USS Somers (1842)
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The USS Somers was a brig in the United States Navy and operated primarily during the Mexican-American War . The USS Somers was the only ship in the American Navy to carry out executions for mutiny at sea.
The ship
The design of the Somers and their identical sister ship Bainbridge comes from Samuel Humphreys , the lines correspond to the type of the Baltimore clipper and the rigging was strongly disproportionate, which made them fast sailors. Both ships were built at the navy's own shipyards , the Somers in New York and the Bainbridge in Boston .
Initial rides
The Somers entered service on May 12, 1842 under Commander Alexander Slidell Mackenzie . After the maiden voyage in June – July to Puerto Rico and back, the new brig left the port of New York on September 13, 1842 with the destination of the Atlantic coast of Africa , where she was to meet the frigate USS Vandalia . On this voyage, she served as an experimental training ship for aspirants to the Navy.
After making stops in Madeira , Tenerife and Praia , still looking for the Vandalia , she finally reached Monrovia , where she was informed that the frigate was meanwhile on its way home. The next day, Commander Mackenzie set sail for the Virgin Islands , where he hoped to meet the Vandalia in Saint Thomas Harbor before returning to New York.
The "Somers Affair"
On November 26, 1842, near St. Thomas , Lieutenant Guert Gansevoort informed the commanding officer of rumors of a mutiny according to which the officers and part of the crew were to be murdered and the ship was to be used for piracy. On December 1, midshipman Philip Spencer, son of Secretary of War John Canfield Spencer , boatswain's mate Samuel Cromwell, and seaman Elijah Small were hanged at the main yard for mutiny . The Somers reached St. Thomas on December 5th and returned from there to New York, where it arrived on December 14th. She stayed there pending a naval court investigation into the mutiny and executions. At that hearing, Mackenzie was exonerated by the court; He was also acquitted of all charges in a subsequent court martial (he himself applied for a court martial in order to avoid civil proceedings).
In the home fleet
On March 20, 1843, Lt. John West took command of the Somers and ran them as part of the home fleet . In the following years she operated along the Atlantic coast and in the area of the West Indies.
Mexican-American War
The Somers was in the Gulf of Mexico at the height of Veracruz , as in 1846 the Mexican-American War broke out; apart from a few trips to Pensacola in Florida (for provisions and other logistical matters), she stayed there until winter as part of the sea blockade .
On the evening of November 26, the Somers blocked , this time under the command of Lt. Raphael Semmes , Vera Cruz, when the Mexican schooner Criolla slipped through the blockade and entered the harbor. Thereupon a boarding party was dispatched, which boarded the ship and took possession of it; However, since the lack of wind made it difficult to sail, the boarding crew set the Criolla on fire, after which it retreated in their boats together with seven prisoners of war and under fire from the land to the Somers . Unfortunately, it turned out that the Criolla was supposed to be spying on behalf of the US government under the responsibility of Commodore David Conner .
On December 8th, 1846, while hunting a blockade breaker from Vera Cruz, the Somers was hit by a sudden gust and capsized. The losses were 32 crew members drowned and seven captured.
reception
The aforementioned Lt. Guert Gansevoort was a cousin of Herman Melville ; this was possibly influenced by the infamous events of the Somers affair ; some elements seem to have found expression in his novel Billy Budd .
The incident was detailed in the novel Voyage to the First of December (by Henry Carlisle ). The book tells the story from the ship's doctor's point of view and is based on old reports that he had collected.
The story of the "Somers Affair" and its subsequent process is thematized in an episode of the television series JAG , with the well-known members of the series crew slipping into some of the roles of this story.
The wreck
In 1986 the wreck was discovered by an expedition led by George Belcher , an art dealer and researcher from San Francisco . In 1987 it was identified by archaeologists James Delgado and Mitchell Marken . In 1990 it was finally implemented in a joint project in which both US and Mexican institutions and researchers were involved (including Pilar Luna Erreguerena (Mexico), US National Park Service , Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia , Armada de Mexico archaeologists etc. ), explored. According to a map of the site, the wreck was looted by unknown persons in the period after the 1987 expedition. Legally, the wreck remains in the possession of Vera Cruz.
literature
- Case of the Somers' Mutiny. Defense of Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, Commander Of The US Brig Somers, Before The Court Martial Held At The Navy Yard, Brooklyn. Tribune Office, New York 160 Nassau Street, 1843.
- Mutiny on a United States Warship . In: Illustrirte Zeitung . No. 5 . J. J. Weber, Leipzig July 29, 1843, p. 67 ( Wikisource ).
- HG Langley (Ed.): Proceedings of the Naval Court Martial in the Case of Alexander Slidell. A Commander in the Navy of the United States . 1844 (with a comment by James Fenimore Cooper ) archive.org
- Philip McFarland Sea Dangers: The Affair of the Somers . Schocken Books, New York 1985, ISBN 0-8052-3990-1 , 308 pp., Illust.
- Buckner Melton: A Hanging Offense: The Strange Affair of the Warship Somers . Free Press, April 1, 2003, ISBN 0-7432-3283-6 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Howard I. Chapelle: The history of American sailing ships . Norton / Bonanza Books, New York 1935, ISBN 0-517-02332-6
- ^ Howard I. Chapelle: The history of American sailing ships . Norton / Bonanza Books, New York 1949, ISBN 0-517-00487-9
- Jump up ↑ JAG - Season 6 - Episode 23 - Mutiny