"Henry Carlisle has done a superb job. "Voyage to the First of
December" has true distinction . A story that has long lain buried
in the annals of the American Navy is the record of the only
alleged mutiny-an abortive one at that-in our country's naval
history . the story is told with close adherence to the records,
but using the novelist's license to probe into the psychology of
the actors in this drama, and to fill in the tantalizing spaces
between the spare lines of fact."-"The Wall Street Journal"
Drawn from the facts of a notorious episode in U.S. naval
history, the "Somers" Mutiny Affair of 1842, Carlisle has crafted a
stunning novel in the tradition of great stories of the sea. The
story of the conflict between eighteen-year-old Midshipman Philip
Spencer, son of President Tyler's Secretary of War, and the man of
necessities, Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, commander of the
"Somers," provides an existential excursion to the center of a
tragedy in our past which brilliantly illuminates the present.
On the first of December in 1842, Philip Spencer was hanged at
sea along with two sailors, the three having been charged with
leading a conspiracy to capture their ship, the brig of war
"Somers." "Voyage to the First of December" re-creates this
controversial incident through the journal of the ship's surgeon.
Was there a real mutiny which nothing less than execution could
check-or had the officers acted in panic, the commander for perhaps
darker reasons? What happened at sea that the court-martial chose
to overlook?
"Voyage to the First of December" effortlessly unites the taste
of the sea with the relentless drama of men sitting in judgment of
one another; a conflict between authority and rebellion, and
ultimately one man's quest for meaning.
General
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