Did a Coal Bunker Fire Sink the USS Maine?

 

Cortland Evening Standard, Wednesday, May 20, 1896.

FIRE ON THE INDIANA.

Big Battleship's Narrow Escape From Destruction.

HER COAL BUNKERS ABLAZE.

Fire Was In the Bunker Adjoining Her Magazines, Where Enough Powder Was Stored to Blow Her to Atoms—No Damage Done.

   NEW YORK, May 20.—A bunkerful of soft coal caught fire by spontaneous combustion in the big battleship Indiana as she lay in the coal dock at the Brooklyn navy yard. Right next to the burning bunker was the magazine for the 8-inch guns, stored with powder enough to blow the great battleship out of the water and wreck half the navy yard beside.

   The crew was called to fire quarters, the few visitors aboard hustled ashore and warned to give the ship a wide berth, and then, with a will and the cool rush of well-trained men, the jack tars got to work upon the fire.

   Its heart was already a glowing mass and was momentarily growing more dangerous.

   While the fire fighters were getting their apparatus ready and battening down the midship hatches a line of men was formed from the 8- inch magazine to the 13-inch on the deck forward, and the canisters of powder were passed rapidly from hand to hand to new quarters remote from the heat and danger.

   The fire itself was fought with water and steam, and after the powder had been removed was speedily extinguished.

 

 

Cortland Contrarian commentary.

 

   During initial sea trials, the Indiana achieved speeds of 15 ½ knots but had trouble with her gun turrets when they came loose and swung across the deck in heavy seas. The ship almost “turtled.” The gun turrets were quickly lashed with heavy lines and the ship returned to port. The Indiana was then retrofitted with a locking system to hold the gun turrets to the bilge keel. The Massachusetts and Oregon had their turrets fitted in the same fashion
   There were additional coal bunker fires on American ships during the 1890’s. Coal bunker fires were considered but rejected as a proximate cause of the Maine explosion by naval boards of inquiry.
   “On February 15, 1898, the American battleship Maine exploded while sitting in Havana harbor, killing two officers and 250 enlisted men. Fourteen of the injured later died, bringing the death total to 266. A naval board of inquiry concluded that the blast was caused by a mine placed outside the ship.” Louis Fisher, April 4, 2009, Destruction of the Maine (1898).
   The quoted sentences above are contained in a five-page report in the Law Library of Congress. The 2009 report was written by Louis Fisher, a specialist in constitutional law. The report summarizes and provides references to the various findings, inquiries and studies on the causative factors of the sinking of the battleship Maine.
   In 1976 Admiral H. G. Rickover, after a study of more than two years, published How the Battleship Maine Was Destroyed. He concluded that the explosion was internal--not caused by a mine or torpedo.
   Because there are conflicting conclusions about the proximate cause of the explosion, the subject becomes one of history’s mysteries. The Cortland Evening Standard front page article on May 20, 1896, about the fire in the coal bunker of the battleship Indiana, clearly demonstrates a potential relationship to the tragic magazine explosion on the Maine.

References:
   1) Five-page report by Louis Fisher: http://loc.gov/law/help/usconlaw/pdf/Maine.1898.pdf
   2) Sinking of the Maine, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Maine
   3) U. S. Navy History: http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq71-1.htm
   4) USS Indiana, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Indiana_(BB-1)#CITEREFReillyScheina1980