IT ALL STARTED WITH USS MAINE

Students of American history will know just how significant the first USS Maine was in establishing the United States of America as a considerable world power at a time when imperialism was the mode of all powerful nations. A young nation, a century past from freeing itself from its colonial British ties, must have needed an opportunity to assert itself in global politics, and the USS Maine provided the perfect opportunity.

Her explosion that is. The annals of history has forever recorded the night of February 15, 1898 as the night the USS Maine sank just off the Havana harbor. Her sinking into the night triggered public outrage, fueled by the yellow journalism prevalent at that time, and set off the Spanish-American War.

Just why and how the USS Maine sank is a mystery that no one ever figured out. A number of investigating bodies have been commissioned by the United States government, and these investigating bodies have been successful not in solving the mystery but merely in offering clues on what might have triggered it.

It is without a doubt that the sinking of the USS Maine happened because five tons of powder charges for the ship’s guns were ignited, leading to the burning and the actual destruction of the forward third of the USS Maine. The question is, what triggered the ignition?

The popular theory back then, or at least the one sold to the public by the influential figures of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, was that the explosion was instigated by the Spaniards to deter the Americans from taking Cuba. The culprit was a mine. How the mine got there, no one could say for sure, even until now. Not even the investigations commissioned by the government back then could tell if it was really a mine and if the explosion happened within or outside the USS Maine.

In 1976, however, more than a decade after the sinking of the USS Maine, Admiral Hyman G. Rickover offered the explanation that fire within the coal bunker caused the magazines containing the powder charges for the ship’s guns to overheat. The overheating led to the explosion.

However the USS Maine sank is a mystery in the annals of history, and will probably remain so for all time. But the events that the explosion and sinking led to are certainly interesting events that shaped the fortune of the United States of America forever.

The sinking of the USS Maine triggered the Spanish-American War of 1898, a little “splendid” war that lasted a mere ten days. The war made the once-powerful Spain to bow to the young American nation and give up three of its colonies: Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippine Islands. The annexing of these territories paved the way for the United States’ entry as a mover and shaker in global politics, a precursor to its status as the single global superpower that it is today. Regardless of how the USS Maine went to her death, she died for a cause. The power wielded by the United States all started with the sinking of the USS Maine.

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