Maine whose sinking by an explosion on February 15, 1898 precipitated the Spanish–American War. To the south and east is the Atlantic Ocean and to the north and northeast is New Brunswick, a province of Canada. The Canadian province of Quebec is to the northwest. Maine is both the northernmost state in New England and the largest, accounting for almost half the region's entire land area. Maine is the only state to border exactly one other state (New Hampshire to the west). Maine is the easternmost state in the United States in both its extreme points and its geographic center. The
Heavy cruiser battleship sailed at 20 knots, this would mean that an armored cruiser would have to steam at least 26 or 27 knots. Armoured cruisers could not fulfill these criteria without being built much larger and taking on a different form than they had in the past. The result was the battlecruiser. HMS "Invincible" and her two sister ships were designed specifically to fulfill these requirements. In a sense they were an extension of the armoured cruiser as a fast, heavily armed scout, commerce protector and cruiser-destroyer, reflected in the term originally ascribed to them, "large armored cruiser". However, they were