A detailed and riveting account of the U.S. Navy's greatest mutiny and its wide-ranging cultural and historical impact
The greatest controversy in the history of the U.S. Navy of the early American Republic was the revelation that the son of the Secretary of War had seemingly plotted a bloody mutiny that would have turned the U.S. brig Somers into a pirate ship. The plot discovered, he and his co-conspirators were hastily condemned and hanged at sea.
The repercussions of those acts brought headlines, scandal, a fistfight at a cabinet meeting, a court martial, ruined lives, lost reputations, and tales of a haunted ship "bound for the devil" and lost tragically at sea with many of its crew. The "Somers affair" led to the founding of the U.S. Naval Academy and it remains the Navy's only acknowledged mutiny in its history. The story also inspired Herman Melville's White-Jacket and Billy Budd. Others connected to the Somers included Commodore Perry, a relation and defender of the Somers' captain Mackenzie; James Fenimore Cooper, whose feud with the captain, dating back to the War of 1812, resurfaced in his reportage of the affair; and Raphael Semmes, the Somers' last caption who later served in the Confederate Navy.
The Curse of the Somers is a thorough recreation of this classic tale, told with the help of recently uncovered evidence. Written by a maritime historian and archaeologist who helped identify the long-lost wreck and subsequently studied its sunken remains, this is a timeless tale of life and death at sea. James P. Delgado re-examines the circumstances, drawing from a rich historical record and from the investigation of the ship's sunken remains. What surfaces is an all-too-human tale that resonates and chills across the centuries.
Industry Reviews
James Delgado, a well-published maritime historian and archaeologist, has given the infamous 'Somers Affair' a 21st century twist with a fascinating view of sailors' daily life in the pre-civil war sailing navy. This is a diverting and essential book covering a rare mutiny and its punishment in the ante-bellum U.S. Navy. * William S. Dudley, author of Inside the US Navy of 1812-1815 *
Was young Philip Spencer actually plotting a mutiny, or was he simply an over-imaginative teenager? Was Alexander Slidell Mackenzie a responsible skipper protecting his ship, or was he over his head in command and guilty of a paranoid overreaction? In this reconstruction of the so-called Somers mutiny, James P. Delgado offers a vivid and gripping account of the personalities and circumstances that culminated in one of the most controversial episodes of American naval history. * Craig L. Symonds, author of Nimitz at War *
Delgado leads readers into that vortex of nineteenth-century recrimination that continues to this day. He has skillfully put the facts on the table in The Curse of the Somers. * John E. Grady, Fairfax, Virginia, The Northern Mariner *
This lively and informative book is the result of Delgado's scholarly engagement with the history of that 'most infamous ship' in American naval history. Delgado draws on a host of primary and secondary sources, offering a fresh view on a well-known case. * Steven Pfaff, International Journal of Maritime History *
