 J. Besanko, the Chief Operating Officer of the National Archives and Records Administration. On behalf of the National Archives, Arlington National Cemetery, and the Naval History and Heritage Command, I would like to welcome you to today's program on the sinking of the USS Maine. On the 125th anniversary of this event, it is important to reflect not only on the implications of this event on our history, but also the personal stories of those affected. My great-great-uncles, Martin Tuie and John Joseph Tuie, emigrated from Ireland and served in the United States Navy on the USS Maine. On February 15th, 1898, when the explosion occurred, Martin Tuie was aboard the ship as a coal passer. He perished by drowning in the explosion. I learned about Martin's story through the efforts of his mother Margaret, who wrote about him in support of her pension application to the United States government following his death. That pension file and many others are preserved at the National Archives. Margaret and her family were only one of the over 260 American families who lost loved ones on the Maine, and whose stories continue to echo through today. The sinking of the USS Maine was not only an event with implications on the global stage, it was a personal tragedy for each of those families. It is my honor to participate in the events commemorating the USS Maine, the lives lost and the impact of the singular tragedy on national and global history. This event, sponsored jointly by our three agencies, represents one of the many ways that we all preserve and make accessible the documentary history of our nation. I hope you enjoy the presentations by our expert speakers, and thank you for joining us today. Good afternoon, and thank you for listening in. I'm Dr. John Fahey, and on behalf of the United States Naval History and Heritage Command, I am honored to introduce the ship that we're all here to discuss. The USS Maine is one of the most remembered ships in US history. Unlike the Constitution, but monitor the enterprise though, it is not remembered for valiant wartime service, but rather for exploding in a foreign port and sparking a war. While we usually remember Maine due to this tragedy, it's a fascinating ship on its own merits. Today I'll discuss a bit of Maine's history before explaining why the ship went to Havana in January of 1898, and what it did there up until the night of 15 February. USS Maine was built at an interesting time. After the US Civil War, the Navy suffered under severe budget cuts that left with ancient wooden warships. In the 1880s though, Congress started funding the so-called New Steel Navy of cruisers and battleships. Maine and Texas, you could see Maine right there, the plan anyway. So Maine and Texas were the first US battleships built. Maine was bigger than Texas. So at the time, it was the largest warship ever built by the United States. By today's standard, the ship was fairly small, about 6,600 tons and 320 feet long. That's about two-thirds the size of a modern Arleigh Burke class destroyer. It had an eclectic assortment of weapons ranging from 10-inch cannons to Gatlin guns and an unusual lopsided arrangement that you can see on the gun plan there. Maine was laid down in 1888 and launched 18 November 1890. 20,000 people attended the launching ceremony, which you can see there, overseen by Secretary of the Navy Benjamin Tracy. His granddaughter, 12-year-old Alice Tracy Wilmerding, christened the ship Maine. Since the American industry is not fully ready to equip the battleship though, it took five years for US companies to produce the engines, armaments, and fittings for the ship. You can see the scale of it there to kind of see the problem, I guess. They were alone required three years due to the difficulties in procuring nickel and steel. Some of Maine's fittings were new technology and thus particularly hard to acquire. For example, the ship needed about 400 light fixtures. Just over a decade after Thomas Edison had built the first incandescent light bulbs. The Maine is a good representation of US industry and naval power in the early 1900s. The crew is likewise a good representation of US society at the time. Maine was commissioned on 17 September 1895 as a second class battleship, and then became the home of 31 officers and 346 sailors and marines, although that number does fluctuate over the years. The crew was recruited from across the United States and the world. Almost a quarter were born outside the country, a marker of the heavy pace of immigration around the turn of the century. Maine had multiple crewmen from Ireland, Sweden, Germany, Japan, Norway, Denmark, Canada, England, France, and Greece, and other crewmen from other countries. Thirty crewmen were African-Americans. The officers were an interesting mix of the contemporary US Navy. Maine's first captain, Art S. Cronenshield, was a New Yorker and a veteran of the Civil War as was the ship's second captain, Charles Sigsby. The first executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Adolf Merricks, was the first Jewish graduate of the Naval Academy, and Chaplain John P. Chidwick was one of the first Roman chaplain in the Navy. Life on Maine was a lot like life on any Navy ship, with endless watch, drill, and training. The ship itself spent its relatively short career heading up and down the East Coast, getting repaired, refueling, and training naval militiamen. One story may resonate with today's sailors or anyone who's met a sailor. In November of 1895, Maine was sent to the state of Maine to meet with Governor Henry B. Cleves. Traditionally, ships were given a punchbowl by their namesake, but since Maine was a prohibition state at the time, Governor Cleves presented the ship with a set of silver vegetable dishes and a large soup of tory, as you can see here. Chaplain Chidwick recalls later that from then on, Maine, quote, provided for our guests a board ship, a peculiar quality of soup, which had neither vegetables nor meat as component parts. It was exceedingly cheerful in spirit and seemed to be the constant center of attraction to the guests who favored us by their presence. Maine's officers and men held parties, visited New Orleans from Artigraha, and fulfilled their Navy duties. Maine also had some close calls, like the time that three men were washed overboard and lost in a storm off South Carolina, or the time that Captain Sixby rammed a pier in New York Harbor to avoid sinking a ferry full of tourists. All in all, the ship would have had a fairly typical career in the new and expanding American Navy if it wasn't for the Cuban insurrection. Throughout much of the 19th century, Spain had fought a brutal counterinsurgency against Cuban revolutionaries seeking independence. American newspapers and the public became increasingly worried about Spanish abuses of Cuban civilians, particularly as Cuba was governed by General Whaler from 1896 to 1897. Nicknamed the Butcher by the American press, Whaler instituted a policy of reconstitucion, or forcing civilians out of the countryside to live in camps controlled by Spanish forces. Reconstitucion decimated Cuba, killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, failed to end the insurgency, and inspired the use of similar concentration camps across the world. The US government struggled to know how to deal with the humanitarian and diplomatic complexities of this situation. Now, Whaler was recalled in October of 1897 by a new liberal government in Spain, which also granted Cuba a degree of autonomy and a new governor. While these changes were an improvement, Cuba was still unstable, and US-Spanish relations remained strained. Maine was ordered in October of 1897 to be ready to intervene or assist American citizens in interest on the island as decided by President William McKinley. After a few scares, the ship was ordered to make a friendly port visit in January 1898 to Havana. Maine arrived in Cuba on 25 January. Despite some anti-Spanish feelings on board, no member of the crew reported any significant anti-American demonstration while Maine was in Havana. Once anchored at buoy number four, which you can see here to the left of the city by the little x there, Captain Sigurdid went ashore to visit local officials. He also ordered the crew to remain vigilant, allowed no shore leave, and took extra precautions against sabotage. A few sailors went ashore to buy supplies, and officers made social visits to the city where they watched a bullfight and met victims of Spain's reconcentration policy. Over the next few weeks, as officers visited Havana and locals visited the Maine, U.S.-Spanish relations improved in some ways. According to President McKinley, Maine's visit was a success, creating, quote, a feeling of relief and confidence following the resumption of the long-interrupted friendly intercourse. Towards mid-February, the crew began to look forward to revisiting New Orleans for Mardi Gras. They would not get the chance. Nathaniel Patch of the National Archives will take this story from here. Thank you for your time. Good afternoon. My name is Nathaniel Patch. I am the U.S. Navy Marine Corps and Coast Guard subject matter expert for the National Archives in College Park. The story of the Maine continues. On the evening of February 15, 1898, started out as a quiet night with most of the enlisted crew in their hammocks and the night watch milling about on deck. The column was broken by thunderous explosion as the USS Maine ripped apart from the forward section out. The upper decks folded back on it and the bow came to settle in the harbor. As a surviving crew took stock of their situation, getting the lifeboats ready and hopefully preparing to fight the fire, they noticed the debris and the flotsam and jotsam in the harbor and took notice of the white shirts of the wounded, dead and drowning sailors. As the realization of the explosion was settling in, neighboring ships like the City of Washington and the Spanish cruiser Alphonse the 12th sprang to life to help with the rescue. In the end, 266 out of the 354 officers and sailors perished that night. The Secretary of the Navy, John Long, immediately called for a Corps of Inquiry. The head of this court was Captain William T. Samson. He and his investigators interviewed surviving crew members and officers and those who were at the harbor and observed the explosion as well as taking into account the physical remnants of the Maine itself. They came to the conclusion that the Maine was blown up by a mine placed by people unknown primarily because of a piece of keel at the 18th frame that was bent upwards as being the epicenter of the explosion. As the Samson board was conducting their investigation, the Spanish were conducting theirs. Their conclusions were that the Maine had exploded from the inside because there was no geyser caused by a mine. There are no dead fish in the harbor, which would have been killed by the shockwave. And they also concluded that no person could have placed a mine large enough to sink the Maine without anybody noticing. But in the United States, the yellow journalists had already been fending the flames towards war and the sinking of the Maine and the return of the remains of the sailor. Sailors only fend the flames higher. There was a huge public outcry of free member of the Maine and the papers were now pushing for even stronger for the independence and autonomy of Cuba and the removal of Spain from the Caribbean. The call for war reached a fever pitch between the yellow journalism and the indecisive Samson report. President McKinley found himself in a very precarious position under pressure from Congress and the American public to intervene in Cuba. In April 1898, there was a quick cascade into war from McKinley's ultimatum on April 20th to the Spanish severing diplomatic ties on April 21st. And then eventually declaring war as the United States began their blockade of Cuba. The Spanish-American war lasted 110 days, ending on August 13th. And with the Treaty of Paris signed in December. The sinking of the Maine and the loss of life has cemented itself as being the cause of the Spanish-American war much in the same way that Pearl Harbor is to World War II and the Tonkin Gulf is to Vietnam. In 1911, there was a call for the salvage of the Maine from Havana Harbor. Primarily to get the remains of the few sailors that were still trapped in the hull and to finally get a definitive answer as to what sank the Maine. The US Army Corps of Engineers built a cofferdam around the Maine and they were able to inspect the wreckage. The members of the Bureau of Construction and Repair, like William Ferguson, were able to take extensive photographs of the wreck. But in the end, the investigation came to the same conclusion as the Samson Board, which that an external mine was used to blow up the Maine, again by persons unknown. In 1974, an article about the sinking of the Maine caught the attention of Admiral Hyman Rickover of the Navy's Nuclear Propulsion Division. He and his researchers from the Naval Seasystems Command researched historical records, including Ferguson's photographs. The researchers had extensive knowledge of war damage, particularly from mines and torpedoes from two world wars, and they could quickly assess that the wreckage of the Maine was caused by an internal explosion rather than an external one caused by a mine. They concluded that it was as a result of a coal bunker fire lighting off the nearby magazine sharing the same bulkhead. The legacy of the Maine is that it was an accidental opportunity during a time of a tense situation in Cuba that ignited the Spanish-American War, ushering in the United States as a global power in the 20th century. Hello, my name is Steve Carney and I'm the Command Historian at Arlington National Cemetery. I'm standing in front of Section 24 where 230 crew members who were killed during the explosion of the USS Maine are buried. Today I'm going to talk briefly about the cemetery response to the Maine's explosion and how and why these crew members are buried at Arlington National Cemetery. In the aftermath of the Maine's explosion, due to Spanish policy, burials had to be made within 24 hours. Therefore the initial crew that were recovered in the aftermath of the disaster were quickly buried at the Cologne Cemetery in Havana. Here we see images of several crew members from the initial recovery efforts lying in state at the City Hall in Havana and in the second image we see the funeral procession through the town on the way to Cologne Cemetery on February 17th of 1898. During the remainder of the month of February a total of 166 crew member remains were located and interred at the Cologne Cemetery. This photo taken later in 1898 shows the burial plot for the Maine crew. The cascaded remains were buried in several grave sites around this cross which read victims of the Maine. Beginning in March additional remains that were recovered were sent to Key West Florida rather than being interred in Havana. Captain Charles Sigsby had complained earlier to the American Secretary of the Navy about the treatment of American remains that were recovered in mid February but he did not have the resources to move those remains to the U.S. for burial. As a result however by March any additional remains that were located were sent for burial at the Key West Cemetery. This film shows the funeral procession and Navy escort of nine crew members through the town of Key West on March 27th. All of the remains recovered after the end of February of 1898 were interred at the Key West Cemetery. However all operations or searches for additional crew members remains were suspended at the beginning of April. In total 24 crew members were recovered in March of 1898 and were buried at Key West. In the cemetery two of those 24 were known and are buried in individual grave sites. The remainder were all unknown. In these photos we see one of the early burials at the cemetery and what the plot ended up looking like in about 1901 which included all of the grave sites as well as a memorial that was erected in honor of the Maine victims. After the peace treaty with Spain went into effect on April 11th 1899 the United States government began to repatriate service members who fell overseas during the conflict to the United States at the government's expense at no cost to the families. One of the reasons for this is another piece of Spanish policy was that no disinterference could be made for a certain number of years after a burial. So now that Spain no longer administered Cuba or the Philippines that was no longer a concern. One of the early repatriations that occurred was of the original 166 crew members who had been interred in the clone cemetery during February of 1898. In total 165 of those 166 crew members were brought to Arlington National Cemetery for burial on December 28th of 1899 in what we at the time was called the Maine section but of course today we call section 24. Disinterments were completed in the clone cemetery on December 17th of 1899 and the 151 caskets that were disinterred were sent towards Arlington. They arrived on December 27th and were guarded overnight while the funeral service and burials were conducted then on December 28th. This is an image of our December 1899 monthly report on burials at ANC and you can see that in total 165 Maine victims were buried here that month. 63 were known and 102 were unknown. Of note it's also interesting to see that at the time there were 17,720 individuals interred at the cemetery. In order to commemorate the establishment of the Maine section and the 165 crew members that were interred there an early memorial comprised of an anchor and two captured Spanish mortars was dedicated. During the late 19th and early 20th century it was very common at ANC for a memorial to be dedicated when a new burial section was created. That however is not the end of the story of the burials at ANC. During the salvage operations of the Maine which we'll hear about in a later presentation the remains of an additional 65 crew members were recovered throughout 1911 and were kept under American guard at the fortress of La Cabana in Havana. After making preparations the cascaded remains were brought to the pier in Havana on March 16th of 1912 and were sent to the Washington Navy yard where they arrived on March 23rd of 1912. Here we see images of the procession of the cascaded remains to the pier in Havana and then the disembarking off of the USS Birmingham at the Washington Navy yard. After arriving at the Navy yard a funeral procession snaked through Washington DC and ultimately to ANC. Along the way a funeral service was held near the state war and Navy department building which today is the site of the Eisenhower executive office building. After arriving at ANC the final 65 service members of the Maine's crew were laid to rest and joined their 165 shipmates who had been buried in 1899. In this photo we see the preparation of those grave sites in section 24 and here is a modern view of section 24 today with all 230 crew members interred there. This daily burial log from ANC on March 23rd of 1912 shows the burial of the 65 remains in a total of 34 cascades. Arlington offers a unique perspective on the Spanish-American War. There really are no other sites in the United States that tell as comprehensive of a story as we do here. Not only are the USS Maine crew members interred here but also soldiers, sailors, marines and nurses from the conflict are buried nearby. In addition to those grave sites we also are a major site of commemoration and memorialization of the war. We have five individual memorials here dedicated to the conflict. Two to the USS Maine, one to the war itself, one to the Rough Riders and one to the Spanish-American War nurses. You can learn about all these connections between ANC and the conflict through our education program which is available at education.arlingtoncemetery.mil. Hello ladies and gentlemen my name is Lynn Rowe. I am a reference archivist with the Old Navy Maritime Team at the National Archives at Washington DC. Today I will be talking to you about the sinking of the USS Maine records at the National Archives in Washington DC and providing you with just a few examples of the records we house here at our research facility. Overall our records consist of documents relating to the USS Maine and its design, the events before and after the explosion, the recovery efforts for both men and ship, the Navy's investigation of the incident and records relating to the implementation of memorials. Our first set of examples can be found in record group 24 records of the Bureau of Naval Personnel. In entry 118 law books of US Navy ships we see records which can provide researchers with the logistical day-to-day operation of a ship. Records are arranged alphabetically according to ship's name, home number, or station in there under chronologically. While law books of the USS Maine stop at the end of 1897 researchers can instead look at the records of vessels used during the rescue recovery and salvage of the USS Maine. Entry 98 correspondence relating to naval personnel listed in the sinking of the Maine records are arranged alphabetically by person's name. Within the series there are folders for individual men who are lost during the explosion. These folders hold letters of condolences and offers a relief money to surviving family members. There is information relating to next of kin and letters from family members thanking relief societies. These letters often provide descriptions of family relationship in their hardships following the Maine's explosion. Researchers will also find many family letters to and from foreign countries. Entry 88 and 89 general correspondence these records are arranged chronologically in there under by file number. As you can see these two series will overlap in dates. Both files relate to casualty lists, requests for such lists, memorials, services, plaques, monuments, and awards. Next we have record group 45 naval records collections of the office of naval records and libraries. Entry 502 subject files are among the most utilized and accessible records relating to old navy records here in DC. These records are arranged by subject based on an alphabetical classification scheme developed by the office of naval records and libraries. Examples are included in this slide. Entry 60 cipher messages received and translated are arranged chronologically. The majority of messages were sent by officers in command of squadrons and or vessels stationed in the South Atlantic Caribbean and Pacific stadiums. Most of the messages were received directly by the secretary's office and other records were received by the Bureau of Navigation and forwarded to the secretary. Entry 517 area file of the naval records collection are arranged by geographical area in there under chronologically. Records have been reformatted in microfilm publication M625. These records consist of letters, telegrams, radio messages and maps removed or copied from the office of secretary of the navy bureau of navigation, office of naval intelligence and other naval departments. Next we have record group 125 records of the navy judge advocate general. Entry 30 records of the proceedings of court of inquiry, board of investigation, and board of inquest. Records are arranged by case file number. The USS main case file number 4950 takes up two boxes. The first box has records relating to the testimonial of survivors, witnesses, and those who assisted with the recovery of the ship. The second part of the box consists of conclusions of the investigation. The second box has photos of the vessels remains an example of one of the photos is included in this slide. As we mentioned before these were just a few examples of the records relating to the USS main. Here are some additional record groups that also relate to the ship and its and its explosion. For more information relating to our records researchers can contact us at archivesonereferenceatnara.gov. This concludes my presentation. Thank you for your time and your attention. Hello my name is David line Bart. I work in research services at the national archives. It gives me great pleasure to talk to you about department of state records relating to the USS main. The records on the main fall into three different iterations of the department central files from the late 19th century to the 1930s. Next slide please. One of those covers the years 1783 to 1906. In 1898 because Cuba was a colony of Spain the highest ranking American there was consul general Fichu Lee in Havana. Lee was the nephew of Robert E. Lee and a former Confederate general himself. Among Lee's dispatches or reports from Havana we find his account of the explosion and immediate follow-up. Those begin with his telegram announcing the explosion and subsequent reports deal with the recovery and burial of the bodies and initial planning on how to deal with the wreckage. His reporting ends fairly soon as the consulate general closed with the advent of war with Spain. Upon his return to the United States Lee became one of four former Confederate generals who became major generals of U.S. volunteers during the war although he saw no action himself. In other series of records from this time period are the messages of condolence from other countries. Those messages were transmitted to the U.S. either through American diplomatic and consular officials or by foreign diplomatic officials in the United States. Next slide please. The records of the main continue in the department's numerical file which dates from the years 1906 to 1910. Within that large set of records file 11893 deals with the subject of the wrecks of the Spanish warships on the Cuban coast and the USS Maine. Among the issues discussed in the file are what to do with the wrecks and who owns them. Next slide please. The department state adopted a new filing system in 1910 the central decimal file. Within those records there are two different files on the subject of the Maine. One file 811.304 M28 is the continuation of numerical file 11893 in the later period. A second altogether new file 837.413 M28 is about the USS Maine memorial in Cuba. In later years that file includes documentation on the annual ceremonies commemorating the sinking. Next slide please. Some of the records I've discussed are available online. All of the central file records dating to 1906 can be viewed through various series in the National Archives catalog. This includes lease dispatches and the condolence messages as well as the extensive diplomatic record relating to the Spanish-American war. Numerical file 11893 is online too. Sadly the central decimal file records on the Maine are not available online. The series of foreign relations in the United States the official documentary history of U.S. foreign policy prepared and issued by the department state includes a selection of documents from all three time periods and is available online. URLs for the online resources and foreign relations are noted on this slide. I hope you found this information useful. Thank you for your attention. Hello my name is Ivor Moloma. I work as an underwater archaeologist at the underwater archaeology branch of the naval history heritage command. Today I'm talking about the ultimate fate of the Maine. So we're going to cover its sinking. So I'm going to be talking about its recovery efforts where it ultimately ended up and some of the memorialization that happened after it was raised. So just a quick timeline as we've already covered the Maine sank in on the 15th of February 1898. On the 10th of December 1898 the Spanish American War ends and the Maine remains in Benna Harbor. It wasn't until the 9th of May 1910 that U.S. Congress authorized funds totaling at the time about 650,000 dollars in total for the recovery of Maine. In June the cofferdam was completed and then finally in March of 1912 the Maine was resunk and it was ultimately rediscovered about 88 years later. So as part of the recovery efforts it remained in Benna Harbor after the 1898 war. It was a clear shipping hazard. There was risk of shoaling because sand and silt and other sediments were collecting on the wreck and it would create a shoal that would inhibit shipping in the harbor. It was also protruding above the water so ships couldn't simply sail over it for risk of damaging their hulls. And then finally Congress was under pressure from a number of patriotic groups including veterans of the war and other groups and interested parties to raise the Maine for the collection of souvenirs. This also went hand in hand with the hopeful recovery of about 70 bodies that still remained on board the Maine that had not been recovered after its initial sinking. So finally on the 13th of October 1911 following a long logistical process of getting equipment down to Havana, renting equipment on boats from the Cuba government, the copper dam was started. On the 7th of June it was completed. You can see here at the bottom picture that shows a picture probably around July or August of the copper dam pictures. You see the kind of cylinders that I'll talk about a little bit later but note the boats and the pumping stations kind of surrounding the copper dam that were all essential to completing this project. For those that don't know a copper dam is essentially you build a dam in the middle of some water and then pump it out so that the dam keeps the water out and you can remove the water from within the dam. As you can see that's what's happening here that allows then essentially terrestrial or land access to the shipwreck itself on the bottom. So that's what's happening here. Finally in 1911 after a lot of effort the stern section which was the most intact of the main is refloated. This involved the creation of a concrete and wooden plug effectively which helped to reseal the main. As a fun side note the engines on board the main despite having been underwater for almost 14 years at that point fired up again and they were able to use it to transport the main and drain some of the last remaining water out of the main. So I'm sure the manufacturer was thrilled to hear that at the time. Now as a final note on this slide the picture in the top right hand side here is what the main looked like following the war in 1898. As you can see it's a clear shipping hazard it sticks out there's we have documents here of letters to US Navy personnel requesting permission to dynamite the remains of the main as soon as almost November 1898. So at that point they were already thinking about clearing the harbor and clearing the debris out of the way. At that point the Navy said no for the clear reason that there is still UXO on board and if dynamite is applied we don't know what's going to happen there. And then finally the the ultimate reason as well was that there was still remains of sailors on board that they didn't want to disturb in that way. So quick note on the cofferdam you see two images here on the left hand side this one's a little bit later so the previous image was in in August this is probably a little later say in late August or early September judging by the water level you can see some of the remains of the main getting exposed in the fore and middle ground of the photo. Again note that there's cranes and other boats surrounding the cofferdam to assist in this project but the cofferdam itself as you can kind of tell here was constructed of 20 steel cylinders that were sunk about 38 feet into the harbor which meant that they sat in or on top of the harbor bottom they're each 50 feet wide and they would be filled with gravel and clay. That in itself delayed the construction of the cofferdam as it was thought that they could simply pull up clay and gravel and sediment from the bottom of Havana Harbor and fill the cylinders with that material. Unfortunately that proved too much for the pumping equipment at the time and replacement pumps would have cost $1,800 a day to be rented which was a prohibitive cost so they ended up pumping it in a different way but simply filling it with clay that came in through lump so it took much longer to fill the drums and then much slower to fill the or empty the cofferdam of water afterwards as well. Ultimately as the water level inside the dam decreases the water pressure on the outside of the drums increases it was calculated at the time that there was probably about 4,000 pounds of water pressure per drum being enacted on there as the water level was decreased to the 38 feet below. They would have stopped at about five feet below the sea level there to check for any leaks none were found at the time or no serious leaks were found at the time so they were able to patch anything but when they resumed pumping the increased pressure as they lowered the water inside increased to such a degree that significant leaking occurred and they had to slowly pump the water away at a rate of less than one foot per hour with frequent stops to patch leaks and reinforce the material. As the water got even lower it was realized that extra bracing in this case it would have been wooden bracing was required to keep the steel drums in place and from collapsing on each other so they would have put wooden beams in between some of the steel drums to add that extra bracing to counter the increasing water pressure. At that point it was thought that they might not be able to recover the wreckage and the wreckage was examined in that 1911 examination that was already covered earlier. It should also be noted that this was an Army Corps of Engineers project with Navy assistance so several Navy engineers were involved with it. The investigation did also involve ship architects hired or selected by the Navy to have a good view of the wreckage and come to the best possible conclusion. The picture on the bottom here is near the completion of the draining of the copper dam and it shows the starboard side of the main which is its most intact. You can tell that it's still fairly intact here it's probably towards the stern section where you can see two sailors in the middle of the photo and then towards the bottom right of the photo simply standing on the wreckage showing that there is still a fair amount of structural integrity in that part of the wreck. However as you would have moved forward to the bow that wreckage would not have been structurally integral and that was actually cut away using porches by the Army Corps of Engineers team. Finally it is raised in October of 1911 and it is decided that it needs to be re-sunk or re-deposited somewhere else. This occurs ultimately on the 12th of March 1912 when the main was raised using the pumps that were on board. It was also plugged and prepared for sinking in various ways. One of those was actually they had to cut away parts of the hull structure to counter the pressure of suction from the mud of the bottom and those hulls were then plugged with wooden plugs which they then removed to re-sink or re-deposit the main later. So on the 12th of March the main was pulled out of Havana Harbor. They were hoping to pull it out a little bit further but being as they are pulling a literal wreck that is counterbalanced in various ways it was tough going and at four miles they decided to sink it there. It was escorted by the US Navy ships North Carolina and Birmingham which provided a 21 gun salute as the main sunk to the bottom of Cuban waters. At the time it was sunk in what was measured to be 100 fathoms or between 3,600 and 3,700 feet of sea water so well out of the way of any potential navigational hazards for the time. The picture on the right here shows the last image of the main with an ensign flying as it is re-sunk about four miles from Havana. It is then ultimately rediscovered in October of 2000 by a team from the University of South Florida that partnered with an underwater exploration team, ABC, and partnered with the Cuban government to test some underwater exploration equipment. As they were scanning the seafloor they ran across the main which was unmistakable due to its clear signal or clear structure. It would literally look like a ship that had been caught off which was the case here. It also had a debris field of coal and then associated boiler with it and at that point it was actually discovered about a mile east of where it was originally sunk. So the theory is that it was sunk in the correct position but in that 3,700 feet of seawater it could have drifted significantly and ultimately been deposited about a mile away from its original sinking location. So we already spoke a little bit about the motivations for the recovery of the main which included the shipping hazard and the recovery of the 70 bodies on board which were all recovered. Only one was identified, the rest were then buried in Arlington. But another motivation to raise the main was for patriotic groups to acquire souvenirs. Now this isn't a practice we really do anymore but it was widespread and prevalent at the time to have souvenirs like this. You can see two here that are examples of what we have from the USS Main in the Washington Navy Yard. It's on the left here is the cover of a capstan that is located in the rare book room of the library and on the right here is a spare propeller blade from the USS Main on display in the gun yard that we have here at the Washington Navy Yard. Two of the other notable examples for memorialization of the main are the four mast that sits in the US Naval Academy in Annapolis which is pictured on the left here and the main mast of the main that is pictured on the right here which is located at the main monument in Arlington. So those are two of the principal ones. Other examples include several six pounder guns that were recovered. One sits in Bangor Main at a monument, another sits in New York, somewhere in the state as a monument and several others are spread out as well. Some souvenirs were recovered, some shells are documented to have been recovered and become part of memorials around the country. A museum in Maine actually has a porthole cover along with several other artifacts from the ship and then ultimately some bronze plaques were also printed by the Navy independently to confirm that some of these items or memorials were of and for the Maine and those became part of that kind of memorialization effort as well. So you can see here they're in fairly good shape they've been maintained fairly well but these masks and everything is what is left of the Maine ultimately and is where you could visit a piece of history so choose. Thank you to all of our speakers and thank you for joining us for today's presentation on the documentary history related to the USS Maine jointly sponsored by Arlington National Cemetery, the National Archives and Records Administration and the US Naval History and Heritage Command. We will now move on to the question and answer portion of today's event. I'm Megan Guthorn and I will serve as your moderator today. If you have a question for our speakers please add it to the chat box. We will start with a question for Nate. Was the USS Maine the first all-steel warship in the US Navy to be sunk in such a violent manner? I think so. There doesn't seem to be any predecessor certainly during the American Civil War there were any number of monitors and iron clad ships that were destroyed but they were not totally made from metal and they were not certainly built and constructed in the same way that the Maine and the Texas were so this was an unusual event and we would not have any basis of comparison until the First World War. Thank you. I think the next question is for John. Could you tell us a little bit about what else is happening to commemorate the Maine today? Of course, I'm glad to. Thank you for the question. So the biggest single event that's going on is well it's already happened. It took place at the Maine Memorial Mast in Arlington and I think Dr. Kearney showed us some nice pictures of that. This morning Rear Admiral Cox of the Naval History and Heritage Command and Mr. Boskamp Bosenko of the National Archives as well as a band and some other guests later Reef gave a speech as well at that. So that was the main thing. The other thing is Naval History and Heritage Command we have published a number of articles on our blog The Sextant on causes of the Maine's explosion and some of the people killed and then we also have done a update to the the dictionary of American fighting ships. This is a resource that the Navy History Command has online to look for danfs or dictionary of American fighting ships and that gives official ship histories of all ships in Lacy. Our one of the Maine was quite old so we've expanded that out to be a lot longer and more helpful to modern researchers. So that's the main things. Thanks. Steve, did you want to elaborate on anything else that the cemetery is involved in? Sure, thanks Meg. First on behalf of our executive director at the office of Army Cemetery and Army National Military Cemetery Miss Karen Durham Aguilera as well as our superintendent Mr. Ray Alexander. We thank everybody for joining us today for this webinar. The one piece that Arlington is going to really continue to do throughout this 125th anniversary of the Spanish-American War is we have a really outstanding education module that's focused on the conflict. So certainly I would encourage anyone who is interested in in employing those kinds of materials in a classroom you know as an educator for for students or for student projects or just someone who's interested in in visiting the cemetery either in person or virtually to take a look at those materials as well as the related walking tours because they they all really are focused on on this 125th anniversary of of the conflict and the Maine's destruction. Thank you. I think the next one is probably also best answered by John. John was the USS Maine built to fight and how did it compare to vessels of possible opponents including those from Latin American navies? Yeah, good question. So I think as I mentioned in my talk this is a time of transition and a time of kind of expansion for the US Navy. When the Maine is launched everything else well when Maine and Texas are launched everything else the Navy is you know cruisers or smaller ships. In fact the first steel ships the Navy launched or only launched a couple of years before the the Maine they're the the so-called ABCD cruiser named Atlanta Boston and Chicago I think. Anyway so Maine though is different it is armored it is slower has larger guns so you know it absolutely is intended as a as a warship. It is particularly so because it is built in large part as a response to I don't speak Portuguese so sorry I apologize if that's the Rochello I think which is a Brazilian warship built in the United Kingdom but bought by and then deployed by the Great Britain. In fact when Rochello is bought which I believe is in 1883 sailors the US sailors at the time realized you know if the entire US Navy went against the Rochello we'd all be killed we'd all die from this thing. So the Maine is definitely a response that actually there are a lot of the design of the Maine is similar to that ship as well. Now as far as comparisons to when the ship is actually done it takes forever to make for Maine to be completed so much so that by the time the Maine is actually commissioned we have the Indiana class in the United States Navy that is close to that is getting close to being done it's definitely in the yards by that point. Maine's about 6,000 tons, Indiana's over 10,000, they're the much larger things and so even by the American Navy Maine's almost obsolete by the time it's launched not quite but it's getting there. Also that's also true for the British Navy the British Navy of course is the golden standard at the time the Maine was launched from the from the same time as the Centurion and renowned classes both of which are getting on towards like 11,000 tons larger guns faster better armor so even with Maine is designed as a fighting ship it's likely opponents would have been considerably more powerful as that so actually that's why Maine is designated a second class battleship rather than a true first class one that's supposed to go against the real battleships there. Thanks John. I think the next one I'm going to pass around several of you and we'll start with Nate. Nate can you share what your favorite book on the USS Maine and the Spanish-American War is? Well the one that I like is by David Trask which is called The War with Spain. It's a very detailed book on the causes of the Spanish-American War as well as the actual war itself. David Trask is a naval historian and he's written one other major work on World War I so. Thanks Steve same question. So I would say that unfortunately you know there there really isn't a definitive work certainly on the the USS Maine so I certainly would be an advocate for it's a good line of future research I think there's a a lot of gaps holes to be filled in. John your thoughts? Yeah I would absolutely agree with Dr. Carney here that the definitive work on Maine is yet to be written. Said Admiral Rickover's book that discusses the true cause of the destruction written in the 70s and it's got a solid you know 60 page something like that history of the Maine and then a good analysis of destruction. Also um oh what's his name sorry um it blows ship a ship to remember um no sorry Edward Weems excuse me the fate of the Maine uh it's published in the 50s but he's a solid historian and and actually uses good sources. There's been a number of kind of more popular histories in recent years that aren't spectacular um so yeah I would go with Weems as far as an actual academic one although again it is dated or or Rickover as far as the Spanish-American War um Ivan Musican's book Empire by Default is the best one I've found it's quite good. Thanks um actually I have a related question about this for Lynn um Lynn can you speak to what records we have at the National Archives in DC relating to the Maine board um I believe that's referenced in Rickover's book um how the battleship Maine was destroyed. Oh yes um there was reference to the Maine board um during the ship's recovery the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was called in to assist with the racing of the vessel. The board refers to a group of officers appointed by Brigadier General William Bixby. Um the records for those will be found in record group 77 records of the office of the chief engineer um and there are two boxes in entry 103 um that speaks about the recovery of the vessel the discoveries of the bodies um so that would be the main series I would recommend. There is also which is not necessarily referring to Rickover's um board but there is also the board of inspections and surveys which also covers um a good portion of the recovery and that can also be found in entry 242 um in record groups 38. Fantastic I hope folks have an opportunity to check those out um so the next question I'm not sure who to toss to but I'm going to guess either Steve or John um so the question is can the USS Olympia still on display be considered a sister ship of the USS Maine? Steve's shaking his head no so so Olympia is is not a sister ship of the Maine so obviously they're built within a couple years of each other um Olympia is a cruiser and so it's um it's not nearly as armored um I think it's actually I think it's about the same size maybe a little bigger actually um you know it's it's a cruiser rather than a battleship um so faster, longer, less armor that's that's it so sorry. No that's great and while I have you um do you know the answer who was the manufacturer of the engines and who retired after almost 14 years that retired after almost 14 years? So first up the answer is on the Dan F's the Diction of American Fighting Ships uh website webpage so you can look it up there but no it is um NF Palmer Junior and Company so those are uh triple expansion engines that and that relates kind of how the heat uh that refers to how the heat kind of turns the turbines there are multiple kind of turbines that goes as the the steam goes out or whatever uh I'm not an engineer I'm a historian but um so it's uh engines of navy design built by NF Palmer and Company in the Quin yard ironworks in New York so near built navy designed and at the time they're capable of about 9000 horsepower uh there so that's that's what I know. Great thanks John um it does look like we're coming up at the end of our time today so I want to thank everybody um both our panelists and everybody who's joined us for this virtual presentation on behalf of the panel Arlington National Cemetery the National Archives and Records Administration and the U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command we appreciate your interest in America's documentary history and we hope you enjoy it you join us again thank you and have a wonderful afternoon.