On February 15 1898, a huge explosion sounded through Havana Harbor. The U.S.S Maine, sent to Cuba to protect American interests during the Cuban War for Independence against Spain, was quickly sinking, a massive hole in its fore. An American steamer and a Spanish cruiser, the City of Washington and the Alfonso XII, respectively, rushed to its assistance and saved over 100 men. However, 261 men would die.
Everyone handled everything perfectly. America handled the news in stride and made a nationwide pact to reserve judgment until all evidence could be investigated. The newspapers put out thoughtful analyses and reasonable discussions of the tragedy and promoted a cautious reaction from the U.S. America followed suit and everyone decided that it was best not to jump to conclusions – in this case that the explosion had been caused by the U.S.’s possible enemy, Spain – and allow cooler heads to prevail.
Ha hah ha hah ha, nah, I’m just kidding. Everyone lost their shit. And fast. The U.S. was pretty well on edge because of Cuba’s third war against Spain and because of the atrocities Spain had committed against the Cubans. They were urged forward by the shrill and shrieking accusations – or at the very, very least heavy insinuations – from the U.S.’s two leading newspapers that Spain was responsible for or involved in the tragedy. Though Joseph Pulitzer, the owner of the New York World, one of the most vociferously accusatory newspapers, privately said that “nobody outside of an insane asylum” could actually believe Spain was involved, his newspaper sang a far different tune. Though the newspapers weren’t directly responsible for the cause of the Spanish American War, they sure helped. The rallying cry, “Remember the Maine, down with Spain!” became rampant and two months later, William McKinley, who had been trying to cool things down, declared war.
As far as wars go, the Spanish American War has the bad luck of being in between America’s Civil War and the huge global twins WWI and WWII. So it’s mostly remembered in America for Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders taking San Juan Hill. It’s also when America took Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. It resulted in about 400 American and 800 Spanish deaths from combat. Fortunately, a much more warlike 2,000 Americans and 15,000 Spaniards died from disease. Aside from Teddy’s ride up San Juan, we are left with very few American heroes to avenge the cruel espionage (read: accident because of coal) of the Maine. But since Americans now had Puerto Rico for generations of their kids to vacation and honeymoon in, they didn’t care anymore.
In 1933, during the Cuban revolution, America gets that hero in Charles Baker. While the world has seen many explorers, who’d journeyed the stretches of the earth in search of poles and lost cities, Charles Baker went in search of cocktails – he was an alcohol explorer. He travelled the world finding recipes and collected them along with stories and tidbits of wisdom in The Gentleman’s Companion: Being an Exotic Drinking Book or Around the World with Jigger, Beaker and Flask.
It’s in this collection that Baker not only sets out well over 200 recipes, but mostly acts as something of a meditation on the life of a drinker. His ideations include letting life fly you by the seat of your pants, drinking alone is not only OK, but a wonderful pastime to take up, and awesome, interesting people love to drink.
“All really interesting people—sportsman, explorers, musicians, scientists, vagabonds and writers—were vitally interested in good things to eat and drink. This keen interest was not solely through gluttony, the spur of hunger or merely to sustain life, but in a spirit of high adventure. Crossing all language, class and cultural barriers, the offer of a drink is the handshake for this excellent set.”
He also set out a list of, depending on how you want to read them, rules, guidelines, or observations on the state of the cocktail. The more worldly of which are summarized below.
- Too many cocktails use gin and vermouth
- Cocktails with cute or trick names generally suck and don’t stick around long. We’re looking at you, Slow pleasant Screw up against a Wall
- With very few exceptions and not including a dash of alcohol to touch up a drink, any cocktail with more than 3 main alcoholic ingredients “can ever prove out into anything but the taste melee it is.”
- Don’t use too many liqueurs or cordials in cocktails, they can make a cocktail too sweet and lose its character through dilution.
The narratives that Baker tells along with each of his cocktail recipes is at first reminiscent of J Peterman’s peculiarly exotic blurbs in Seinfeld. At second, though, one can’t help get drawn into the story, wondering how an “itinerant Russian Prince” happened to have both a few jiggers of Absinthe, gomme syrup, and egg whites on him in Paris in the 20s. It’s in this, the only travelogue and drinking companion that one will ever need, that Charles H Baker lays out a recipe for the ‘Remember the Maine.” The story and the recipe are best told in his words:
Remember the Maine, a hazy memory of a night in Havana during the unpleasantless of 1933, when each swallow was punctuated with bombs going off on the Prado, or the sound of 3’’ shells being fired at the Hotel Nacional, then haven for certain anti-revolutionary officers.
Treat this one with the respect it deserves, gentlemen. Take a tall bar glass and toss in 3 lumps of ice. Onto this foundation donate the following in order given: 1 jigger of good rye whiskey, ½ jigger Italian vermouth, 1 to 2 tsp of cherry brandy, ½ tsp absinthe or Pernod Veritas. Stir briskly in clockwise fashion – this makes it seagoing, presumably! – turn into a big chilled saucer champagne glass, twisting a curl of green lime or lemon peel over the top.
So, my friends, make that cocktail and let’s all report back. Once created, shout forth (in the privacy of your own house, perhaps in a soundproof room) “Remember the Maine!” and if you follow that with the awfully jingoistic “Down with Spain!” make sure you convey it with irony. More importantly, keep Mr. Baker the alcohol adventurer in your thoughts as you drink. Keep in mind his belief that were it not for alcohol, he never would have had the adventures he’d had. For in a way that is absolutely true for all of it. Lastly, do not fear the lethal morning after disease, for you are all explorers of the first rate.
