"The ``dewatering'' allowed the Navy to photograph the wreckage in detail,
and a new court of inquiry was convened. It rejected the 1898 finding on the
inverted ``V,'' saying that was caused by the internal explosion. Instead,
it focused on a hull bottom plate bent inward -- damaged, the court held, by
an exploding external mine.

So the record stood for decades, until U.S. Adm. Hyman G. Rickover, ``father
of the nuclear Navy,'' took an interest and put experts to work on the Maine
case, using more sophisticated analysis of the old photos.

Their 1976 report concluded the explosion was almost certainly caused by
spontaneous combustion of coal in a bunker abutting a powder magazine. Such
coal fires were commonplace in that day. They said a mine would have caused
more damage to the inward-bent plate.

But they acknowledged, ``A simple explanation is not to be found.''

In 1995, Smithsonian Institution Press published a book, ``Remembering the
Maine,'' by Peggy and Harold Samuels, pointing up flaws in the Rickover
analysis and concluding that Spanish fanatics had set off a mine. It cited
no new hard evidence, but uncorroborated reports of the time about plots
against the ship.

In Spain, opinion is also divided. The Spanish navy approvingly reprinted
the Rickover study, but a Spanish historical journal has pointed a finger at
Cuban saboteurs.

Most recently, the National Geographic Society commissioned a computer
modeling study of the coal-fire and mine theories, and found both feasible.
``The case remains open,'' National Geographic says in its February issue.
"

"Joe" wrote in message
oups.com...
"In 1911 the Navy Department ordered a second board of inquiry after
Congress voted funds for the removal of the wreck of Maine from Havana
Harbor. U.S. Army engineers built a cofferdam around the sunken
battleship, thus exposing it, and giving naval investigators an
opportunity to examine and photograph the wreckage in detail. Finding
the bottom hull plates in the area of the reserve six-inch magazine
bent inward and back"