Author : United States. Navy. Courts of Inquiry. Somers (Brig) 1842-43
Publisher :
Page : 60 pages
File Size : 19,3 MB
Release : 1843
Category : Courts-martial and courts of inquiry
ISBN :
Author : John Davison Lawson
Publisher :
Page : 902 pages
File Size : 48,72 MB
Release : 1914
Category : Crime
ISBN :
Author : Thomas Truxtun Moebs
Publisher : Government Printing Office
Page : 196 pages
File Size : 44,54 MB
Release : 2000
Category : Government publications
ISBN : 9780160873126
From the Preface--Established in 1800 with a small collection of books that served the Secretary of the Navy, the [Navy Department Library] holds the most comprehensive collection of U.S. navy literature. For the past two hundred years, it has collected the books, documents, journals, and manuscripts the record the Navy's achievement in combat, international diplomacy, exploration, technological development, medicine, education, and social reform. This literature described in the catalog chronicles the more significant events, customs and traditions, organizations, and personalities in navel history, providing insight into the origins and development of Navy doctrine.
Author : Thomas Truxtun Moebs
Publisher : Government Printing Office
Page : 200 pages
File Size : 18,46 MB
Release : 2000
Category : Government publications
ISBN :
From the Preface--Established in 1800 with a small collection of books that served the Secretary of the Navy, the [Navy Department Library] holds the most comprehensive collection of U.S. navy literature. For the past two hundred years, it has collected the books, documents, journals, and manuscripts the record the Navy's achievement in combat, international diplomacy, exploration, technological development, medicine, education, and social reform. This literature described in the catalog chronicles the more significant events, customs and traditions, organizations, and personalities in navel history, providing insight into the origins and development of Navy doctrine.
Author : James P. Delgado
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 233 pages
File Size : 11,15 MB
Release : 2022-01-24
Category :
ISBN : 0197575226
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.
Author : Richard Snow
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 47,58 MB
Release : 2023-11-21
Category : History
ISBN : 1982185449
A riveting account of the only mutiny in the history of the United States Navy—a little-known event that cost three innocent young men their lives—part murder mystery, part courtroom drama, and as propulsive and dramatic as the bestselling novels of Patrick O’Brian. On December 16, 1842, the US brig-of-war Somers dropped anchor in Brooklyn Harbor at the end of a cruise intended to teach a group of adolescents the rudiments of naval life. But this seemingly harmless exercise ended in catastrophe. Commander Alexander Slidell Mackenzie came ashore saying he had narrowly prevented a mutiny that would have left him and his officers dead. Some of the thwarted mutineers were being held under guard, but three had been hanged: Boatswain’s Mate Samuel Cromwell, Seaman Elisha Small, and Acting Midshipman Philip Spencer, whose father was the secretary of war, John Spencer. Eighteen-year-old Philip Spencer, according to Mackenzie, had been the ringleader who encouraged the crew to seize the ship and become pirates, raping and pillaging their way across the old Spanish Main. And while the young man might have been a rebel fascinated by pirates, it soon became clear the order that condemned the three men had no legal basis. And worse, that perhaps a mutiny had never really occurred, and that the ship might instead have been seized by a creeping hysteria that ended in the sacrifice of three innocents. Months of accusations and counteraccusations were followed by a highly public court martial which put Mackenzie on trial for his life, and a storm of anti-Navy sentiment drew the attention of the leading writers of the day (Washington Irving thought Mackenzie a hero; James Fenimore Cooper damned him with a ferocity that still stings). But some good did come out of it: public disgust with Mackenzie’s training cruise gave birth to Annapolis, the place that within a century, would produce the greatest navy the world had ever known. Vividly told and filled with tense action based on court martial transcripts, Snow’s masterly account of this all-but-forgotten episode is naval history at its finest.
Author : Wayne Franklin
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 834 pages
File Size : 35,58 MB
Release : 2017-04-25
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0300229100
A definitive new biography of James Fenimore Cooper, early nineteenth century master of American popular fiction American author James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) has been credited with inventing and popularizing a wide variety of genre fiction, including the Western, the spy novel, the high seas adventure tale, and the Revolutionary War romance. America’s first crusading novelist, Cooper reminds us that literature is not a cloistered art; rather, it ought to be intimately engaged with the world. In this second volume of his definitive biography, Wayne Franklin concentrates on the latter half of Cooper’s life, detailing a period of personal and political controversy, far-ranging international travel, and prolific literary creation. We hear of Cooper’s progressive views on race and slavery, his doubts about American expansionism, and his concern about the future prospects of the American Republic, while observing how his groundbreaking career management paved the way for later novelists to make a living through their writing. Franklin offers readers the most comprehensive portrait to date of this underappreciated American literary icon.
Author : Buckner Melton
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 330 pages
File Size : 21,1 MB
Release : 2007-11-01
Category : History
ISBN : 1416595929
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.
Author : Thomas Williams
Publisher : AuthorHouse
Page : 722 pages
File Size : 36,37 MB
Release : 2012-11-09
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9781477284889
Admiral Charles Stewarts had eleven sea commands during his sixty-three years as an officer in the United States Navy serving fifteen Presidents. Admiral Charles Stewart commanded and sailed most every type of war vessel from sloops to ship-of-the-line war vessels in the nineteenth century. His skills on the seas were demonstrated in his success in many major combat actions with enemy war vessels. Charles Stewart was a statesmen, diplomat, teacher, scholar, and perhaps most important, a man of truth and honor. Charles was the first officer in the United States Navy to bear the title Admiral. Admiral Charles Stewart fought in the Barbary wars, the War of 1812, the final battle with the Muslim pirates in 1815, as commander-in-chief in the defense of the Pacific (1821) in the breakup of the Spanish held colonies, and the protection of trade in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. He married Delia Tudor in 1813 and they had a son and daughter. The marriage did not last. Stewarts true love was Margaret Smith and they had a son. There was talk about running Charles Stewart for President of the United States beginning in 1840. Admiral Charles Stewart served as a pallbearer on the funeral train of President Lincoln in 1862. United States Navy destroyers and destroyer escorts named after Senior Commodore Charles Stewart. Destroyers were named after distinguished USN/USMC officers and enlisted men such as Charles Stewart. (DD, (Destroyers)-216, DD-291, and DE, (Destroyer Escort)-DE-238 and DE-224 carried Stewarts name.
Author : GAR OLSON
Publisher : AuthorHouse
Page : 545 pages
File Size : 34,69 MB
Release : 2014-02-05
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1491861398
Governments around the world were realizing the disproportionate advantages Great Britain were taking by imposing trade restriction on the American colonies. These restrictions were also affecting their economies in a negative way. British have made it known they want a piece of us. Our defiance of their demands to pay portions of our profit to them had the British Royal Navy looking for us. We will be at war with England in the near future but not until our spineless Congress arms a Navy, as per the Constitution we adopted, to be governed by and following the language of the Constitution. Captain Thomas Williams was exercising his Economic independence but other than his efforts, free trade did not exist in the United States. Captain Williams did not recognize Great Britain as having any rights of legislation over America. America cannot be just a service economy with an expanding government subservient to the British. We need to allow the development of new small businesses that can succeed and employ those who need to work. We can only achieve this by removing all the mountains of British rules and regulations that have been killing entrepreneurs off. Government must allow the economy to grow; not create more Socialism. I want to put a stop to this American. What is his name and what is his vessel? Sir, the name of the American vessel is Tossea and the name if the ships captain is Thomas Williams. Blood Spilled for Freedom by Gar Olson Historical Fiction: The factious story of Captain Thomas Williams (1776-1815) is fun, informative, emotional, and adventurous.
