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Cargando... A Hanging Offense: The Strange Affair of the Warship Somerspor Buckner Melton
  
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Mutiny on the Bounty is one of history's greatest naval stories--yet few know the similar tale from America's own fledgling navy in the dying days of the Age of Sail, a tale of mutiny and death at sea on an American warship. In 1842, the brig-of-war Somers set out on a training cruise for apprentice seamen, commanded by rising star Alexander Mackenzie. Somers was crammed with teenagers. Among them was Acting Midshipman Philip Spencer, a disturbed youth and a son of the U.S. Secretary of War. Buying other crew members' loyalty with pilfered tobacco and alcohol, Spencer dreamed up a scheme to kill the officers and turn Somers into a pirate ship. In the isolated world of a warship, a single man can threaten the crew's discipline and the captain's authority. But one of Spencer's followers warned Mackenzie, who arrested the midshipman and chained him and other ringleaders to the quarterdeck. Fearing efforts to rescue the prisoners, officers had to stay awake in round-the-clock watches. Steering desperately for land, sleep-deprived and armed to the teeth, battling efforts to liberate Spencer, Somers's captain and officers finally faced a fateful choice: somehow keep control of the vessel until reaching port--still hundreds of miles away--or hang the midshipman and his two leading henchmen before the boys could take over the ship. The results shook the nation. A naval investigation of the affair turned into a court-martial and a state trial and led to the founding of the Naval Academy to provide better officers for the still-young republic. Mackenzie's controversial decision may have inspired Herman Melville's great work Billy Budd. The story of Somers raises timeless questions still disturbing in twenty-first-century America: the relationship between civil and military law, the hazy line between peace and war, the battle between individual rights and national security, and the ultimate challenge of command at sea. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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 Google Books — Cargando...GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)343.73Social sciences Law Military, defense, public property, public finance, tax, commerce {trade}, industrial law North America United StatesClasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio: (3.5)
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On the surface you would say O. K. discipline in those days were harsh and these things happened in those days.. But it ends up that these three young men were hanged without a court Marshall or the benefit of legal council of any kind.
Add to the mix that the mastermind of the mutiny was a young acting Midshipman named Phillip Spencer whose father was John Canfield Spencer was Pres. John Tyler's secretary of war, and had arranged the boy's commission with the help of Capt. Oliver "Hazzard Perry.You now have the setting for high drama and what sounds like a Hollywood script.
The book is written in a very low keyed tone. Every chapter is more of an essay on the main people involved and each part of the event as it unfolds. Overall it gives a good account of the facts as known and the condition both political and physical of the U.S. Navy and the Country ain 1842.
The story is a who's who of America and American Maritime History. James Fenmore Cooper, Richard Henry Dana Jr., and almost every member of the Perry family. William H. Seward who would be Pres. Lincoln's Sec. of State in the Civil War.
The Lt. aboard the Somers was Melville's cousin and may have been the source for Melville's book Billy Budd. There are some very striking similarities between Capt. Mackenzie and Captain Vere. The last exchange between Capt. Mackenzie and Seaman Smalls is touching ;
Capt. Meckenzie - "Small" ..."what have I done to you that you won't bid me goodbye?"
..... "I did not know that you would bid a poor bugger like me goodbye Sir,"
.... Now Meckenzie it was who asked forgiveness of Small. He told the seaman that he had to go through with the execution; both the honor of the flag and the safety of the crew demanded it. "Yes, Sir and I honor you for it," replied Small. "God Bless that Flag!"
Billy Budd years later says ""God bless Captain Vere!" (