The evening of February 10th, 1898, was dark and sultry.  At eight o’clock Captain Sigsbee received the reports from the different officers of the ship that every thing was secure for the night.  At ten minutes after nine the bugler sounded “taps,” the signal for “turning in,” and soon the ship was quiet.  At forty minutes after nine a sharp explosion was heard, then a loud, long, roaring sound, mingled with the noise of falling timbers; the electric lights went out, the ship was lifted up, and then she began to sink.  The Captain and some of the other officers groped their way to the deck, hardly knowing what had happened.  They could do nothing; the ship was sinking fast, and was on fire in several places.

The force of the explosion was so great that it threw Captain Sigsbee out of his cabin, where he sat writing a letter, and against William Anthony, a marine who was on duty as a sentry.  As coolly as though nothing had happened, Anthony saluted the Captain and then said: 

“Sir, I have the honor to inform you that the ship has been blown up and is sinking.”

[Illustration:  Captain Charles D. Sigsbee.]

Small boats came out from the other ships, and rescued many men from the Maine.  The Spaniards helped the sufferers in every possible way, taking them to the hospitals in Havana, where they received the best care that the hospitals could give.

In that awful destruction of the Maine, two officers and two hundred and fifty-four of the crew were lost.  Several of those who were rescued, died afterward.

The next day divers went down into the water to see what they could find in the wreck, and nineteen dead bodies were brought up.  The Spanish officers of Havana asked Captain Sigsbee to permit the city to give the a public funeral; and a plot of ground in Colon Cemetery, outside the city, was given to the United States free of expense forever.  The day of the funeral all the flags were put at “half mast,” as a sign of mourning, and the stores were closed.  Crowds of people joined the long funeral procession.

In the latter part of the year 1899, however, the Maine dead were brought from Havana by the battleship Texas, then commanded by Captain Sigsbee, formerly of the Maine.  They were laid away in Arlington Cemetery, near Washington, on December 28th, with simple religious services and the honors of war, in the presence of the President of the United States and his Cabinet, officers of the army and navy, and many other spectators.

Besides Captain Sigsbee and Father Chidwick, who was chaplain of the Maine at the time she was blown up, three others who lived through that awful night were present.  They were Lieutenant Commander Wainwright, who was the executive officer of the Maine and who afterwards sank the Furor and Pluton at Santiago; Lieutenant F.C.  Bowers, formerly assistant engineer of the Maine; and Jeremiah Shea, a fireman of the Maine, who was blown out of the stoke-hole of the ship through the wreckage.