Hanging Offense

The true story of a transatlantic training voyage gone horribly wrong, Mutiny is both maritime adventure and legal thriller. In 1842, just at the twilight of the Age of Fighting Sail, the sleek brig-of-war Somers set out from the Brooklyn Navy Yard on a training cruise for apprentice seamen, commanded by Alexander Mackenzie, a socially prominent New Yorker and rising Navy star. His new ship, one of the last Navy vessels to be powered solely by sail, was crammed with teenagers. Among them was a disturbed nineteen-year-old midshipman by the name of Philip Spencer, the son of the U.S. Secretary of War. Buying other crew members' loyalty with pilfered tobacco and alcohol, Spencer fomented a plan to kill the officers on his vessel and turn the swift little brig into a pirate ship. The bizarre, but not impossible, daydream of a troubled young man, mutiny was no joke on a warship. Arrested and chained to the quarterdeck with some of his henchmen, Spencer encouraged rescue attempts by cohorts. Finally, while still hundreds of miles at sea, with almost no hope of help, and in a state of despair and near exhaustion, Captain Mackenzie and his officers hanged the three ringleaders of the plot. The result was the captain's court-martial on murder charges, the most famous trial of its day.Based on a wealth of primary sources, Mutiny brims with fascinating details about how a nineteenth-century warship operated at sea, the system of naval discipline, and the political and judicial processes of the time. Buckner Melton masterfully depicts the insular society of a warship, the challenge of command at sea, and the terrible and fateful confrontation between two men of very different characters, beyond society's view or control.