five round internal magazine; alternately a Marine could load rounds singly. Spare rounds were carried in five round stripper clips found in pouches of two on the web belt, along with a long bayonet, plus a canteen and musette bag when in the field. Reportedly, Marines carried 180 rounds on their belts. The Lee’s 6mm round was a 112-grain (7.3 g) round-nose, copper-jacketed (FMJ) military load developing 2,560 feet per second in a rimless, smokeless powder design. The Navy Lee had a higher rate of fire than its predecessor and fit well into the Marine Corps’ burgeoning marksmanship training. Commandant Colonel Charles Heywood, USMC, was reluctant to adopt the weapon when it was available, only because he thought an ad hoc adoption would be detrimental to overall marksmanship training. Once sufficient weapons and ammunition were secured, the Marine Corps made a nearly complete transition to the Navy Lee.
Further exacerbating the friction between Spain and the U.S. was a letter written by the Spanish Ambassador Don Enrique Dupuy deLôme and intercepted by Cuban rebels and fed to the tabloid Hearst paper, the New York Journal. Tame by today’s standards, the missive insulted President McKinley as “weak and a bidder for the admiration of the crowd besides being a would-be politician who tries to leave a door open behind himself while keeping on good terms with the jingoes of his party.” The U.S. press, and public viewed this letter as the greatest insult to the president and the country.
So, by the time taps was sounded aboard the USS Maine on February 15, 1898, the die had been cast. Tensions between the U.S. and Spain had never been higher. The U.S. viewed Spain as a threat to business interests in Cuba, human rights, and potentially to the cities and harbors of the east coast. Cuba viewed the U.S. as a threat to its lucrative colony in Cuba, and holdings elsewhere.
Shortly after taps, as Captain Sigsbee and Lieutenant Catlin were in their respective quarters writing letters home, an explosion tore the USS Maine apart.
[1] Cuba was the largest exporter of sugar to the U.S., a mantel it had inherited when slaves in Haiti overthrew their French masters in 1804. The slave rebellion in Saint-Domingue (present day Haiti) shocked pro-slavery forces in the American south and led to bans on Haitian emigration and curtailment of trade with burgeoning republic.
[2] Hansen, Jonathan M. Guantanmo – An American History, Hill and Wang, New York. Kindle Edition.
[3] A not uncommon counter-insurgency tactic, remove the people from the land, reducing the confusion over who’s a combatant and who’s not. Used by British in South Africa, and the U.S. in Vietnam (see strategic hamlets).
[4] Report of the Secretary of the Navy, 1898.
[5] Wikipedia page, USS Maine.
[6] Herder, Brian Lane. US NAVY BATTLESHIPS 1886-98, The pre-dreadnoughts and monitors that fought the Spanish American War. New Vanguard 271. Kindle Edition.
[7] Shulimson, Jack. The Marine Corps Search for a Mission: 1880-1898. Kansas. 1993
[8] Charleston was a British design, that was the first major iron warship built in San Francisco. Despite not having a Panama Canal yet, the Navy still required ships for the Asiatic and Pacific fleets.
[9] Twenty-eight died in the explosion on 15FEB98.
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