Sunken Treasure : Fighting Ship’s Wreckage Unites U.S., Mexico for Joint Historical Study

A scandal-scarred fighting ship that sank when the United States and Mexico were at war now brings the two countries together in an unprecedented study of history.

Thanks in part to the ship’s dark and chilling past--it was the scene of an 1842 mutiny and hangings that rocked the U.S. Navy and inspired Herman Melville’s novella “Billy Budd”--the wreck of the Somers has inspired the first joint government underwater archeology expedition undertaken in the Americas, researchers said. The expedition completed its first dive this month, finding a ship with its rigging, cannons and artifacts of everyday naval life intact.

“I would like to see this as a precedent for more international accords,” said William Dudley, senior historian at the Naval Historical Center in Washington.

If the two governments had not agreed to work together and protect the site from scuba-diving looters, Dudley said, “Pretty soon what’s left of naval history in that area would be gone.”

Naval historians believe the Somers to be the only underwater wreckage the United States left during the Mexican War, which lasted from 1846 to 1848, and cost Mexico more than half its territory.

The wreck was discovered in 1986 by George Belcher, a San Francisco undersea explorer who was searching for historic sunken vessels for the governor of Veracruz, Mexico.

Thieves pilfered several pieces of pottery and a small arms chest from the wreck before the governments agreed in November to study it together and protect it with regular patrols, Dudley said.

Just back from the research team’s first plunge into the 110-foot waters that cover the ship’s remains five miles off Veracruz, Belcher said the Somers is in even better shape than researchers had expected.

“It has become sort of a cliche to say it, but archeologically and historically it’s a time capsule,” said Belcher. “It had everything on it that a warship in that time period would have.”

Although much of the wood hull has decayed, a reinforcing layer of thin copper sheets remains undisturbed where the capsized ship lies sideways on the ocean floor, said James Delgado, maritime historian for the U.S. National Park Service. Virtually all of its rigging is in place and its loaded, four-foot-long cannons point away from the deck.

Capable of reaching speeds of 16 knots, the Somers represented the pinnacle of sailing ship technology when it was hit by a sudden gale. The 102-foot brig of war capsized and quickly sank while chasing a blockade runner making a break for the heavily fortified Veracruz harbor, Delgado said.

The ship sank into a hole on the edge of a reef, leaving it well-protected from currents and curious divers. For researchers, it provides the clearest look anywhere of clipper ship technology.

“It is an intact ghost of an entire vessel,” Delgado said. “It’s one of the most remarkable shipwreck sites I’ve ever seen. Everything is exactly in its place.

“We even found glass panes from the skylight in the ward room, where the officers used to eat.”

For maritime history buffs, the neat arrangement of the Somers’ remains stirs up images of mutiny, ghosts and cruelty on the high seas.

The 1842 Somers mutiny plot was the only such rebellion in U.S. Navy history.

During the ship’s maiden voyage, Cmdr. Alexander Slidell Mackenzie charged an 18-year-old midshipman with stirring up talk of mutiny among the 120-man crew. The young man, Philip Spencer, was the son of then-Secretary of War John Canfield Spencer.

Mackenzie hanged young Spencer and two others from the yardarms. News of the executions scandalized the nation. Mackenzie later was cleared by a Navy court-martial of murder and other charges.

Tales of cruelty--43 floggings were recorded during the first three weeks of the maiden voyage--and fear of the mutineers’ ghosts circulated among sailors and earned the Somers a reputation as a doomed, haunted ship.

Melville, inspired by his cousin’s firsthand account of the hangings, wrote “Billy Budd,” in which the innocent Budd is forced to serve on a British warship and eventually is hanged because he is hated by a cruel master-at-arms.

In the first week of exploring the site, the Mexican-led dive team this month found no remains of the 32 sailors who drowned when the 80-man crew abandoned the sinking ship. Divers were able to gather information needed to make detailed maps of the site, which is strewn with all 10 of the ship’s cannons, both its anchors, the galley stove and other artifacts. The next dive probably will come no sooner than 1992, after a yard-by-yard map of the site is completed.

There is no gold hidden in the debris of the Somers. The ship carried nothing that could be of great monetary value to adventurers today, researchers said. What the Somers offers is historic and scientific booty--rare clues revealing how sailors lived and how their ships worked--along with a model of international cooperation, Delgado said.

“Here you have the United States and Mexico working on a ship that was involved in a war between the two countries,” he said. “These two governments working together will pave the way for other governments to document their mutual heritage.”