What is this? Cannon on city hall lawn.

major bill

Brev. Brig. Gen'l
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Aug 25, 2012
I am on vacation and as I passed a city hall lawn I saw a cannon, so I just had to stop.
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It was a 19th Century cannon, but not a Civil War cannon. The gun has no markings at all. If there was not a sign telling about the cannon, most people would have no idea what this cannon is.
 
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That is a 6" gun from the Maine . It was sent to Alpena , Michigan in 1912 after the Maine was raised.
That is what the sign said it was , except the sign does not say the size the gun is. Having a hour to kill, I think it was worth my time to park and look the gun over. Not a real common gun to see on a city hall lawn.
 
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Great guess. Unbeknownst to me the is a quilt store three blocks away, so I had a hour to kill while my wife shopped.
Believe me , I am well aware of quilt shops during trips . I am the patient type and always find something else to explore .
 
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That is what the sign said it was , except the sign does not say the size the gun is. Having a hour to kill, I think it was worth my time to park and look the gun over. Not a real common gun to see on a city hall lawn.
That´s why the Maine is nicknamed the ¨longest ship in the Navy¨ or the ¨biggest ship in the Navy.¨ Pieces of it are everywhere. One of the masts is at the Naval Academy, IIRC. There´s a piece of brass railing from her in the Tioga Point Museum in beautiful downtown Athens, Pennsylvania (my hometown).
 
That´s why the Maine is nicknamed the ¨longest ship in the Navy¨ or the ¨biggest ship in the Navy.¨ Pieces of it are everywhere. One of the masts is at the Naval Academy, IIRC. There´s a piece of brass railing from her in the Tioga Point Museum in beautiful downtown Athens, Pennsylvania (my hometown).
They actually melted down parts of the ship and recast them into Daniel Boone Trail Markers. There were 385 metal tables between Virginia Beach and San Francisco. (I'm not sure how many contained metal from the Maine, but many of the early ones did.)
 
Two guns from the main battery are still in Havana. These form the base of the "víctimas del Maine" memorial.

I might add that Spanish navy trophies appear here and there on various public buildings too. North Carolina, Raleigh near the Ensign Worth Bagley memorial, for example.
 
That´s why the Maine is nicknamed the ¨longest ship in the Navy¨ or the ¨biggest ship in the Navy.¨ Pieces of it are everywhere. One of the masts is at the Naval Academy, IIRC. There´s a piece of brass railing from her in the Tioga Point Museum in beautiful downtown Athens, Pennsylvania (my hometown).
Actually, the USS Maine is called the longest ship in the Navy because the foremast is at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, and the mainmast is in Arlington National Cemetery. The distance is more than 30 miles "as the crow flies."
 
What was the cause of the Maine explosion after all? I´m pretty sure Spanish sabotage has been ruled out. Was it a coal dust ignition after all?
 
What was the cause of the Maine explosion after all? I´m pretty sure Spanish sabotage has been ruled out. Was it a coal dust ignition after all?

The mysterious explosion of the USS Maine 15 Feb. 1898 in Havana harbor triggered the war, but the underlying circumstances were much more complicated. Rather ironically, the sister ship USS Texas was the more trouble-prone vessel than the hapless Maine.

The wreckage of the Maine remained in Havana harbor until 1911 when it was hauled out and sunk in deep water.
 
Admiral Hyman G. Rickover published, in 1976, How the Battleship Maine Was Destroyed. This book was not entirely his work, he assembled an unbiased team of experts, who examined all the evidence. The ship positively blew up from an internal explosion. The team came to the strong conclusion that the explosion that sank the Maine was caused by an internal source, almost positively by accident. Probably an explosion of coal dust.

Logic also eliminates the possibility of a bomb smuggled aboard by Spain. The ship was in a the bay of Havana, controlled by Spain.
The ship was on full alert.

And don't forget that the Spanish knew full well how a war would go against the vastly superior US Navy. Look how short and lopsided the war actually was. They wanted to avoid war with us. The 98 pound geek never wants to fight the biggest linebacker on the football team. People who don't actually study history are unaware that Spain actually agreed to all the terms the US made on them and notified our government BEFORE we declared war. War fever had become an unstoppable force and we declared war anyway.
The idea that the Spanish had destroyed the Maine was, of course partially responsible for this war fever.
Wm. Randolph Hearst was largely responsible for this war fever. He wanted a war to boost circulation of his newspapers. He was the strong promoter of the story that a Spanish mine sank the Maine.

That's not a conspiracy theory, that's fact.
 
There is a Maine deck gun with a shield outside of the Butler GAR Hall in Lowell. It was inside for years but the last time I saw it it was outside.
The cool thing was/is is there was a good size piece of shrapnel that went through the shield.
This a Ben Butler connection to the Maine.
Keep in mind, though Old Ben was dead by then he had bought the Union Cartridge Co and supplied most of the ammo to the US through WWI...always had an eye for wise investments and had the pull to make it all happen.
Good Old Ben Butler
 
Admiral Hyman G. Rickover published, in 1976, How the Battleship Maine Was Destroyed. This book was not entirely his work, he assembled an unbiased team of experts, who examined all the evidence. The ship positively blew up from an internal explosion. The team came to the strong conclusion that the explosion that sank the Maine was caused by an internal source, almost positively by accident. Probably an explosion of coal dust.

Logic also eliminates the possibility of a bomb smuggled aboard by Spain. The ship was in a the bay of Havana, controlled by Spain.
The ship was on full alert.

And don't forget that the Spanish knew full well how a war would go against the vastly superior US Navy. Look how short and lopsided the war actually was. They wanted to avoid war with us. The 98 pound geek never wants to fight the biggest linebacker on the football team. People who don't actually study history are unaware that Spain actually agreed to all the terms the US made on them and notified our government BEFORE we declared war. War fever had become an unstoppable force and we declared war anyway.
The idea that the Spanish had destroyed the Maine was, of course partially responsible for this war fever.
Wm. Randolph Hearst was largely responsible for this war fever. He wanted a war to boost circulation of his newspapers. He was the strong promoter of the story that a Spanish mine sank the Maine.

That's not a conspiracy theory, that's fact.

On the night of 15 Feb. 1898 the vast majority of officers of the Maine were ashore, so it is hardly the case that the ship was "on full alert." There were two explosions. It is thought the first was a coal bunker and the secondary explosion was the magazine. The first responders were all Spanish subjects be they native Cubanos or peninsular Spaniards.

Charles Dwight Sigsbee disagreed with the notion that the Spaniards, or, for that matter, Cuban insurrectos had been responsible, and urged the public and the media to wait until an investigation was undertaken. Such investigation initially thought a mine or "infernal engine" had destroyed Maine and was trumpeted in the run up to war.

People in the United States had followed the 1895-1898 war in Cuba in the newspapers, which carried any number of spectacular and gawdawful descriptions of Spanish misconduct and misrule. The idea that a gleaming great white ship flying the flag had now been destroyed with heavy loss of life in a Spanish-controlled harbor on the island enflamed indignation and war fever in the United States. After vainly attempting to destroy the insurgency, including "reconcentration" of the rural population into army-controlled towns, which led to the deaths by disease and starvation of some ten percent of the island's residents, Spain had belatedly extended overtures of "autonomy" in an attempt to create divisions among rebel leaders, and to palliate U.S. public opinion. The refusal of the bulk of insurgent officials to contemplate negotiations absent guarantees of independence scuppered that. The implication is that the Cuban refusal, in turn, drove the U.S. decision to intervene even if Spain expressed willingness to meet U.S. demands.

The fate of the Spanish Pacific squadron in Manila Bay 1 May 1898 and that of the Atlantic squadron under Pascual de Cervera betrays the miss-match between the U.S. Navy and that of a declining European power, while Spain retained naval fighting ships and resources for home defense and concerns about the war extending to the Canary Islands or Morocco as well. Prior to WWI, Spain's Ejército Ultramar was the largest army ever sent across the Atlantic, much larger than the armada dispatched by Britain during the American Revolution or the War of 1812, let alone the loss of Spain's New World Empire between 1808 and 1821. That army on paper was quite formidable, and capable of creating any number of problems, but it was largely confined to controlling all of the coastal towns and cities in a relatively passive defense. The U.S. Navy feared that a war extending into hurricane season necessitated a safe harbor, and so before the U.S. Army Vth Corps landed in Eastern Cuba, the USMC had already been landed at Guantánamo Bay 10 June. The army feared the extension of the war due to yellow jack, malaria, and other tropical ailments that had long stricken the conscripts of their enemy.

After 1898 and the Treaty of Paris, the U.S. adopted population removal in the Philippine War, as did Great Britain in the Boer War. The British named their invigilated civilian holding pens "concentration camps" as a shorter term than the Spanish "reconcentración" and thus introduced the term "concentration camp" into the political lexicon of the 20th century.
 
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