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
Protected cruiser Argentina, Austria and the United States. The French Navy adopted the protected cruiser wholeheartedly in the 1880s. The Jeune École school of thought, which proposed a navy composed of fast cruisers for commerce raiding and torpedo-boats for coast defence, was particularly influential in France. The first French protected cruiser was the , laid down in 1882, and followed by six classes of protected cruiser – and no armoured cruisers. The Royal Navy was equivocal about which protection scheme to use until 1887. The large , begun in 1881 and finished in 1886, were built as armoured cruisers but were often