Books: Queeg’s Predecessor

THE CAPTAIN CALLED IT MUTINY (236 pp.)—Frederic F. Van de Water—Ives Washburn ($3.50).

On Dec. 1, 1842, the U.S. brig-of-war Somers was wallowing through the long mid-Atlantic rollers under balmy skies, four days’ sail from the Virgin Islands. Converted into a training ship, the brig was on her way home from what had begun ten weeks earlier as a routine cruise. But a terror unique in the U.S. Navy’s history had mocked routine. From the main yardarm dangled three lifeless, hooded figures. They had been hanged by order of the ship’s captain. Reason: alleged conspiracy to mutiny.

A sensation in its day, the confused, controversial Somers affair has never got much notice from historians. Author Van de Water, an interested party (his great-uncle was put in irons aboard the Somers), has briskly dusted off the archives to raise some Caine with the old mutiny.

Wastrel’s Billet. Acting Midshipman Philip Spencer, 18, was the dreamy, wastrel son of John Canfield Spencer, U.S. Secretary of War under President John Tyler. Thrust into the Navy by his stern father as a last resort, young Playboy Spencer found the ship’s discipline and crowded quarters unbearable.

He got no sympathy from the Somers’ Queeg-like skipper. Commander Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, U.S.N., 39, was vain and self-righteous; in 26 years at sea he had developed a fondness for quarterdeck sermons and main-deck floggings. He was aroused by the slightest threat to his position, and he soon hated Midshipman Spencer. As the cruise wore on, Spencer remained moodily aloof from his fellow middies, plied his cronies, Boatswain’s Mate Sam Cromwell and Seaman Elisha Small, with illicit brandy and cigars. Soon Spencer was poring over charts of the West Indies, boasting wildly that he would take over the Somers and become a buccaneer.

When Commander Mackenzie got wind of Spencer’s fantastic threats, his imagination boiled over. His ship, he wrote, was about to become “a lawless wanderer upon the deep.” He clapped Spencer, Cromwell and Small in irons. But, he felt, the crew’s every move showed “sullenness” and “portentous” looks, and four more “mutineers” were put in irons. Spencer and his two cronies were executed without trial, hanged from the yardarm, and ceremoniously buried at sea.

Hero’s Fate. In Washington, Secretary of War Spencer flew into a rage, was assured by Navy Secretary Abel Upshur that justice would be done. As the details leaked out, Author James Fenimore Cooper denounced Mackenzie’s “terrible transaction.” The Navy promptly began a drawn-out court-martial at Brooklyn Navy Yard, eventually exonerated Mackenzie and set him free to continue his career (he died five years later).

The Somers affair was officially recorded as a mutiny (the only one in U.S. Naval annals), although a lot of people, including Author Van de Water, are convinced that no mutiny ever occurred. The case forced much-needed Navy reforms. Soon afterwards the U.S. Naval Academy was established at Annapolis to screen and train the officers of the future.