MAINE, USS.

The battleship sent to Key West in 1898 as a symbol of a strong United States naval force ready to counter any anti-US conspiracies in Havana.  With Spanish approval, it arrived in Havana on January 25, 1898, and, on the evening of February 19^th, blew up in the harbor, killing 260 of the 355 crew on board.  Battleships of that period were inherently unsafe but when the US Naval Court of Inquiry announced in March that the forward magazine had been detonated by the explosion of a mine beneath the hull, most Americans concluded that the Spanish had sabotaged the vessel, and a US examination of the hull when the vessel was raised in1911 repeated the allegation. (The wreck was later cut up and disposed of). Alternative theories were that the explosion had been done by Cuban revolutionaries seeking American help, or by American business interests seeking a US annexation.  Yellow journalism so fanned popular feeling that President McKinley was forced to declare war, despite the lack of any proof of Spanish responsibility.