T H I". C U B .\ R E \' I E W 



19 



RAISING THE "MAINE" 



THE STEEL PILING A WATERTIGHT WALL — MEMORIAL SERVICES IN THE 

 COFFERDAM IN PREPARATION 



The steel piling will form a watertight 

 wall around the "Maine," 450 feet long by 

 320 feet wide, and the area of dry harbor 

 bottom w-ithin will be over three acres in 

 extent when the pumping is completed. In 

 the middle of this space will rest the 

 "Maine'" with a clearance of at least fifty 

 feet all around. 



This wall will be built of successive 

 circles of steel pilings of ingenious design, 

 a little over a foot broad, a half-inch 

 thick in the centre and sixty feet long. 

 They will be driven into the harbor bottom 

 to a depth of fifteen feet, which means 

 that when pumped out the great steel fence 

 will be forty-five feet high, or about as tall 

 as a three-story house. 



To make them water-tight, the steel pil- 

 ings have a unique interlocking feature and 

 are self-calking, rendering the steel wall 

 water-tight, no matter whether they are 

 set to describe a straight line, a curve or 

 an angle. They need no rivets, screws or 

 bolts, and as soon as one has been driven 

 fifteen feet into the harbor bottom, the near 

 edge of the bottom of its neighbor will be 

 fitted into the adjacent groove at its top 

 and dropped. Then the pile-driver will 

 do its work. 



The water inside the big cofferdam, be- 

 fore pumping, will average about thirty- 

 five feet in depth, and there will be alto- 

 gether about 4,725,000 cubic feet of water 

 to be pumped out. After this has been 

 sucked up the wreck will be braced all 

 around and the portion of the hull that 

 is found buried in the mud will be un- 

 covered with shovels and water jets, new 

 bracing being continually added all the 

 while, until finally the rusted and battered 

 man-of-war, redeemed from more than a 

 dozen years' strata of silt and mud, sits 

 high and dry upon her keel as she would 

 be in a drydock. Afterw^ard the entire 

 bottom of the cofferdam will be dug into 

 and explored for fragments of wreckage 

 lying alongside her. 



When this has been done a government 

 board will go down the cofferdam, examine 

 her and determine whether the court of 

 inquiry which inquired into the disaster 

 immediately after its occurrence, in 1898, 

 was correct when it found that the "Alaine" 

 was destroyed by the explosion of a sub- 

 marine mine, which caused the explosion 

 of two or more of her forward magazines. 

 Spain has been invited to send to Ha- 

 vana a representative who will be given ac- 

 cess to the "^Maine" as soon as the coffer- 

 dam has been pumped out, and a similar 

 invitation has been sent to Cuba. 



Tile skeletons recovered will be placed 

 in caskets and borne abroad a naval vessel 

 to the Arlington National Cemetery, oppo- 

 site Washington, where the "Elaine's" 

 military mast will be erected as the crown- 

 ing feature of a memorial monument to 

 be dedicated to all of the victims of the 

 tragedy of February 15, 1898. 



The final disposition of the wreck will 

 be determined by congress It is believed 

 that there will be a pubHc demand that 

 the old hulk be given a deep-sea burial. 



If this burial at sea is decided upon, the 

 bodv of the dead leviathan will be allowed 

 to descend gently into some deep abyss far 

 below the reach of passing keels. — John El- 

 frcth Watkins in the LouisviUe Courier- 

 Journal. 



Minor Notes 



President Gomez has written a letter to 

 President Taft asking that some parts of 

 the wreck of the "Maine" be given to Cuba 

 to be added to a monument that will be 

 erected as a memorial to the warship. 



Night work on the wreck of the battle- 

 ship "Maine" has begun. Pile driving con- 

 tinues slowly in three places. It will in- 

 crease in activity as soon as the work is 

 fully organized and the material is plentiful. 

 Work is progressing systematically 

 around the vessel. The dredge "Barnard" 

 has arrived and will join the others now at 

 work around the wreck. 



The x\merican colony in Havana will pre- 

 pare a highly impressive memorial service 

 to be held at the bottom of the harbor on 

 February 15, 1911, beside the "Maine," on 

 the thirteenth anniversary of the explosion 

 which sank her. 



Captain T. L. Huston, chairman of the 

 Spanish War Veterans' Commission here, 

 has left for the United States, intending 

 to ask President Taft to send a battleship 

 to Havana for this service. 



Invitations are being distributed among 

 the Spanish War veterans in the United 

 States to be present at the ceremony, which 

 is proposed to be .of a highly imposing 

 character. 



El Mundo suggests that when the rais- 

 ing of the "Maine" is accomplished, the 

 cofferdam should be used as a base for a 

 monument to perpetuate the memory of 

 the disaster. It says there will be plenty 

 of time to choose a subject and the ma- 

 terial, but the place where the "Maine" 

 sank in Havana harbor should not be ob- 

 literated. 



