discipline?

Of course, many of the newspaper accounts have more or less foundation
in fact, for no effort is spared by their correspondents to be the first
to ascertain and report the truth. The general impression now seems to
be that no explosion in the ship originated the disaster.

One New York paper stated that the most important evidence was given by
an officer of the _Fern_, who is said to have discovered that the keel
and armor-plates of the _Maine_ had been driven upward, this proving in
his opinion that the explosion must have occurred under the vessel.

The correspondent of this paper also said that the ten-inch and six-inch
magazines were upset and hurled from their places in opposite
directions, and added that the forward boilers were overturned and
wrecked. There were no fires under these boilers at the time of the
explosion. Fires were under the after boilers only.

He added, that from the discoveries of the divers there was every
indication that the explosion came from a point beneath the keel, just
forward of the conning-tower, and that this explosion drove keel,
plates, and ribs almost to the surface, the main force of the explosion
having been exerted on the port side of the vessel.

According to this report, the ascertained facts, collectively, indicate
that the contents of the reserve six-inch magazine were exploded by the
first explosion, and that there was no explosion in either of the other
two magazines. In the reserve magazine was stowed twenty-five hundred
pounds of powder, in copper tanks, each of which contained two hundred
pounds.