0:04 [Music]
0:07 the battleship USS main steamed into
0:10 Havana Harbor in late January
0:13 1898 while the United States government
0:15 claimed the battleship was simply making
0:17 a courtesy visit to Cuba the ship had
0:19 really come to protect American lives
0:25 island Cuban revolutionaries had
0:27 struggled for decades against their
0:28 Spanish rulers who had controlled the
0:32 island for nearly 4 100
0:36 years in January of 1898 civilian riots
0:39 left Havana Cuba's capital in turmoil
0:41 and put American lives and Investments at
0:46 risk the appearance of one of America's
0:48 Premier battleships bristling with 10-in
0:56 Havana the Maine dropped anchor in the
0:58 harbor and its crew kept a watchful eye
1:00 on the island
1:03 but 3 weeks later on February the 15th
1:06 the main exploded in a gigantic Fireball
1:08 that echoed throughout Havana's
1:12 streets 266 men were killed as the
1:14 Main's three forward 6 and 10in
1:18 ammunition storage magazines blew
1:21 up America turned suspicious eyes toward
1:25 Spain for years Cuban Exiles in America
1:27 and others sympathetic to their cause
1:28 had been calling for the United States
1:31 to force the Spanish out of
1:33 Cuba those calls were fueled by the
1:35 Press which often presented Spain's
1:37 leaders as evil or less than [Music]
1:46 human when word of the main explosion
1:48 reached America some people including
1:50 the powerful newspaper owner William
1:54 Randol Hurst immediately blamed
1:58 Spain and most of the public believed
2:00 them when a team of investigators sent
2:02 by the Navy concluded that the explosion
2:05 was the result of a black powder mine
2:08 war fever swept across the
2:10 country President William McKinley and
2:12 the US Congress gave in to the Public's
2:25 1898 within 6 months the war was over
2:27 and Spain was
2:30 defeated and the United States St was on
2:32 the road to becoming a world power by
2:34 gaining Puerto Rico the Philippines and
2:37 the Pacific Islands of Guam and wake from
2:41 [Music]
2:44 Spain but a nagging question
2:47 remained no direct evidence linking
2:49 Spain to the sinking of the main had been
2:51 been
2:54 found so why had the ship blown
2:57 up in the 1970s the Navy launched a new
3:01 investigation into the case
3:03 Admiral Heyman rickover concluded that
3:05 the explosion aboard the main was not
3:07 caused by a mine at
3:10 all instead the ship sank because of a terrible
3:17 accident using various techniques modern
3:19 researchers have confirmed rickover's
3:21 conclusion that the blast was probably
3:23 indirectly caused by a spontaneous
3:27 combustion fire inside the Main's coal
3:30 bunker that Coal Fire probably heated
3:31 the wall of the nearby ammunition
3:38 [Music]
3:41 explode so it apparently was a simple
3:44 accident that destroyed the ship and set
3:46 up a chain of events that altered the
3:54 [Music] history
