The Curse of the Somers


 The greatest scandal in the nineteenth-century U.S. Navy, the “Somers Affair” occupied the national press for nearly a year. Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, captain of the Somers, faced a court-martial, with his life at stake if he lost his trial. Mackenzie stood accused of murder on the high seas for hanging three of his crew, one of them Philip Spencer, a young officer and the son of John Canfield Spencer, secretary of war under President John Tyler. Mackenzie was acquitted, but his career and reputation were ruined. Philip Spencer, a troubled nineteen-year-old, had violated social norms and naval regulations while “only joking” when he spoke of plotting a mutiny, but as his captain said before he hanged the boy, it was joking on a forbidden subject. The Somers Affair shocked the nation, changed the means by which the navy trained its officers and sailors, and remained a forbidden topic in naval circles even as it constantly resurfaced in news accounts, reminiscences, and in the sinking of the brig with many of its crew during the Mexican War, and most famously in Melville’s classic novella Billy Budd. Written by the archaeologist who helped identify and study its wreck off the coast of Mexico, this book is a classic tale of two troubled, proud personalities, Mackenzie and Spencer, and of events that blossomed into a full-blown tragedy that ruined lives and became a cultural icon.