The first USS Maine, was a second-class armored battleship whose destruction by an explosion precipitated the Spanish-American War. The exact cause of the explosion is still debated, but William Randolph Hearst's yellow journalism at the time reported that the Spanish forces had attacked the ship. Recent examinations of the hulk have shown that the cause was definitely not a mine but rather an internal explosion - probably a magazine explosion triggered by a coal bunker fire in turn caused by spontaneous combustion. A book on this subject was authored by Navy Admiral Hyman G. Rickover.
