THE CUBA REVIEW 



11 



Rear Admiral Sigsbee 



Rear Admiral Sigsbee 



Read Admiral Sigsbee, retired from the 

 United States Navy, and famous as the 

 captain of the battleship Maine, died in 

 New York on July 19, 1923. 



Charles Dwight Sigsbee was born at Al- 

 bany, N. Y., in 1845. He was only four- 

 teen years old when he entered the naval 

 training school at Annapolis. He was 

 graduated in four years and became ensign 

 in 1863. For the first two years of his 

 service, he was attached to the Monon- 

 gahela and the Brooklyn of the West Gulf 

 squadron. Even at that early age he was 

 following the sea strenuously, for he saw 

 active service in the attack upon Fort 

 Fisher and in the battle of Mobile Bay. 

 At the age of 23 he was promoted to 

 Lieutenant Commander, a distinction said 

 to be without parallel in the navy. 



He was variously employed thereafter, 

 being at different times with the Asiatic 

 and North Atlantic squadrons; stationed 

 at the Naval Academy 1869-70; in the 

 hydrographic office 1873-74, and the com- 

 mander of the coast survey steamer Blake, 

 employed in deep sea exploration for the 

 government. The chief portion of the 

 outfit of the Blake consisted of inventions 



and adaptations by Sigsbee, and in recog- 

 nition of these, he received a gold medal 

 at the London International Fisheries Ex- 

 hibition, and the decoration of the Red 

 Eagle of Prussia from Emperor William I. 



Promoted to the grade of commander in 

 1882, he was commander of the practice 

 ship Dale, 1883-4; of the Kearsarge at the 

 European station 1885-6 and on shore duty 

 1887-90. In 1890-2 he commanded the 

 training ship Portsmouth, in 1893 was 

 made chief of the hydrographic office. In 

 1897 he was made a captain and subse- 

 quently assigned to the command of the 

 Maine. 



The Maine was designed at the Navy 

 Department, built at the New York navy 

 yard, commissioned in 1895, and was the 

 most powerful, at that time, of the second- 

 class battleships in the United States navy 

 In January, 1898, the vessel was ordered 

 to the port of Havana, Cuba, arriving 

 there on the 6th of January. 



On the evening of February 15th the 

 Maine was destroyed by an explosion 

 in which the entire forward part of the 

 vessel was utterly wrecked. Two officers 

 and 264 of the crew were lost. The 

 United States Court of Inquiry, appointed 

 to examine into the catastrophe, found 

 that the vessel was destroyed by a sub- 

 marine mine, and that no evidence was 

 obtainable fixing the blame. Captain Sigs- 

 bee was writing in his cabin when the ex- 

 plosion occurred. To him it seemed like 

 a blast, or, as he sometimes expressed it, 

 "a general roar." The first order he gave 

 was to post sentries to repel boarders, 

 which indicated that he expected an attack. 



No man on board was cooler in the 

 emergency, but nothing could be done to 

 save the ship. Sigsbee was a witness of her 

 foundering with most of his ship's crew 

 penned in their narrow quarters. It was 

 a moment, the pain of which remained 

 with him to the end. 



"Therefore," wrote Sigsbee in his own 

 narrative, "although the war which fol- 

 lowed was not founded on the destruction 

 of the Maine as a political cause, the 

 disaster was a pivotal event of the con- 

 flict." 



Sigsbee's wise dispatches at the time did 

 much to suspend any popular demand for 

 immediate reprisals, while his expert 



