On November 26, 1842, Captain Alexander Slidell Mackenzie of Somers adjusted his uniform and stepped forward to the young midshipman. “I learn, Mr. Spencer,” he quietly said, “that you aspire to the command of the Somers.”

Philip Spencer smiled slightly. “Oh, no, sir.”

“Did you not tell Mr. Wales, sir, that you had a project to kill the commander, the officers, and a considerable portion of the crew of this vessel, and convert her into a pirate?” Mackenzie pressed.

“I may have told him so, sir, but it was in joke.”

Mackenzie glared at the boy. “You admit then that you told him so?”

Spencer’s smile vanished. “Yes, sir, but in joke.”

“This, sir, is joking on a forbidden subject,” Mackenzie said. “This joke may cost you your life.” Now furious, he leaned forward. “You must have been aware that you could have only compassed your designs by passing over my dead body, and after that, the bodies of all the officers; you had given yourself, sir, a great deal to do; it will be necessary for me to confine you, sir.” Mackenzie turned quickly to First Lieutenant Guert Gansevoort. “Arrest Mr. Spencer, and put him in double irons.”

Soon, Spencer was sitting on the open deck next to the ship’s wheel, hands and feet manacled. Mackenzie and his officers searched the ship, looking for incriminating evidence and for co-conspirators. They found both, or so they believed. The first was a note, written in Greek, with the names of those said to be “certain” or “doubtful,” and those to be kept, “willing or unwilling.” The night before, Spencer had approached Purser’s Steward Josiah Wales to confide his plan, joke or not, and had alluded to a plan on paper hidden in his neckerchief. Wales, fearful and sleepless, had reported his conversation with Spencer and told about the paper. A search of Spencer failed to find it, but a hunt of his berth turned up the incriminating document. As for co-conspirators, several of the crew had acted sullenly or had expressed contempt for the captain — led by Spencer, who had from the start of the voyage called the captain a “damned old granny” behind his back.

Then, the next evening, there was an accident with the rigging and a rush aft by the crew to fix. The crew’s dash to the quarterdeck, stopped by Lieutenant Gansevoort, who cocked his pistol and aimed it at the advancing men, was taken by Mackenzie as evidence that Spencer’s fellow plotters were trying to free him. The following morning, Mackenzie arrested two more men: Boatswain’s Mate Samuel Cromwell and seaman Elisha Small. On November 29, four more men joined them in chains. Mackenzie, on a small, 100-foot vessel with a 120-member crew — an extremely crowded ship — faced a real problem. He had no safe place to keep his prisoners, and he was not sure that there were not more mutineers in the ranks. He asked his officers for their opinion. They interrogated members of the crew and offered their advice on November 30: execute Spencer, Cromwell and Small as punishment, and quickly, to re-establish control of the ship.

The following day, in the afternoon, Mackenzie mustered the crew on deck. Most of them were young boys, teenagers, on a training cruise as part of an experimental program to create seagoing schools instead of the rough-and-tumble, often sordid, world of the between decks of a man-of-war. Now these boys were getting a strong lesson on the Articles of War, the rules that regulated naval life, and on the consequences of defying the absolute authority of a captain and his officers. Spencer, Cromwell and Small, with hoods over their heads and nooses around their necks, stood on the deck. Mackenzie asked Spencer if he wanted, as an officer, to give the order to fire the cannon that would signal the crew to haul on the lines and hang them. Spencer had accepted, but now, at the end, found that he could not.

The crewman at the cannon approached Mackenzie, saluted and said: “Mr. Spencer says he can not give the word; he wishes the commander to give the word himself.”

Mackenzie did not hesitate. “Fire!”

The gun roared, and the crew grabbed the lines and ran forward, hoisting three kicking bodies up the yardarm. There they struggled, slowly strangling, until life left them.

Mackenzie climbed up onto the trunk, the cover of the passageway leading below to the officer’s quarters. It was the highest spot on the deck. From there, he spoke to the assembled boys and men, reminding them of the dead men’s crimes and how all men were masters of their own fates, and not to follow the example of those three. He ended by pointing to the flag fluttering at the stern. “Stand by, to give three hearty cheers for the flag of our country.” Three cheers, and the crew went below to dinner. The bodies, lowered to the deck, were cleaned and prepared for burial. Cromwell and Small were lashed into their hammocks with weights. Spencer, dressed in his uniform, was laid in a wooden coffin made from two mess-chests. A sudden squall sprang up, covering the decks with rain. When it ended, the crew, called up from dinner, stood in ranks. Darkness had fallen, and battle lanterns illuminated the scene as Mackenzie led them in prayer. Then, one by one, the bodies splashed into the sea.

When Somers reached New York on December 14, news of the “mutiny” spread quickly. At first, the press acclaimed Mackenzie’s actions. The New York Herald of December 18 enthused: “We can hardly find language to express our admiration of the conduct of Commander Mackenzie.” But questions soon arose over the hasty nature of the executions, as well as their necessity. And then there was the matter of just who Philip Spencer was. The nineteen-year-old midshipman was the son of Secretary of War John Canfield Spencer. A difficult boy, Philip’s short but notorious naval career had been punctuated by drunken behavior and brawls. Somers, ironically, had been his last chance. Mackenzie and his officers had not been overjoyed, to put it mildly, by his arrival. Nonetheless, Spencer remained despite their protests and sailed with Somers on a voyage that took him to eternity.

Mackenzie’s actions aroused outrage among his detractors and concern from his friends when, in response to questions as to why he could not have kept the prisoners in irons until Somers reached port in the Virgin Islands just four days later, he explained that the quick executions at sea had been necessary because Spencer, as the son of a prominent man, probably would have escaped justice ashore. A damning letter in the Washington Madisonian of December 20, probably penned by Spencer’s angry and anguished father, whipped up sentiment for the dead midshipman, summing up his transgression as “the mere romance of a heedless boy, amusing himself, it is true, in a dangerous manner, but still devoid of such murderous designs as are imputed.” The actions of Mackenzie, on the other hand, were characterized as “the result of unmanly fear, or of a despotic temper, and wholly unnecessary at the time”

Debate over the “mutiny” and Mackenzie’s actions raged in the press, on the streets and throughout the nation. Anxious to clear his name, he asked for and received a court of inquiry. The month-long hearing absolved him of wrongdoing, but not sufficiently to satisfy him, his defenders, his detractors or the Secretary of the Navy, who immediately agreed to Mackenzie’s request for a full court-martial. The court-martial, on charges of murder, illegal punishment, conduct unbecoming an officer, and general cruelty and oppression, lasted two months. Some influential citizens rallied to Mackenzie’s support, while others, notably the famous author James Fenimore Cooper, railed against him as a tyrant and murderer. The court-martial finally acquitted Mackenzie of all charges, but not unanimously. At the heart of his own near-hanging was the fact that he did not have the legal authority to execute his men at sea; they had been denied the very court-martial that now protected the captain from a similar fate.