The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1898-03-29

in the region of ten-inch magazines.
He went down to where the keel be-
came horizontal at frame 23, walked aft
about twenty-five feet and climbed
over lot of wreckage consisting of
plates and bulkheads standing upright.
The upper ends of these plates were
ragged and he crawled over them to
what he thought was part of a boiler.
He could not give definite details, but
he thought it was a boiler A little
after this he walked out to port clear
of the ship into the mud. He was at
this time forward of the break of the
ship at frame Al. Returning about ten
feet in he found wreckage. He exam
ined this plate and found it curved as
If it were a part of the ship. 1t point
ed toward the starboard bow, but 1t
was so dark that he could not distin-
guish the color. All the edges of the
plating were rough. The compartment
seemed to be about two and one-third
| or three feet wide. Forward from this
| point he found a six-inch tank. 1t was
intact and was sent up. 1t proved to
be full tank. He found a lot of brok-
en- tanks split upon the seams, and in
one tank, the cover of which has holes
in it, he found lot of mud, which was
brought up and which looked like dis
| solved powder. There was any guam
tity of similar mud in the same place.
| The mud around the tanks was black;
that of the harbor Is gray"
Ensign Powelson was recalled at the
| beginning of the thirteenth days hear
ing, and after correcting his preceding
| testimony he was asked whether he
had taken an angle which would show
the position of the ram with regard to
the keel Of the ship. He said he had
sent the diver down to make load line
| fast as near to the point of the ram as
possible.
| He could not find the point of the
ram, as it was in the mud, and he made
his load line fast to some weights along
a ram plate at a distance which he es-
| timated from the curve of the keel at
| that point and the stem of the ship, to
be about five feet abaft the ram point.
The man was sent out to plumb this
point on the ram plate. A diver was
also sent down to make a line fast to
the vertical keel, where the broken
place occurs at frame IS. Powelson
| then got into the boat and plumbed the
latter point, taking the angle between
the plumb line of the armor plate and
the center of the aft funnel of the
Maine
| Ensign Powelson was recalled on
March Is and explained how he got the
data for his sketches which played
such an important part in the work of
the court He said he sent divers down
at various points along the line Of the
keel, as it lay broken and twisted on
the harbor bed. Then he got in boat
and located the points on the keel by a
lead line. On the wreck he established
stations at the main mast, the port
crane, the smokestack, and so forth.
and from these bases he would get the
bearing by angles of his lead line, as It
rested on the keel and other points of
! the wreckage under water. Thus he
was able to present a map of the wreck
| both above and below water that was
automatically correct BY comparing
this with the original plans of the ves-
sci it was possible to tell just how
much and in what direction any part
of the Maine had been distorted by the
explosion without relying on under
water estimates by the divers.