BC Cook
IF you steal something that was stolen, have you committed a crime? I suppose it depends on your motive and what you do with it. Imagine a mutiny on board a ship, the criminals sail away, then several of the crew mutiny a second time and return the ship to its rightful owner. In the process nearly everyone ends up dead. This is the bloody tale of the Globe mutiny.
The whaleship Globe put to sea in 1822 with a crew of 21 sailors under the command of Captain Worth. After good hunting in the waters around Japan they stopped at Honolulu where six men jumped ship and another was fired. Worth replaced them with local stragglers, which proved to be a big mistake.
Not long after, mastermind Samuel Comstock set his plan in motion. The mutineers killed Captain Worth and three others and headed for a remote island but the camaraderie did not hold and they quickly turned on each other.
First the criminals suspected one of them, William Humphries, had designs to take over the ship himself. So, after a make-believe trial they executed him.
Then, after landing at Mili Atoll in the Marshalls, Comstock shared his bigger plan with the others: he intended to conquer the local inhabitants and become their king. Comstock’s behavior became increasingly disturbing, even psychotic. He drank heavily, was prone to violent outbursts and threatened the others. They became convinced that he would kill them all.
In a case of “get him before he gets you,” two of the mutineers then killed Comstock. Silas Payne and John Oliver, now the leaders of the rabble, next turned suspicious eyes on each other. It became clear that the killing would not stop until the last man standing.
Another sailor, Gilbert Smith, then took matters into his own hands. He convinced some of the others that this mutiny would end in all their deaths, so he and five others snuck away in the Globe, leaving the rest of the mutineers on Mili Atoll, marooned.
They crossed the Pacific to Valparaiso, Chile and reported all that happened to the American consul. It was a masterful piece of sailing. Six men sailed a ship normally crewed by four times that number, and none of them had formal officer’s training. Their scant familiarity with navigation came only from observing activities on board the ship.
The Globe, along with Smith and the others, eventually returned to its home port of Nantucket. A naval vessel was dispatched to Mili Atoll to arrest the criminals, but the hangman was denied. By the time authorities reached the island only two of the mutineers remained. The islanders had killed off the others.
What a tragic waste. The leaders of the mutiny were killed by their own followers, and so on, and so on, until very few lived to tell the tale. Greed and ambition mixed with violence and suspicion. It proves the old saying is true: There is no honor among thieves.
BC Cook, PhD lived on Saipan and has taught history for over 30 years. He is a director and historian at Sealark Exploration (sealarkexploration.org).
