Overview
"The greatest controversy in the history of the US Navy of the early American Republic was the revelation that the son of the Secretary of War had seemingly plotted a bloody mutiny that would have turned the US brig Somers into a pirate ship. The plot discovered, he and his coconspirators were hastily condemned and hanged at sea. The repercussions of those acts brought headlines, scandal, a fistfight at a cabinet meeting, a court martial, ruined lives, lost reputations, and tales of a haunted ship ""bound for the devil"" and lost tragically at sea with many of its crew. The ""Somers affair"" led to the founding of the US Naval Academy and it remains the Navy's only acknowledged mutiny in its history. The story also inspired Herman Melville's White-Jacket and Billy Budd. Others connected to the Somers included Commodore Perry, a relation and defender of the Somers's captain Mackenzie; James Fenimore Cooper, whose feud with the captain, dating back to the War of 1812, resurfaced in his reportage of the affair; and Raphael Semmes, the Somers's last captain, who later served in the Confederate Navy. The Curse of the Somers is a thorough recreation of this classic tale, told with the help of recently uncovered evidence."
Full Product Details
Author: James P Delgado ,
J Rodney Turner
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Imprint: Tantor Audio
ISBN: 9798212367394
Publication Date: 01 November 2022
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Audio
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Author Information
James P. Delgado is senior vice president of SEARCH, Inc., the leading cultural resources firm in the United States. Before that, he was director of Maritime Heritage for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and president and CEO of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA). He was also host of the National Geographic international television series The Sea Hunters, featuring bestselling author Clive Cussler. Author of more than twenty books, including War at Sea, more than a hundred scholarly and popular magazine articles, and a regular guest in documentary films, he is senior consultant and regularly appears in National Geographic's international television series Drain the Oceans. For decades he has led diving and excavation teams, most recently at the site of the wreck of the Clotilda, the last ship known to have brought slaves to the United States. J. Rodney Turner is a prolific audiobook narrator who specializes in historical fiction set in the post-Civil War era, as well as Westerns, mystery/thrillers, and crime dramas. Rodney served as an air traffic controller in the Navy and in the Federal Aviation Administration for a combined thirty-one years. He has two sons, four grandsons, and one granddaughter, and resides in a small farming community north of Nashville, Tennessee, with his wife of over twenty years, Julie, and their daughter, Rylie.
