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 and replaced with a single military mast with machine guns. The next class of small cruisers in the Royal Navy, the , were protected cruisers, but the Royal Navy returned to the armoured cruiser with the , begun in 1885 and completed in 1889. However, in 1887 an assessment of the "Orlando" type judged them inferior to the protected cruisers and thereafter the Royal Navy only built protected cruisers, even for very large first-class cruiser designs, returning to armoured cruisers only in the late 1890s with the , laid down in 1898. The sole major naval power to retain a