The Roughest Riders (5 page)

The
Maine
measured 324 feet and 4 inches in length. It had a beam of 57 feet, a draft of 22 feet, 6 inches, and was divided into 214 watertight compartments. It displaced 6,650 tons of water and was propelled by twin screws that generated a horsepower of more than 9,000, with a maximum speed of 17 knots. The vessel was fitted out with a ramming bow, giving it the appearance of a gargantuan
waterborne battering ram. It was also designed for effective naval combat; two main winged or “sponsoned” gun turrets containing four ten-inch guns pointed menacingly over the sides, with the ability to fire fore and aft in any kind of ship-to-ship confrontation. Six six-inch guns, seven rapid-fire six-pounders, and torpedoes that could be launched through four tubes fleshed out the ship's military might. Spain cast a wary eye on the US battleship but took no action to expel it from Havana Harbor.

And then the ship exploded, prompting the US government to establish a naval court of inquiry to investigate the incident on February 17. The delegation, headed by Captain William T. Sampson of
the battleship
Iowa
, traveled to Havana to determine exactly what had happened. Sampson and his team began their investigation on February 21. The inquiry dragged on for more than four long weeks, with the investigation hampered by the absence of any floating debris. The entire wreck lay submerged at the bottom of the harbor, preventing close and detailed examination. The board concluded that the
Maine
had been sunk by an external device, most likely a mine floating in the water. The team returned to the States without fixing the blame directly on Spain, but the American public was not satisfied by such an ambiguous outcome. Spain, many decided, was guilty by implication if not by actual fact. War fever mounted, and the drums of impending war grew louder in the distance, fanned by newspapers demanding that Spain be held accountable, even without definitive proof.

The explosion aboard the USS
Maine
on February 15, 1898, obliterated the first third of the ship, where most of the men were sleeping or resting, and the remaining wreckage quickly sank to the bottom of the harbor. Two hundred and fifty-three men were killed instantly.

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (LC-DIG-det-4a14340)

The
New York Journal
, owned by William Randolph Hearst, offered a $50,000 reward for “the conviction of the criminals who sent 258 American sailors to their deaths.” That figure was revised later. Joseph Pulitzer's
New York World
was not quite as shrill yet also insisted that a Spanish mine had caused the destruction. Privately, however, Pulitzer admitted that “nobody outside a lunatic asylum” really believed Spain would trigger such an event. The
Chicago Tribune
took a different tack, opining that “the people want no disgraceful negotiations with Spain” and that “should the president plunge his administration into that morass, he and his party would be swept out of power in 1900 by a fine burst of popular indignation. An administration which stains the national honor will never be forgiven.”

President McKinley wavered briefly, still hoping for a diplomatic solution, but the pressure proved impossible to ignore. He had already been labeled as “weak, and catering to the rabble, and, besides, a low politician,” by the Spanish minister in Washington, Dupuy de Lôme, in a letter de Lôme wrote to an editor in Madrid.
McKinley was still seething because of the attack on his character, and on April 21 he accelerated military preparations and imposed a naval blockade of Cuba. At the same time, he ordered Spain to withdraw from Cuba immediately. The Spanish, who had denied all along any involvement in the incident, were incensed. Their own position hardened. They declared war on the United States two days later. On April 25, McKinley issued his first call for 125,000 volunteers, along with a war appropriations bill, which sailed through Congress without a single dissenting vote.

A second board of inquiry conducted in 1911 proved more detailed, but no more decisive. When Congress approved funds to salvage the wreckage, US army engineers built a cofferdam around the battleship and floated it to the surface, finally allowing a panel of naval technicians the opportunity to view the damage firsthand. Finding the bottom hull plates bent backward and inward, they declared that a mine had detonated under the magazine and destroyed the ship. Still, the matter was not concluded to everyone's satisfaction.

A book published in 1976 by Admiral Hyman G. Rickover,
How the Battleship
Maine
Was Destroyed
, backed the conclusion reached by the 1911 board of inquiry. Rickover, wondering if scientific advances over the decades would be more decisive on the matter, commissioned two experts on explosions to examine the documents generated by the first two inquiries, plus information on the construction and ammunition of the
Maine.
His panel concluded that the damage caused to the ship was inconsistent with the external explosion of a mine. The most likely cause, they speculated, was spontaneous combustion of coal in the bunker next to the magazine. To this day, the true cause of the detonation remains a
mystery—one of those great riddles of history that will likely never be resolved.

The bottom line for McKinley, however, was that the American public was in an uproar, demanding that Spain be held to account for the explosion, lack of definitive proof notwithstanding. By this point, a diplomatic solution was politically out of the question. War with Spain had become increasingly inevitable, thrummed into the public consciousness by the energy of war fever, a jingoistic press, and homegrown political warlords longing to propel the United States more deeply into world affairs.

I
n any event, America was at war again. Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt had been champing at the bit to take on Spain and other foreign powers for some time. He admitted that he was a quietly rampant
Cuba Libre
man who couldn't wait to go to war with Spain: “I had preached, with all the fervor and zeal I possessed, our duty to intervene in Cuba, and to take this opportunity of driving the Spaniard from the Western World.”

His imperialistic impulses were no secret to anyone. A year before becoming assistant secretary of the navy, Roosevelt wrote a letter stating that, if he had his own way, the United States would annex the Hawaiian Islands the very next day. If that proved impossible, he at least wanted to establish a protectorate over them. Roosevelt also advocated immediately building a canal across Nicaragua and commissioning a dozen new battleships, half of which would be anchored off the Pacific Coast to protect America from dangers presented by the Japanese. He considered Japan to have nothing but ill will toward the United States, and it behooved the government to take preemptive action against the hostile country.

As it happened, Roosevelt got his wish, thanks to an explosion ninety miles off the coast of the United States. He wrote in a letter to a friend before the explosion that he desired a war with Spain for several reasons: he believed the United States should act on behalf of the Cubans from a place of both humanity and self-interest; he thought the war would be a giant step forward in freeing America from European domination; and he said the American people would benefit from the exercise by having something to think about other than the quest for material gain. Roosevelt believed a justifiable war would prepare US military forces for the kind of empire he envisioned, by testing the army and navy in challenging battle conditions. He added that he would be extremely sorry if the experiment was not attempted.

Roosevelt's warlike inclinations intensified in the wake of the
Maine
disaster. He called the incident an act of treachery on the part of the Spaniards and said he would give anything “if President McKinley would order the fleet to Havana tomorrow.” He took advantage of his boss's brief absence from Washington to confer with Henry Cabot Lodge, a senator from Massachusetts and fellow imperialist. The two crafted a war strategy based on the presumption that Roosevelt was in charge when Long, the secretary of the navy, was out of town. Roosevelt dispatched three squadrons of ships on different routes to Cuba, an action that stunned Long when he returned to the nation's capital the next day.

“I find that Roosevelt, in his precipitate way, has come very near causing more of an explosion than happened to the
Maine
,” Long stated publicly. “The very devil seemed to possess him yesterday afternoon. He has gone at things like a bull in a china shop.”

Mark Twain had an even more poignant take on Roosevelt. The man is “clearly insane,” wrote the great satirist, “and insanest upon war and its supreme glories.”

Roosevelt compounded his misappropriation of authority by firing off a confidential telegram to Commodore George Dewey, commander of the US Asiatic Fleet, telling him to order his squadron, except for the
Monocacy
, to Hong Kong. He advised Dewey to keep his boilers full of coal and, in the event of a declaration of war with Spain, to see that the Spanish squadron does not leave the Asiatic coast. Roosevelt told Dewey to then commence “offensive operations in Philippine Islands” and to stand by for further orders.

For whatever reason, Long failed to rescind Roosevelt's orders. He seemed to feel that more harm would be done to the United States' reputation by ordering an about-face in reaction to Roosevelt's insubordination. Roosevelt had clearly usurped his boss's authority, positioned himself as the man in charge of the navy, and forced McKinley's hand by unequivocally launching America on a path to war. Long had little choice but to rubber-stamp his assistant's directive after Spain officially declared war on the United States on April 23.

“War has commenced between the United States and Spain,” Long telegraphed Dewey on April 25. “Proceed at once to Philippine Islands. Commence operations particularly against the Spanish fleet. You must capture vessels or destroy. Use utmost endeavor.”

It took Dewey's squadron six hours, firing at ranges from two thousand to five thousand yards, to destroy Spain's naval forces in the Philippines. The islands now effectively belonged to the United States—although it would take a prolonged ground campaign to effectively assume total control—earning Dewey a place in history as a result of the engagement. Puerto Rico and other Spanish colonies would also be sucked into the US orbit in the aftermath.

Cuba was next on Roosevelt's hit list. After receiving word of Dewey's decisive victory, Roosevelt promptly resigned his post and joined the army, organizing his own quasi-private cowboy militia
that also included an odd assortment of Ivy League types. No one was more stunned by Roosevelt's latest move than Long. Why on earth would Roosevelt quit an important job in Washington to “brush mosquitoes from his neck in the Florida sands?” he asked.

John Hay, Lincoln's former secretary, a writer and a future secretary of state, was more than a little amused by Roosevelt's temperament and decision: “Theodore Roosevelt, that
wilder verwegener
, has left the Navy Department, where he had the chance of his life, and has joined a cowboy regiment.”