Radio has been an integral feature of maritime operations,
whether military or civil, for well over a century and it is difficult to
imagine just how isolated all ships were prior to that once they were out sight
of land. Large numbers of vessels disappeared annually, the vast majority as a
result of storm damage, but there must have been occasions when “lost without
trace” meant hijacking by a mutinous crew who thereafter found some way of
abandoning or destroying the ship and disappearing with their booty. An
instance in 1816, centred on the American schooner Plattsburg, shows just how close one gang of mutineers came to
realising their dreams in a world where intercontinental telegraph
communication was still a half-century in the future.
 |
| The
topsail schooner Amy Stockdale off Dover - by William
John Huggins (1781 – 1845) One imagines the Plattsburg to have been generally similar |
In the aftermath
of the futile but destructive “War of 1812” between Britain and the United
States, there was every reasonable expectation or maritime trade picking up.
Among those anticipating a bonanza – the more so since so much merchant
shipping had been destroyed in the war, and vessels were at a premium – was the
Baltimore merchant and ship-owner Isaac McKim. In 1816, a year after the war’s end, he commissioned a
new trading schooner called the Plattsburg,
her name commemorating the recent American victory on Lake Champlain. The
vessel was built for speed and for transport of small-volume high-value
cargoes, somewhat the same role as is filled by air-transport today. The maiden
voyage was to carry just such freight – eleven thousand pounds of coffee and
forty-two thousand dollars in coins, the latter apparently intended for
purchase of opium at the Plattsburg’s
destination, the Turkish port of Smyrna – now Izmir – in the Eastern
Mediterranean.
Shipping
coins – the term for which was specie – was always a hazardous enterprise unless
a ship was under naval escort. McKim and the Plattsburg’s master, Captain William Hackett, were well aware of
the risk from a mutinous crew and endeavoured to keep details of this part of
the cargo secret – though without success. Eight men who shipped as crew appear
to have been driven to do so by knowledge of the specie and by recognition of
the opportunities that could arise for taking it once the ship was out of sight
from land. With the entire North Atlantic and Mediterranean ahead of them, the
opportunities for getting booty ashore would have seemed legion. The Plattsburg had a crew of over thirty –
the number is indicative of the labour-intensiveness of manning even a small sailing
merchantmen – but eight determined men,
with surprise on their side, were likely to have a good chance of pulling off
the hijack.
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| Sail still dominated trade through much of the 19th Century Here is "Ships at Le Havre" by Eugene Boudin 1887 |
The leader
appears to have been an experienced seaman called Stromer who had some
knowledge of navigation and a pronounced ability to sway others. Six others – Smith,
Rog, Peterson, Williams, Stacey and Raineaux – appear to have been less clever
thugs. The eighth man was a Francis Frederick whom Captain Hackett had refused
to ship as crew before relenting on hearing Frederick describing seeing Smyrna
as being an ambition of his life.
Stromer’s
first move was to sow resentment against the ship’s officers among the members
of the crew not yet in the plot. His instrument was to be the brutal thug, Smith.
The opportunity came shortly after the Plattsburg
left Baltimore on July 1st 1816. The wind was light, so that she
merely glided down the Patapsco River and into Chesapeake Bay, where she
anchored. Here the first mate, named Yeiser,
began working up the crew, setting them to tasks until the wind should
strengthen enough to carry the Plattsburg
get to sea. Smith, Stromer’s tool, was reluctant and surly. Yeiser called him
to order but Smith’s manner was unchanged. Authority had been challenged and Yeiser punched
Smith on the jaw, precipitating a fistfight that he was quickly getting the
worst of. He was saved only by Captain Hackett intervening with a hand spike. Smith
was vanquished – and had he been on a man of war would have paid for this
action with his life – but the authority of the officers had been challenged
and had only been reasserted with difficulty. The atmosphere was now ideal for fostering
mistrust and resentment.
The ship’s
steward, a black man called Lamberson (who was probably free, as he was working
at sea) was drawn into the conspiracy and with his help the officers were to be
poisoned when the Plattsburg had
reached the Azores. Lamberson served
contaminated coffee but, though it made those who drank it violently sick,
nobody died. Stromer’s conspirators suspected Lamberson of losing his nerve and
beat him savagely. Poison having failed, there must be recourse to outright
violence.
On July 21st,
as the Plattsburg was passing Santa
Maria, the most southerly of the Azores, the weather began to deteriorate, with
a strong wind, rain and low visibility. Darkness fell and Yeiser had the eight
to midnight watch while the lookout forward was Williams, one of the
conspirators. As the second mate, Stephen Onion, came on deck at midnight to
relieve Yeiser, Williams called out “Sail ho!” The danger of a collision was
obvious.
Onion,
alarmed, ran to the bows to peer into the darkness and Yeiser, who had not yet
gone below, followed him. As they searched for the non-existent sail three of
the conspirators crept up behind them. Yeiser was knocked senseless and flung
overboard. Onion managed to break free and fled aft, where he locked himself in
the bread locker. The noise had drawn Captain Hackett on deck and as he stepped
into the darkness he too was beaten down and thrown into the sea.
The remainder
of the crew do not seem to have participated actively but they offered no
resistance to the mutineer’s take-over. The only opposition remaining was
likely to come from the supercargo – the owner’s representative, responsible
for sale of the cargo – and the second mate, Onion. The supercargo was known to
have close relations with the shipowner, McKim, and was therefore likely to be
a hostile witness should he survive. The mutineers invited him on deck under a guarantee
of safety. He hesitated, but when he did emerge he too was thrown overboard.
Now only Onion remained.
 |
The brutal reality of life at sea that triggered so many
mutinies in merchant ships in the 19th Century
An illustration from an early edition of Dana’s “Two Years Before the Mast”
|
The
mutineers’ leader, Stromer, felt confident of being able to navigate the ship
in the open sea, but with an intention now formed of landing the cargo in
Northern European waters – a decision that seems crazy in retrospect – he
realised that he would need assistance from somebody with more detailed
knowledge of coastal waters. This could only be Onion, who was familiar with
the English Channel and the North Sea. It was however important to enforce
Onion’s future silence by forcing him to accept a share of the plunder, thus
making him complicit in the mutiny. Onion, with no option but death, agreed to
this. By this time the core of eight mutineers had expanded to thirteen, all of
whom were committed to bringing the vessel to Norway, with the remainder of the
crew cooperating under fear of violence.
Under Onion’s
pilotage the Plattsburg passed
through the English Channel and sailed up the English and Scottish east coasts
to the Orkney archipelago, and from there eastward to the small port of
Christiansand, close to the southern tip of Norway. Its isolation made it an
ideal location for smuggling ashore the eleven thousand pounds of coffee in the
ship's hold. It was now however that the enterprise began to unravel. Stromer
seems to have been able to impose discipline on the crew while they were at
sea, but this failed once the men got ashore. They drank and caroused,
challenged Stormer’s authority, talked without caution and ignored his warnings.
They also insisted on having the specie split fourteen ways, each conspirator
to have his own share.
Many now
abandoned the Plattsburg and took
passage in other vessels for the Danish capital. Copenhagen, little more than a
day’s sail way. Among these were Onion and the steward Lamberson. They broke
away from the group and contacted the American Consul, providing full details
of the whole affair. The consul moved fast and action by the respective
authorities followed in both Norway and Denmark.
 |
"Entrance to Copenhagen" by J. C. Dahl, 1830
|
The Platttsburg was seized at Christiansand
but Stromer, the brains behind the mutiny had disappeared, never to be found. Six
mutineers were arrested in Copenhagen, one in Christiansand. The shares of
these seven should have totalled twenty-one thousand dollars but when they were
arrested they had only five thousand. It seems inconceivable that they had
spent sixteen thousand dollars in two weeks ashore and one wonders if Stromer
had not taken much of the remainder with him – if so, he would have had enough
to set himself up in respectable affluence for the rest of his life. Two mutineers
were captured in Europe – one in Prussia and one in France, but the authorities
in both countries refused to deport them to the United States. In total some twenty-seven
of the crew were rounded up in various places but most were let go after questioning.
The remainder were shipped to America. Here, four – Williams, Rog, Peterson and
Frederick – were convicted of murder and hanged at Boston Neck on February 18,
1819. It was noted at the time that "Their
conduct in prison is said to have been exemplary and they met their fate with
firmness.” Onion and Lamberson had acted as state witnesses and a seaman
named White was cleared on the grounds that he had been forced into the mutiny.
The Plattsburg was to have a less than
honourable future. She was brought home from Christiansand and McKim put her up
for sale by public auction. Her speed fitted for carrying another high-value
cargo – in this case human – and she was bought by slavers based in Cuba.
Furnished with Spanish papers, she was captured in 1820 off the coast of West
Africa by the United States sloop-of-war Cyane,
which was tasked with slave-trade suppression. The seizure of the Plattsburgh gave rise to a US Supreme Court case, with the court
finding in favour of her seizure as a slaver, despite a number of subterfuges.
And Stromer? Nobody
knows what became of him, but if he had indeed taken the money, he might well
have died decades later, under some other name, as a revered pillar of society.
Britannia’s Shark by Antoine Vanner
1881 and the power of the British Empire seems unchallengeable.
But now a group of revolutionaries threaten the economic basis of that power. Their weapon is the invention of a naïve genius, their sense of grievance is implacable and their leader is already proven in the crucible of war. Protected by powerful political and business interests, conventional British military or naval power cannot touch them. A daring act of piracy draws the ambitious British naval officer, Nicholas Dawlish, and his wife into this deadly maelstrom. Amid the wealth and squalor of America’s Gilded Age, and on a fever-ridden island ruled by savage tyranny success – and survival –will demand making some very strange alliances...
Britannia’s Shark brings historic naval fiction into the dawn of the Submarine Age.
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