The second USS Somers was a brig in the United States Navy during the administration of President John Tyler. It became infamous for being the only U.S. Navy ship to undergo a mutiny which led to executions.

Somers was launched at the New York Navy Yard on 16 April 1842 and commissioned on 12 May 1842, with Commander Alexander Slidell Mackenzie in command.

Initial cruise

After a shakedown cruise in June–July to the Spanish colony of Puerto Rico and back, the new brig sailed out of New York harbor on 13 September 1842 bound for the Atlantic coast of Africa with dispatches for frigate

. On this voyage, Somers was acting as an experimental schoolship for naval apprentices.

After calls at Madeira, Tenerife, and Praia, looking for Vandalia, Somers arrived at Monrovia, Liberia on 10 November and learned that the frigate had already sailed for home. The next day, Cdr. Mackenzie headed for the Virgin Islands hoping to meet Vandalia at St. Thomas before returning to New York.

The "Somers Affair"

thumb|This lithograph, published circa 1843, shows the mutineers hanging under the US flag.

On 25 November 1842, during passage to the West Indies, Midshipman Philip Spencer, the son of Secretary of War John C. Spencer, allegedly told purser's steward J.W. Wales of a planned mutiny by approximately 20 members of Somers crew, who intended to use the ship for piracy from the Isle of Pines. Seaman Elisha Small was involved in the conversation, and Wales was threatened with death if he revealed Spencer's plan. Captain Mackenzie was not inclined to take the matter seriously, but instructed Lt. Gansevoort to watch Spencer and the crew for evidence of confirmation. Lt. Gansevoort learned from other crew members that Spencer had been observed in secret nightly conferences with seaman Small and Boatswain's Mate Samuel Cromwell. Captain Mackenzie confronted Spencer with Wales' allegation that evening. Spencer replied that he told Wales the story as a joke. Spencer was arrested and put in irons on the quarterdeck. Papers written in Greek were discovered in a search of Spencer's locker and translated by Midshipman Henry Rodgers. Morison attributes the origin of the smear campaign to Whig politics, and a print vendetta by novelist James Fenimore Cooper, because Mackenzie and others had published articles criticizing Cooper's history of the Battle of Lake Erie. On 3 March 1847, Congress authorized gold and silver medals to the officers and men of French, British, and Spanish ships-of-war who aided in the rescue.

Legacy and wreck

Herman Melville – whose first cousin, Lt. Guert Gansevoort, was an officer aboard the brig at the time of the Somers Affair – may have been influenced by the notorious events involving the Somers mutineers. Melville may have used elements of the story in his novella Billy Budd.

The incident is detailed in the novel Voyage to the First of December by Henry Carlisle, written from the viewpoint of the naval surgeon on duty (from his old journals). It is also described in detail in the novel The Big Family by Vina Delmar.

The story of the Somers Affair and the subsequent trial is dramatized in the penultimate episode of the sixth season of the television series JAG. The presentation takes place as a dream by Lt. Col. Sarah MacKenzie, while she prepares to give a lecture at the United States Naval Academy, which came into existence as a result of the Somers Affair. The regular cast portrayed the people involved. Trevor Goddard played the role of Mackenzie, and Catherine Bell (in a play on the identical surname of her usual role in JAG) played Mrs. Mackenzie.

In 1986, an expedition led by George Belcher, an art dealer and explorer from San Francisco, California, discovered the wreck, and in 1987 archaeologists James Delgado and Mitchell Marken confirmed the identification of the wreck. In 1990, Delgado, along with Pilar Luna Erreguerena, co-directed a joint Mexican-US expedition, which involved archaeologists and divers from the US National Park Service, the Armada de Mexico, and the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. The project determined that unknown people had looted the wreck sometime after the 1987 expedition. The wreck remains as a site protected by legislation.

The most notable legacy of the Somers Affair is the US Naval Academy, which was founded as a direct result of the affair. Appalled that a midshipman would consider mutiny, senior naval officials ordered the creation of the academy so that midshipmen could receive a formal and supervised education in naval seamanship and related matters.

References

Further reading

  • McFarland, Philip (1985). Sea Dangers: The Affair of the Somers (New York: Schocken Books), 308 pp., illust.
  • Sherman, William Thomas (2012). A Proposed Solution to the Somers Mutiny Tragedy
  • USS Somers
  • National Park Service: Wreck exploration
  • CASE of the Somers' MUTINY. DEFENCE of ALEXANDER SLIDELL MACKENZIE, COMMANDER OF THE U.S. BRIG Somers, BEFORE THE COURT MARTIAL HELD AT THE NAVY YARD, BROOKLYN, NEW YORK: TRIBUNE OFFICE, 160 NASSAU STREET, 1843.
  • Records of the United States Naval Academy [USNA] – in National Archives