THE MAINE'S FUNERAL.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIII, Issue 21, 22 May 1912, Page 2

THE MAINE'S FUNERAL.

WRECKED WARSHIP SUNK AMU) FLOWERS,

The battleship Maine, whose destruction in Havana Harbour on February loth, 1898, caused by the Span-ish-Amcrican War, was solemnly buriied at sea on March 16th, alter being resurrected from the bottom of the harbour, where she had rested lor 11 years.

This impressive and beautiful ceremony is without precedent in the history of the American Navy. It was decided to make the final interment of the wreck an occasion of national mourning, and there was a general cessation of business for a few minutes throughout the country, alter the news had been received that the Maine has disappeared for ever.

The battered hulk, which was covered with masses of flowers, disappeared in the Gulf Stream, 600 fathoms deep, outside the three-mile limit opposite Havana, which spot officially marks her tomb. Her final resting place, however, will never be known, for the depth of the water and the strong current of the Gulf Stream probably carried her a number of miles north-east before she settled at the bottom of the Atlantic. Funeral Cortege. A hundred thousand people lined the water front of Havana as the strangest funeral cortege the seas have ever witnessed escorted the battered hulk to the ocean cemetery. Forty-seven bodies of bluejackets and marines, recovered from the wreck, were reverently conducted through the streets of Havana to the cruiser North Dakota, which carried them to the United States for burial. Nearly every official of t'ne Cuban Government attended a service for the victims ol the Maine.

The funeral procession which escorted the Ma ine on her last journey ineluded the American cruisers North Dakota and Birmingham (which afterwards proceeded to the United States), three Cuban gunboats, and a'score of other vessels bearing delegations of American and Cuban mourners.

These vessels formed a hollow square around the Maine. The naval tug Osceola ,which conveyed the high civil, naval and military dignitaries, steamed in front of the wreck, and the procession started silently and slowly out of the harbour.

On board the Maine, acting as her last pilot, was Captain O’Brien, familiarly known as “dynamite Johnny,” who,, us a Cuban filifibuster previous to the Spanish-American war, i did more than anyone else to keep i the Cuban revolutionary supplied with arms. Covered With Ficwors. j The Maine was literally covered with flowers from stem to stern- Hundreds of floral decorations, coni posed of nearly a million ' indivictuaV ’ floivers, concealed her battered decks. An enormous American flag flew from a jury mast.

The escorting vessels stopped, still in the hollow square formation, outside the harbour, and as the North Dakpta played the “Sta l^1 Spahgled Banner,” and niamfed ship, officers put out to the wreck and opened--the - sea . cocks. The Maine began to sink in about ten miuutots, and as she did so tile guns from the warships thundered out the last salute. She continued to sink slowly, until an explosion of compressed air in the hull caused her to drop suddenly below the surface. The last thing seen was the American flag disappearing through the flowers that were strewn over the sea. The solemn silenco was broken by the shrill notes of a bugle, sounding. “Tapps,” the naval and military signal for “lights out.”