'I DID NOT EXPECT SHE WOULD BE BLOWN UP …'

摘要

Nearly a century and a quarter ago, the battle cry "Remember the Maine!" reverberated throughout every city in the land. This referred to the sinking of the second-class battleship Maine in Cuba's Havana Harbor on 15 February 1898- the pivotal event initiating the Spanish-American War. Lost in the hail of yellow journalism headlines was what preceded the still unsatisfactorily explained explosions that claimed the ship and 260 of her crew. The Maine's commander, Captain Charles D. Sigsbee, wrote extensively about his ship and the disaster that befell her. The battleship had been sent from the Norfolk, Virginia, Navy Yard to Key West, Florida, where she arrived on 15 December 1897. Sigsbee's "confidential" orders were to wait until summoned to proceed to Havana in case of "grave local disturbances" there to provide asylum and "the usual protection." General Fitzhugh Lee, the U.S. consul-general in Havana, would request the ship. Sigsbee immediately opened coded communications with Lee through both mail and telegraph. On 23 January 1898, the Maine joined the North Atlantic Squadron for exercises in the winter drill ground off the Tortugas. The next night, the torpedo boat Dupont arrived with a message from Key West: The Maine was ordered to Havana. Lee had received an order from the Department of State "to resume the friendly naval visits at Cuban ports . . . [and] arrange for the friendly interchange of calls with the authorities." Sigsbee later wrote: "I was left to act according to my own judgment in the usual way; that is to say, it was undoubtedly assumed that I would know how to act on my arrival in Havana, and it was intended to hold me responsible for my action. The situation seemed to call for nothing more than a strictly careful adherence to the well-known forms of naval procedure and courtesy.".