A Proposed Solution to the Somers Mutiny Tragedy
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From left to right, and down, Ambrose C. Spencer, Philip Spencer’s elder brother, both sons of John C. Spencer; A United States midshipman of 1848; Illustration from The Pirate’s Own Book (1837), and Slidell Mackenzie as presented in the Duyckincks’ Cyclopaedia of American Literature (1854-1875.) A Proposed Solution to the Somers Mutiny Tragedy By Wm. Thomas Sherman “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat…” ~ Luke 22:31. “It would seem that a panic or mania prevailed on board the Somers -- captain, officers, and crew being afflicted with it in one way, seeing mutiny in everything -- and Midshipman Spencer afflicted with it in another shape -- concocting mutiny out of Greek letters and nothing. It is probably the greatest farce, ending in an awful tragedy, that ever was enacted since creation.” ~ New York Herald, Jan. 17, 1843. Preface There are two things likely to strike one after reflecting on the purported mutiny and subsequent hangings that occurred aboard the U.S. brig Somers in late 1842, and that is the event was, in retrospect, both extremely sad and perplexingly preposterous. With respect to its tragic aspects, a feeling person, I think, will invariably experience genuine pity for either the executed mutineers and or the correspondingly maligned captain; and, perhaps as well, pity for others who were connected with or involved in what took place. In my case, my own emotions have been at times deeply moved in these wises, and which feelings all the more prompted me to want to get at the bottom and solve the puzzle of what transpired on that ill fated U.S. Navy training ship. Which brings us to the second point, namely, that what happened aboard the Somers was extraordinarily absurd. How could persons have been hanged for a mutiny that in point of fact 1 never really occurred; and this owing to the judgment of a naval commander; whom fellow author Edgar Allan Poe (not to mention other famous prose writers and prominent civic leaders of that day) ranked as a something of a gifted luminary, even genius?1 Here then also was a singular opportunity to explain a seemingly bewildering mystery; where an event and all its witnesses were in an ostensibly closed off and confined space; with apparently little opportunity for outsiders to influence either their actions or subsequent testimonies. And yet despite such ideal circumstances for an investigation, attempts at something like a reasonably firm and fixed solution have ever and hitherto been thwarted. Those who have gone to no inconsiderable trouble in researching and writing write about the case, having been so baffled, in arriving at their final conclusions could not help but, in some measure, to invoke the supernatural to aid their effort. The cover of Harrison Hayford’s The Somers Mutiny Affair depicts an eerie looking ship beset by a haunting moon. In the same volume are quoted reminiscences of later Somers crew members who claimed to have seen, on the same ship, apparitions of the hanged victims.2 At the end of his study, Sea Dangers, Philip McFarland finds himself making indirect association between the Somers and the Millerites, and other odd religious zealots and fanatics, of the 1840’s.3 Buckner Melton, in A Hanging Offense, while admitting himself at a loss to account for what happened is reduced to wondering if perhaps something like current day high-schoolers shooting fellow students, combined with the (supposedly) innate cruelty of the sea (with some added lunacy thrown in) were (in the final analysis) what were at fault. In addition to these, there is a historical documentary with the unabashed title “The Curse of the Somers.” It is then a bit of a marvel that no one (at least that I am aware) has yet as well tied in the Somers business with the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle. It just so happens that I myself am one who has my own real life run-in with spirits and the other- worldly. Here you may (or perhaps should) understandably pause and wonder as to my sincerity or my sanity in making such a statement. Please rest assured and as far as reading what follows goes, it is not strictly necessary to question or suspect either; though whether you actually believe my personal claims is, of course, entirely up to you. In support and proof of my avowal of having personally encountered spirit people and “ghosts,” I have written two works on the subject: A New Treatise on Hell; which is a general, howsoever and admittedly imperfect, examination on the subject of (what are termed) “ghosts” and spirit people; and, secondly, my Narrative which is an account of my ordeal and experiences dealing directly with the same persons.4 Beyond directing you to these writings of mine, there is no point to elaborate at length just here on and about what I myself personally know of “spirit people” (as I usually refer to them.) Suffice to say, and if you will, at least for the sake of discussion, grant what I assert as true, let me save us both time by saying that as I got into reading about the Somers case, it as a matter of course occurred to me that spirit people were very possibly involved in bringing about that tragedy. Exactly how and in what manner, I will attempt explanations as I proceed. This said, let me be emphatic in qualifying what follows by making clear that I by no means intend that what I assert cannot in any way be wrong or mistaken. All I do say is that I believe very strongly that what I propose is as good or better an explication of the mystery as any yet offered; while then simply leaving it to others (including of course you the reader) to decide for themselves whether, after hearing me, they do or do not possibly concur. 1 See Poe’s review of Slidell Mackenzie’s (then Lieut. Slidell’s) The American in England, in the Southern Literary Messenger, February 1836. 2 See “Some Reminiscences of Philip Spencer and the Brig ‘Somers’,” The United Service: A Monthly Review of Military and Naval Affairs, vol. IV, July 1890, pp. 35-36, by Robert C. Rogers. 3 As part of which treatment he quotes James Gordon Bennett in the New York Herald, Jan. 19, 1843: ‘‘‘Captain Mackenzie and his officers acted at the time under a species of insanity produced by panic, a vivid imagination, and the spirit of the age all working together.’ [McFarland now speaking] The mad spirit of that age of Transcendentalism, Fourierism, Millerism, Mormonism, Abolition, jingoism: ‘everything is running riot -- perfectly wild.’ Young Spencer longs to be a Red Rover; for his part, Mackenzie ‘is fired with the idea of being a patriot of the old Roman order, and hence gives about a hundred boys, in a short cruise, two thousand colts, cats, or cowhides, and hangs up three individuals, without trial or evidence, merely to enforce order and preserve discipline. Madness all -- madness all . .’” MSD p. 238. 4 You can obtain copies of these at: http://archive.org/details/ANewTreatiseOnHell and http://archive.org/details/WilliamThomasShermanNarrative or both at my Scribd page at: http://www.scribd.com/wsherman_1 2 Certainly it will help most measurably if you can find time to read also my Treatise and Narrative in accompaniment with what follows; to better and more clearly comprehend what I make reference to in this endeavor. But I will otherwise, and as best as I can under the circumstances, try to make your doing so as little necessary as possible; by furnishing you with at least some account and explanation in this study of the Somers case of what spirit people are and what they are like. First and for one, you may for practical purposes and simplicity’s sake think of spirit people as ghosts acting with rational intelligence, calculation, and aforethought. They possess and are composed of a physical substance, albeit of a finer and much lighter sort than we (at least in this like) are materially composed of. Second, we need to point out that in talking about spirit people as they apply to the Somers case we mean criminal spirit people (particularly such who are seasoned, professional criminals); by which distinction we want it understood that a) there (presumably) are spirit people who are not criminals, and that b) if spirit people were among the fomenters of the Somers tragedy they were, not surprisingly, of an overtly spiteful and, on occasion, even malevolent sort. A good example of a criminal spirit person of the type I am referring to can be found in the character of Archimago in Edmund Spenser’s epic lyric poem The Fairie Queene (found in Book I of that work, for instance.) Presented there is a kind of sorcerer ghost who seeks by means of trickery, masquerade, magic, violence, and mayhem to murder or otherwise undo his intended victims. From a more modern perspective we might further see him as a highly skilled master of mind control, crafted illusion, psychological manipulation, behavioral conditioning, and hypnotic suggestion, but who for all that is nonetheless and happens to be a ghost. Typically, he is assisted in some wise by a “regular,” i.e., flesh and blood, person (or persons) who acts as his servant and intermediary or medium between other regular persons.5 In proposing my theory on the Somers affair then I will be making reference to such a one as either “Archimago” or else the “magician-ghost.” Whether or not this kind of preternatural being and personage actually does or can exist one needs to go to my writings on spirit people to see there the case I make for this; as it would simply be too much to attempt the same in this survey of the Somers case.