How the Battleship Maine Was Destroyed

by Hyman George Rickover

When the battleship Maine was blown up in Havana Harbor in 1898 it precipitated the conflict that marked a decisive point in American history - the Spanish-American War. Conveniently, the Spanish were blamed for the explosion, but nagging questions persisted. There were several contradictory conclusions drawn about the cause of the great disaster, but none was based on solid technical explanations. As an engineer, Admiral Hyman G. Rickover was intrigued by this quandary and determined in 1976 to resolve it with the use of modern technical knowledge.
Armed with an analysis he requested from Ib Hansen and Robert Price, Rickover examined the 1898 inquiry and a more sophisticated subsequent study conducted when the stricken vessel was raised in 1911. He concluded that political considerations had led to technically unsound positions.
In 1976 he published the original edition of this book, positing an internal rather than external cause for the spontaneous combustion in a bunker containing bituminous coal caused a fire that triggered an explosion of the black powder stored in an adjacent magazine. Today, with a new foreword by the original research team of Hansen, Price, Francis Duncan, and Dana Wegner, and new material that was not publicly available in 1976 added to the appendix, this updated edition of Rickover's well-presented hypothesis provides the single best account of the cause of the explosion. As such it is a key component to understanding a major episode in American history and deserves to reach a broad audience.

178 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1995

Reviews

[Nick]

if i ever have to read about the vertical displacement of the keel at frame 18 again...

[Paul]

Had obviously read about the sinking of the Maine and how it kickstarted the Spanish American War along with all the questions about what really happened. When I found this old book, I quickly jumped in to explore this topic in more depth. What was very informative in the book was the author's stage setting by explaining what was happened prior to the incident, and how the Maine ended up in Havana harbor. The last half of the book obviously discussed the investigation and eventual conclusions back in the late 1800s, another assessment 10-20yrs later, and his assessment many decades later. One last interesting note was that I did not realize the US Army Corps of Engineers was tasked by Congress to remove the wreckage from the harbor. That chapter was fascinating as it explained how this was done.