A Japanese sailor was blown into the air, and, falling in the sea, was picked up alive.
One seaman was sleeping in a yawl hanging at the davits. The boat was crushed like an egg-shell; but the sailor fell overboard and was picked up unhurt.
Three men were doing punishment watch on the port quarter-deck, and thus probably escaped death.
One sailor swam about until help came, although both his legs were broken. Another had the bones of his ankle crushed, and yet managed to keep afloat.
Two hours or more passed before the unsubmerged, wooden portion of the wreck had been consumed by the flames, and at 11.30 P. M. the smoke-stacks of the ill-fated ship fell.
On board the steamer City of Washington, two boats were literally riddled by fragments of the Maine which fell after the explosion, and among them was an iron truss which, crashing through the pantry, demolished the tableware.
When morning came the wreck was the central figure of an otherwise bright picture, sad as it was terrible. The huge mass of flame-charred débris forward looked as if it had been thrown up from a subterranean storehouse of fused cement, steel, wood, and iron.
Further aft, one military mast protruded at a slight angle from the perpendicular, while the poop afforded a resting-place for the workmen or divers.
Of the predominant white which distinguishes our war-vessels in time of peace, not a vestige remained. In its place was the blackness of desolating death, marking the spot where two hundred and sixty-six brave men had gone over into the Beyond.
The total loss to the government as a result of the disaster was officially pronounced to be $4,689,261.31. This embraced the cost of hull, machinery, equipment, armour, gun protection and armament, both in main and secondary batteries. It included the cost of ammunition, shells, current supplies, coal, and, in short, the entire outfit.