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We can't forget the Maine

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By GARY R. MORMINO

Tribune correspondent

Published: October 25, 2009

In January 1898, The Tampa Tribune noted that the battleship USS Maine had docked in Key West. Sailors enjoyed the tropical winter weather, swimming off the Fort Taylor pier and playing baseball against cigar factory teams.

The USS Maine proceeded to the harbor of Havana, Cuba. On Feb. 9, the Tribune eerily reported, "the ship's crew must feel uncomfortable lying close in the harbor of Havana." Six days later, a thunderous explosion ripped the Maine apart, killing 266 officers and sailors.

"Remember the Maine": Rarely has there been a more-ready slogan for a more imperfect war. By the time President William McKinley asked Congress for a declaration of war on April 11, 1898, the country was prepared. The Spanish-American War had begun.

Small town, big invasion

The same cannot be said for the small community of Tampa. Few residents of a city of 15,000 inhabitants could have imagined how events in Havana or Manila would soon overwhelm Tampa.

Journalists spotted Henry Bradley Plant outside Secretary of War Russell Alger's office in the spring of 1898. Plant, the robber baron and shaper of Tampa's destiny, understood an elementary principle of American politics: Influential friends and well-placed favors matter in the awarding of railroad lines as well as selection of military sites. Plant and Congressman Stephen Sparkman, a Tampa Democrat, lobbied furiously to bring thousands of troops and ships to Tampa.

Just days after the United States declared war against Spain, Tampa was awarded the prize of serving as chief port of embarkation. The selection of Tampa as the center of military operations had one major drawback: Officials had days, not years, to prepare for an avalanche of soldiers, animals, equipment and ships. It was the equivalent of 10 Super Bowls.

A war of words

Preceding the Army and Navy was a vanguard of 125 reporters, including America's first moving-picture war correspondents. Many stayed at Plant's sumptuous Tampa Bay Hotel. The edifice opened in 1891. Normally the hotel would have been closed in late spring, so Plant cashed in on the free-spending Fourth Estate.

Richard Harding Davis - he of the pith helmet - wrote, "Only God knows why Plant built a hotel here, but thank God he did." He described the hotel as a "Turkish harem with the occupants left out ... an Eveless Eden."

If journalists adored the Tampa Bay Hotel, they generally lacerated the city across the river. Among the barbs:

•The New York Journal headline announced: "Tampa is a Poor Place for a Stray Chicken."

•Davis depicted Tampa as a "city chiefly composed of derelict wooden houses drifting on an ocean of sand."

•British correspondent John Atkins Black added, "Tampa is typically Florida; there is sand, and then sand, and lastly sand."

•The hoary New York Times lampooned Tampa as "poor in architecture, poor in population, and worse as regards streets and highways."

•One journalist overheard a sweating soldier cursing, "We're gonna lick them Spaniards and make 'em take Florida back!"

By early May, the army of invasion began to arrive. Harper's Weekly magazine pitied troops sweating night and day in their "thick flannel shirts and winter trousers."

An army of 25,000 men and thousands of horses, mules and rail cars quickly overwhelmed Tampa.

Football comes to Tampa

Almost lost in the myriad tales of Tampa and the Spanish-American War is Edward Marshall's 1899 account, "The Story of the Rough Riders." Marshall, a New York Journal reporter who accompanied the Rough Riders into battle and was wounded, related a story of how the soldiers helped popularize football.

According to Marshall, "There were a good many football players in the (Rough Rider) regiment, and some of them had college records." He related that at the first recorded football game in Tampa history, one of the soldiers, a "strong man from Indian Territory," insisted upon playing the game "with his spurs still on."

ROUGH RIDERS ABOUT TOWN

The Rough Riders of Tampa welcomed the Theodore Roosevelt Association to Tampa this weekend for their 90th annual meeting. The visit ends with a bus tour today with stops in Tampa Heights, Port Tampa, Picnic Island and Ybor City. For information on the group, go to www.tampa-roughriders.org.

Gary R. Mormino is director of the Florida Studies Program at USF St. Petersburg. He invites your letters and stories. Reach him by e-mail at gmormino@mail.usf.edu or in care of the Florida Studies Program, Snell House, 140 Seventh Ave. S., St. Petersburg

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