28 



THE CUBA REVIEW 



THE RAISING OF THE MAINE 



GENERAL BIXBY's OPINION AS TO THE CAUSE OF THE EXPLOSION 



CONFIDENCE IN THE COFFERDAM'S STRENGTH 



The unwatering of the wreck has shown 

 the falsity of the story printed after the 

 explosion to the effect that the "Maine" 

 had its guns trained on Havana and was 

 cleared for action when it was blown up. 

 The guns now exposed show they were 

 at their regular position at rest, with the 

 muzzle caps placed in them as they are 

 keot in time of peace. The windows of 

 the officers' quarters were all raised, and 

 all means were taken to enhance the com- 

 fort of the men on board. No precautions 

 had been taken, such as is usually the case 

 w^hen a naval vessel expects any trouble. 

 Discoveries of relics in the wreck of 

 the "Maine" are many and curious. 



Plates and chinaware in the officers' 

 quarters were found piled up as left by 

 the stewards after the last meal, and were 

 in a good state of preservation. A small 

 ammunition box, such as is customarily 

 distributed about the decks, contained an 

 agglomerated mass of six millimetre 

 cartridge clips for the naval service rifle 

 and a number of short knife bayonets in 

 metallic leather covered scabbards. The 

 clips of cartridges were well preserved, 

 but the steel bayonets were reduced to al- 

 most unindentifiable masses of rust around 

 which were clinging shreds of leather 

 sackings. 



An officer's dress sword was found be- 

 hind the forward portside door leading 

 from the officers' quarters to the spar deck. 

 The bronze sword hilt was in a good 

 state of preservation, but only attached by 

 shreds of the sword knot to the blade, 

 which was merely a ribbon of rust en- 

 closed in a black leather scabbard. 



A curious indication of the slight force 

 of the explosion felt in the after part of 

 the ship was an electric Ught bulb hanging 

 intact from the roof of the superstructure. 

 In the captain's cabin were a rubber coat, 

 a rubber stamp and sundry other small 

 articles of the same material. They had 

 deteriorated but little during their long 

 immersion. 



While there are no indications that se- 

 rious fears are felt concerning the stabil- 

 ity of the dam, measures are now being 

 taken to strengthen the structure. Twenty 

 thousand tons of stone will be sunk about 

 the exterior circumference of the dam. 

 They also found in the captain's cabin a 

 small compass, much corroded, a bottle 

 of bay rum, perfectly preserved, and small 

 toilet articles. 



When emptied of the 34 feet of water 

 and 17 feet of mud, the exterior wall o± 



water, 51 feet high, will exert a tre- 

 mendous pressure upon the cofferdam. 



Objects nobody would expect to endure 

 a month have lasted better, some of them 

 with what seems like miraculous persist- 

 ence. Rubber bands, too, have survived, 

 though it is their wont to grow hard and 

 disintegrate after a few weeks of safe 

 seclusion in office desks. 



It is by no means certain that the cof- 

 ferdam will withstand the enormous 

 pressure which will be exerted against it 

 when it has been emptied to a depth of 

 forty feet or more. The engineers are, 

 however, confident of its strength and 

 predict the success of their undertaking. 



General William H. Bixby, chief en- 

 gineer of the United States, who recently 

 made a personal inspection of the work 

 of raising the "]\Iaine," declares that the 

 loss of the battleship was caused by the 

 explosion of her three magazines. No 

 such effect as that produced upon the 

 vessel could have been caused by an explo- 

 sion from without. 



He found that a portion of the deck 

 over the magazines was blown upward 

 and laid backward, which could not have 

 been caused by an explosion from the 

 outside. The primary cause of the ex- 

 plosion will, he believes, never be learned. 



The engineers in Washington feel that 

 this belief is not fulh' justified in advance 

 of the exposure and examination of the 

 ship's bottom. 



The process of removing the water sur- 

 rounding the wreck of the Maine was prac- 

 tically completed July IS when the water 

 level in the cofferdam had been lowered 

 eighteen feet. The surroundings showed 

 now'here a depth in excess of four feet. 



Although the water now is only two feet 

 lower than in previous pumping operations, 

 the revelations with regard to the shat- 

 tered conditions of the hulk have been 

 vastly enlarged. 



The structure of the bow as far aft as 

 frame eighteen has been exposed, permit- 

 ting of an analysis of the plates, beams, 

 etc., and it has been shown conclusively 

 that they originally belonged to_ the struc- 

 ture of the double bottom, which is now 

 elevated to a height of forty feet above its 

 normal position, apparently giving con- 

 firmatory evidence of a tremendous ex- 

 terior explosion. 



To this view, however, the engineers in 

 charge decline to commit themselves. 



The cofferdam is now^ standing about 

 nine-tenths of the pressure required. 



