The San Francisco call., 1898-03-13

available evidence tends to prove there was no column of water heaved up- ward. such as should accompany any explosion of a submarine mine or tor pedo.
 Nv naval friend is disposed to admit there was not, but he is familiar with the action of submarine explosions, and he tells me that while a mine capable of destroying the Maine, Ii submerged to depth of ten feet, would probably spout column of water 100 feet in the air, one placed thirty-hve feet below the surface would cause little more super- ficial disturbance than a slight upheayal or bubbling of the water.
 Compared with the facilities enjoyed by those conducting the American ln- vestigation, the Spanish divers have been at great disadvantage in other re spects. They have no accurate knowl- edge whatever of the intricaCies ot the Maine's construction. They know noth- ing of the numbering of her several frames or the details of her plates. Our naval divers, on the other hand, have had ready at hand the most perfect de tails and drawings that could be fur nished by the Construction Bureau ot the Navy Department, and the expert guidance of men most familiar by actual experience with all parts of the ship.
 Again Captain Peral lays stress, on the united testimony of fishermen that no dead fish have been found floating in the harbor since the explosion. His argument is that any heavy explosion under water would have killed the fish in large numbers.
 The American divers, to a man, have remarked that there are no live fish either in the harbor, at least in the neighborhood of where the Maine went down This Is so unusual as to have been a matter of open comment among them. While doing submarine work in the vicinity of Key West or Tortugas they were surrounded by fish which swarmed about them in thousands. It is a well-known fact that the dead bodies still under water have not been preyed upon by fish, and all the divers agree that they have not seen any
 Havana fishermen find their catches outside of Morro Castle As one of them remarked to me: No self-re- specting fish would care to swim in the dirty waters of the inner bay"
 The naval authority whom l have been quoting consented, at my request, to give me his personal theory as to how the Maine was blown up. It should be understood distinctly 1t is not as serted that this is the theory held by the Naval Court of Inquiry, though 1t is not unlikely to be so. There is well-known type of submarine mine, very powerful in execution, a specimen of which may be seen in Newport, R. l., at the tor pedo station. Oddly enough Of the three men chiefly instrumental in its de ve1opment, one Is Lieutenant Holman, senior lieutenant of the Maine, who narrowly escaped with his life, while an- other IS Commander Converse, now here in command of the cruiser Mont gomery. The third is Lieutenant Com mander Mclean, now in charge of the Newport torpedo station. This deadly device consists of two main sections. The lower one IS mine. It contains. in four chambers, equally distributed IA pounds of gun cotton, wet and dry combined in proper proportion to se- cure the greatest execution. This mine is connected by wires with floating or partially submerged device, the features of which are a projecting lever or trig- ger, which, on coming ln contact with an obstruction, acts upon a set Of stiff springs, which in turn release a ham mer, connect the circuit and explode the gun cotton in the mine attached below.
 Such device as this Is hardly more bulky than an ordinary domestic wash boiler. It could readily be carried to its destination in a small boat and then put overheard, the proper depth having first been ascertained by a simple con- trivance attached to 1t, like an ordinary sounding line The lever or trigger would then remain harmless until the natural swing of a ship completed the contact, when the mechanism would act promptly on the detonators and the en- tire charge would be exploded. This, in brief. is my informant's theory of how the Maine was blown up.
 The idea of any mine connected by wire with shore firing station is gen. orally believed to be untenable, and ip well informed circles there is growing disposition to abandon the theory that the Maine was deliberately moored in a position previously mined for the pur- pose of her destruction No mere ire sponsible miscreant, however, would have been capable either of construct ing, procuring or operating such an in fernal machine as IS believed to have destroyed the Maine, and just here is one of the knotty points in the problem for those who desire to eliminate the element of direct or indirect Spanish re- sponsibiity for the disaster.
 The officers and crew on board the cruiser Montgomery are unusually vigi- lant, especially after nightfall, but in this particular their neighbors on the Span ish cruisers, the Vizcaya and Oquendo, are not one whit behind them Small