Sigsbee
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
CHARLES DWIGHT, an American naval officer; born in Albany, N. Y., Jan. 16, 1845; was graduated at the United States Naval Academy in 1863; served in the Gulf blockading squadron during the latter part of the Civil War; and participated in the battle of Mobile Bay. After the war he commanded a Coast Survey vessel, and served for several years in the hydrographic office of the Navy Department at Washington. He invented a deep-sea sounding apparatus and was permitted to accept the Order of the Red Eagle from the Emperor of Germany in recognition of his services in superintending its construction abroad. As captain he was assigned to the command of the battleship "Maine" in 1897. During the Spanish-American War he commanded the auxiliary cruiser "St. Paul," which rendered excellent service as a naval scout. The deepest valley in the Gulf of Mexico is named "Sigsbee's Deep," after Captain Sigsbee, and the scientific name of Sigsbeia murrhina is given to one of the rarest species of deep-sea fauna. It was Sigsbee, too, who discovered near the Morro light, many beautiful specimens of the pentacrini, or sea lilies. In 1898 Captain Sigsbee was given command of the battleship "Texas," and in 1900 became chief of the bureau of naval intelligence. In 1903 he was commander of the navy yard at League Island, Pa. He was commander of the S. Atlantic Squadron, 1904-1905; of the N. Atlantic Fleet, 1905-1906. He retired in 1907. He was the author of "Deep-Sea Sounding and Dredging," "Personal Narrative of the Battleship Maine," etc.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's, writing in 1921, mentions that Sigsbee took command of the "Maine" in 1897 but says nothing of what made him famous: the ship blew up in Havana harbour on 15 February 1898, killing 266 men, and Sigsbee's cabled plea that "public opinion should be suspended until further report" was swamped by the rush to war with Spain. Sigsbee, by then a retired rear admiral, died on 19 July 1923, two years after this account appeared, and is buried at Arlington. The cause of the explosion has since been reargued rather than settled: the naval courts of 1898 and 1911 blamed an external mine, while a 1976 study directed by Admiral Hyman Rickover concluded that a fire in a coal bunker had ignited the adjacent magazine, and a 1998 examination left the question open. His name still sits on the map, the Sigsbee Deep and Sigsbee Escarpment marking the deepest part of the Gulf of Mexico he charted.
Written for this edition, 2026.