Mutiny on the high seas

Today’s post comes from National Archives Office of Strategy and Communications staff writer Rob Crotty.

In the history of the United States Navy, no formal mutiny on the high seas has ever occurred, though one was narrowly averted on the storied decks of the USS Somers in 1842.

Without a Naval academy to train future Naval officers, the USS Somers set out in 1842 with a crew of seaman in training, on orders from Commodore Perry to deliver dispatches to another ship off the coast of Africa.  After delivering the letters, whispers of mutiny reached the ears of Commander Alexander Slidell Mackenzie and Lieutenant Guert Gansevoort —the only two commissioned line officers aboard.

It was thought that Midshipmen Philip Spencer was plotting to seize the helm and turn the Somers into a pirate ship, a rumor that was validated when a list of crew members who would support an insurrection was found in Spencer’s room, along with a drawing of the ship flying a pirate’s flag.

Spencer and two others were tried on the ship’s decks, found guilty, and hanged.

The story of mutiny may have faded into the annals of Naval history, but Spencer was the son of the Secretary of War and, though exonerated by the courts, Mackenzie was criticized for carrying out the hanging when he was only a few days from land, and less than two weeks from his final port of call, New York.

The USS Somers went on to be commanded by another man, famed Confederate Raphael Semmes, before it went down in a squall during the Mexican-American war, killing almost all of its crew.

If the near mutiny on the Somers sounds somewhat familiar, it may be that you’ve heard it before:  Gansevoort’s first cousin was Herman Melville.  It’s speculated that Melville drew many of his characters and plot lines from the stories told by Gansevoort.