Adventures of a Sea Hunter_ In Search of Famous Shipwrecks - James P. Delgado [22]
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.