USS Somers Mutiny 1842
The Only Known American Mutiny on the High Seas
The only known US Naval mutiny in documented history ended in 1842 with three mutineers having their necks prematurely lengthened.
Mutiny on the high seas has been a focal point in history. Explorer Henry Hudson was cast adrift as a result of a mutiny. The last Tsar of Russia granted a constitution to his country after the battleship Potemkin mutinied in 1905. The Wilhelmshaven mutiny in 1918 was one of the deciding factors in ending World War One. The British Royal Navy was epidemic with mutinies aboard the HMS Hermione in 1782, the HMS Sandwich and her escorts in 1797 at Spithead, as well as the more famous HMS Bounty. The only documented naval mutiny in US history that ended with bloodshed was aboard the brig USS Somers
The USS Somers was a brand new 259 ton, 100-foot brig which mounted ten 32-pounder guns and carried 120 sailors. She was serving an experimental training ship as there was no naval academy at the time and as such included several teenaged midshipmen in her crew. After a quiet summer cruise to Africa the ship's captain, Commander Alexander Slidell Mackenzie (who was also a well-published author and a personal friend of Washington Irving) and mate Lieutenant Guert Gansevoort, a career officer from an aristocratic Dutch-American family (his father was a brigadier general and had served in the Continental Army) were told that a mutiny was afoot. The center of this plot was seventeen-year-old acting Midshipman Philip Spencer. It was thought that Spencer, along with two sailors, Boatswain's Mate Samuel Cromwell and Seaman Elisha Small, were planning to seize the ship and then kill any who opposed them before turning it into a pirate ship. This charge was supported when Mackenzie ordered Spencer seized after Gansevoort found him studying a map of the West Indies and asking questions about navigation. When Spencer’s cabin was searched a scarf was found with a list of names written in Greek of those of the crew who would be kept after the mutiny as well as drawing of the USS Somers flying a pirate's flag. This led to Small and Cromwell's arrest the next day and their subsequent captain’s mast (courts marshal at sea). The defendants were unanimously found guilty by the panel and ordered hanged three days later. On December 1st, 1842 at 1:45 in the afternoon the ship's crew was called to attention. The defendants were tied to the ship's yardarms and heaved aloft while the ship's ensign was raised above them. All hands were ordered to cheer three times to salute the flag. The mutineers were left to dangle in the sails until 3:30 and were then committed to the sea at dusk.
The teenaged Spencer was the son of Secretary of War John C. Spencer and an inquiry and scandal ensued as soon as the USS Somers hit port. Commander Mackenzie, a naval veteran of some 27 years at sea, was tried at courts marshal for murder as well as eight other charges and fully exonerated. The U.S. Naval Academy was established October 10, 1845 in response to this scandal and the practice of training midshipmen at sea. The scandal colored Mackenzie's career and he died just six years later at age 45. The USS Somers herself did not outlive Mackenzie, being lost in a sudden squall in 1846 while under command of Raphael Semmes, who went on to become the Confederate navy's most famous officer. Th US Navy, who often recycles warship names, has had four subsequent ships (all destroyers) named USS Somers on the navy list as recently as 1988.
Gansevoort, the USS Somers first mate and only other officer aboard, went on to finish his naval career as commander of the iron clad USS Roanoke in the Civil War and retire as an admiral. The World War Two destroyer USS Gansevoort (DD-608), which won four battle stars in the Pacific and was sunk as a target in 1972, was named after the old seadog. Gansevoort however may have had a much more lasting impact. His first cousin was a certain Herman Melville, and it is thought that persons and events in Melville’s classics Moby Dick and Billy Budd (which involves a mutiny!) were based on stories passed on from Gansevoort.
Sources
Howe, David Essay on the Legal Aspects of Somers Affair and Bibliography, Department of the Navy- Naval Historical Center
Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships
Melton, Buckner A Hanging Offense: The Strange Affair of the Warship Somers. Free Press.
Extracts of the Somers- Deck Log, 26 November - 1 December 1842, as transcribed by Acting Master Matthew Calbraith Perry, Department of the Navy- Naval Historical Center
