looking S at anchor memorial - USS Maine Mast Memorial - Arlington National Cemetery - 2013-08-24 : 無料・フリー素材/写真
looking S at anchor memorial - USS Maine Mast Memorial - Arlington National Cemetery - 2013-08-24 / Tim Evanson
| ライセンス | クリエイティブ・コモンズ 表示-継承 2.1 |
|---|---|
| 説明 | Looking south at the anchor at the USS Maine Mast Memorial. Two Spanish mortars, a flagstone plaza, and an American anchor with a memorial plaque make up the western part of the memorial. There is a great deal of confusion that's been printed about just what is here.Some sources say the bronze mortars (they are mortars, not cannon per se) were captured in Cuba, while others say they were taken from Spanish warshipr or are American guns. Well, here's the documentary proof: They are both Spanish, and they were both at Cavite Arsenal in the Philippines.There's widespread confusion about the anchor, too. The USS Maine carried two anchors -- and neither is at Arlington National Cemetery. One anchor was given to the United Spanish War Veterans, who melted it down and made insignia for its members. The other anchor is in City Park in Reading, Pennsylvania. Representative John H. Rothermel used political connections to obtain the anchor from the Washington Navy Yard, which had possession of it. The anchor was dedicated on August 1, 1914, by then-Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt in front of a crowd of about 13,000 people. If one looks carefully at photos of the USS Maine, it's blatantly obvious that the ship's anchors look nothing like the one at the memorial.Just where the USS Maine Mast Memorial anchor comes from is unclear. That it was manufactured is clear. The plaque makes no claim that this anchor came from the USS Maine. Arlington National Cemetery (which cannot be relied on for accuracy) claims it came from the Boston Navy Yard. Whether it was manufactured for the memorial, or for some other purpose, is unclear.---------------------The USS Maine Mast Memorial is located on Sigsbee Drive in Arlington National Cemetery. The monument is due west of Arlington Memorial Amphitheater.An insurrection began in Cuba in 1892 against Spanish coloniel rule. The Spanish response was brutal, involving prison camps in which hundreds of thousands of Cubans died. Anti-independence riots in Havana were fomented by Spanish Army officers in January, and the USS Maine sent there on a "goodwill tour" to help protect American lives and property. The USS Maine exploded in Havana Harbor on February 15, 1898, killing about 266 of its 354 crew. The keel of the front third of the ship was obliterated. Its upper deck flew into the air, twisted upside down, and landed on the deck of the middle third. Amazingly, the rear third of the ship was almost completely intact, and most of the survivors (nearly all of them officers) were back there. The Maine settled into the bottom of the harbor, its upper decks just barely below the water at low tide.In the month before war broke out, 166 bodies (or pieces of bodies) were found floating had been buried at Colon. Another 25 bodies were buried in Key West.What caused the explosion is unclear, but the American press believed it was a naval mine laid by the Spanish. The U.S. went to war with Spain, liberting Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guam, and Wake Island. The war lasted just 10 weeks.After the war, pressure built to "bring home the dead of the Maine". In December 1899, amid much pomp and press coverage, the 166 bodies in Havana were disinterred and brought by battleship to the United States. These bodies were buried in a field just north of other other Spanish-American War dead, just west of a gravel pit. (That gravel pit is the Memorial Amphitheater today.) President William McKinley, his Cabinet, and most Army and Navy leaders attended the funeral along with 25,000 citizens.The first memorial to the Maine dead was constructed in the first six months of 1900. Near the field of the Maine dead a concrete base was poured. Two Spanish mortars — taken by Admiral George Dewey from Cavite Arsenal in Manila, The Philippines, at the end of the Spanish-American War — were placed on brick piers on either side of this base. In the center of the concrete pad was an anchor. The anchor was manufactured specifically for the site. The 2-short-ton (1.8-long-ton) anchor was hand-welded using rough iron to give it a unique look. A slightly worm-eaten wooden crossbar was inserted into the top of the anchor. The crossbar was painted black to protect it, and on the crossbar a brass tablet was riveted to the crossbar on which was written:U. S. S. MAINEBlown Up February Fifteenth, 1898.Here Lie the Remains of One-Hundred Sixty-three Men of'The Maine's' Crew Brought From Havana, Cuba.Reinterred at Arlington, December Twenty-eight, 1899.The Maine memorial mimicked a similar memorial of four captured guns erected previously that year in the Santiago campaign burial field. (These guns formed the basis for the Spanish-American War Memorial, erected in 1902.)In 1910, Congress enacted legislation to raise the wreck of the Maine and recover the remaining 76 bodies. A cofferdam began to be built around the wreck on December 6, 1910, and the ship began to be revealed by May 1911. Partial remains of a number of bodies, many of them burned, were recovered. Most of the foreward third of the Maine was mangled metal and quietly dumped at sea (although some was too heavy to lift from the mud, and was destroyed by dynamite and left there). The middle third was cut away, and also dumped at sea. The rear third was refloated, and on March 16, 1912, it was towed two miles out to sea and sunk with full military honors and battleship gun salutes. On March 22, 1912, President William Howard Taft oversaw the burial of what were believed to be the remains of 67 sailors.The legislation authorizing the raising of the USS Maine also authorized a memorial to be built at Arlington National Cemetery.The memorial consists of the main mast of the USS Maine set upright into the center of a circular, stylized mausoleum shaped to look like a battleship gun turret. The structure is 90 feet (27 m) in diameter and 15 feet (4.6 m) high. The mast pierces the roof the memorial, and is sunk into the floor inside. The mausoleum is constructed of reinforced concrete, sheathed in tan granite on the outside and white marble on the interior. The names and ranks of those who died aboard the Maine are carved into the exterior of the mausoleum, organized into 23 panels. There are 11 slit windows with bronze grills in the wall of structure. The interior roof is a shallow dome, and the interior floor is lined with mosaic tile. The single entry to the mausoleum has two doors. The inner door is made of wood, and half the ship's bell (retrieved from the ocean floor in 1911) is attached to the outer side of this door. The outer door is a bronze gate decorated with metal rope and anchors. Ceremonial stone funeral urns stand on either side of the entryway. Above the door is carved the following: "Erected in memory of the officers and men who lost their lives in the destruction of the U.S.S. Maine, Habana, Cuba, February 15, 1898".Sigsbee Drive encircles the memorial. On the east side of the memorial is a concrete pad on which the anchor manufactured in 1900 sits. Two bronze Spanish mortars, cast in the 1700s and captured during the Spanish-American War by Admiral George Dewey at Cavite Arsenal in the Philippines, flank the anchor. Originally, these mortars were placed atop brick piers with concrete caps. But when the anchor and mortars were incorporated into the new memorial, two granite balustrades were added along the roadway near the mortars. |
| 撮影日 | 2013-08-24 08:42:40 |
| 撮影者 | Tim Evanson , Cleveland Heights, Ohio, USA |
| タグ | |
| 撮影地 | |
| カメラ | NIKON D7100 , NIKON CORPORATION |
| 露出 | 0.004 sec (1/250) |
| 開放F値 | f/8.0 |
| 焦点距離 | 18 mm |