Monument to the Victims of the USS Maine (Havana) Monument to the Victims of the USS Maine (Havana) The Monument to the Victims of the USS "Maine" (Spanish: "Monumento a las víctimas del Maine") was built in 1925 in on the Malecón boulevard at the end of Línea street, in the Vedado neighborhood of Havana, Cuba, built in honor of the American sailors that died in the explosion of in 1898, which served as the pretext for the United States to declare war on Spain thus starting the Spanish–American War. The ship had anchored at Havana three weeks prior at the request of American consul Fitzhugh Lee. The monument
Maine-class battleship World War I. After the war, all three ships were withdrawn from service between 1919 and 1920 before being sold for scrap in 1922 and 1923 and broken up. By 1897, the US Navy had five battleships under construction, and no plans to request additional units for 1898. With the destruction of the armored cruiser in Havana harbor and the subsequent declaration of war on Spain on 25 April 1898, however, a large naval expansion program was passed through Congress. The program called for three new battleships, the first one which would be named for the destroyed "Maine". Design work