HOW WAS THE "MAINE" BLOWN UP ? 199 that if a diver had found anything of the kind, it was one of the numerous under-waterholes that exist for various purposes in the outer plates of most men-of-war. Then came the story that a great hollowhadbeen found in the mud below the ship, the result of a mine explosion,and that the forwardmagazine, which contained some 50,000pounds of powder for the heavy guns,had been found to be intact. The Report of theEnquiry, whenpublished, showed that the officers who conducted the investigation were satisfied that this magazine was actually exploded, and that it was thus the greaterpartof the damage was done. Thereal question was what caused theprimary explosion. All these rumours added to the excitementin the United States, and it was with very little effect that the morelevel-headedmenreiterated Captain Sigsbee's appeal for a suspension of judgment till the facts were clearly ascertained. Engineers and naval officers for the most part clungto the hopethat the final result would be to showthat the disaster was due to anaccident. But from the first the viewthat it was ahorrible example of " Spanish treachery" was the more popular opinion.

Harbour, was as much a portion of theUnited States as oneofthe forts at New York, or oneof the rooms of the Capitol at Washington. The investigation was a purely American affair, affecting, in the first place, the position of a distinguished American naval officer. It was declared that it should be carried out from first to last by United States officials. So the Spanish Government had to be content with appointing a commission of its own, which necessarilyreported on very insufficient data.

The American Court of Enquiry sat for twenty-three working days,at first onboard the lighthouse-tenderMangrove,which was moored close to the wreckedMaine at Havana. The concluding sittings were heldat KeyWest, the American naval station on the chain of islands that runs out into the Mexican Gulf from the southernpoint of Florida,a place within a few hours' steaming of the Cuban coast. Rough weather delayed for some days the investigations of the divers;and,even whenthey got to work,their task proved an exceedingly difficult one. Havana Harbour is one of the foulest in the world, and in the muddy water little could be distinctly seen. The divers had to depend largely on the sense of touch in examining the wreckage under the surface, and the drawings made from their reports, and laid before the Court,were rightly accepted as, at the best,only rough approximations. When the Maine was destroyed there were,at most, about five feet of water betweenher and the bottomof the bay; but this bottom was a deep mass of soft mud, andduring the days which followed the explosion the wreck sank deeper into the mud and perhaps slightly altereditsposition. This was a new source of difficulty. Those who expected that the divers would find the remains of a torpedo beneath the ship forgot that in such circumstances it was impossible to get under her. The origin of the explosion had to be determined solely by its effects.

Notwithstanding the secrecy officially imposed upon themembers of the Court, there werefrom the first sensational reports in circulation as to the discoveries which were being made by the divers. One newspaper told how a diver had found in the bottom of theMaine a round hole eight inches in diameter, blown through her plates by a torpedo. Naval officers in New York, who were asked to comment on this story, of course pointed out that a torpedo capable of destroying the Maine would not make a mere eight-inch hole, and suggested And this opinion was strengthened by a rumour that Lieutenant Powelson, a skilled naval architect, and one of the experts whose services had been placed at the disposal of the Court, had made a startling discovery. The fore part of the Maine was a mass of tangled and twistediron,and it required some time and much careful consideration to determine what had been the position of the shattered plates and beams in the ship when she was intact. Some things became clearer as the ruined superstructure was partly removed, and it was alleged that Powelson had found that a bent mass of shattered iron which projected above the water, shaped like the top of a capital A, was,in fact, a portion of the vessel's keel. If this was so, the keel had beenbentupwards to a height of about thirty-four feet above its original position, forming an arch through which a railway train could have been driven. Could an internal explosion have done this ? Did it not point to the primary explosion having been that of a mine outside and below the fore pait of the ship— a mine so powerful that it could thus break the back of the huge cruiser, and thrust her broken keel up through her rending decks and above the surface on which she was floating— the explosion of the forward magazine, with its 50,000 pounds of