Samoan crisis

Samoan crisis

The sketch features the locations of the wrecked German and American ships.

Date	1887–1889
Location	Apia Harbour, Samoa, Pacific Ocean
Result	Both squadrons wrecked

Belligerents

United States

German Empire

Commanders and leaders

Lewis Kimberly

Frizze

Strength

1 sloop-of-war
1 steamer
1 gunboat 200 marines

3 gunboats 150 marines

Casualties and losses

62 killed
1 sloop-of-war sunk
1 steamer sunk
1 gunboat grounded

~73 killed
1 gunboat sunk
2 gunboats grounded

The British in the cruiser HMS Calliope participated as mediators, and the ship sustained fair damage.
Several merchant ships were also wrecked during the cyclone.

The Samoan crisis was a standoff between the United States, the German Empire, and the British Empire from 1887 to 1889 over control of the Samoan Islands during the First Samoan Civil War.^[1]

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Background

In 1878, the United States acquired a fuelling station at the harbor at Pago Pago, on the island of Tutuila, in exchange for providing guarantees of protection to Samoa. The German Empire on the other hand desired concessions at the harbor at Apia, on the island of Upolu.^[2]

Incident

The incident involved three U.S. Navy warships (the sloop-of-war USS Vandalia, the screw steamer USS Trenton, and the gunboat USS Nipsic) and three German warships (the gunboats SMS Adler and SMS Eber and the corvette SMS Olga), which kept each other at bay over several months in Apia Harbour, which was monitored by the British corvette HMS Calliope.

The standoff ended when the 1889 Apia cyclone, on 15 and 16 March, wrecked all six warships in the harbour. Calliope escaped the harbour and thus survived the storm. Robert Louis Stevenson did not witness the storm and its aftermath at Apia but after his December 1889 arrival to Samoa, he wrote about the event.^[3] The Second Samoan Civil War, involving Germany, the United States, and Britain, eventually resulted in the Tripartite Convention of 1899, which partitioned the Samoan Islands into American Samoa and German Samoa.^[4]

Legacy

Walter LaFeber said that the incident made some 'reticent Americans' realise the power implications of expansion in the South Pacific.^[5]

Gallery

An eyewitness drawing taken from a sketch by an officer on the Calliope.
SMS Adler, knocked over on the beach, 1889.
SMS Adler, view of her deck, 1889.
The wreck of SMS Adler, circa 1938
The wreck of USS Nipsic′
Wrecked ships in Apia Harbour. German gunboat SMS Eber is on the beach, the stern of USS Trenton is at the right, and the sunken USS Vandalia is alongside. SMS Adler is on her side in the center distance.
Wrecked vessels at Apia Harbour, Upolu, Samoa, during salvage efforts soon after the storm. The view looks about northward, with USS Trenton and the sunken USS Vandalia to the left and the beached German corvette Olga at right. The wreckage just off Trenton's stern may be from the German gunboat Eber, which was destroyed when she struck the harbor reef during the hurricane.
A view of the sunken USS Vandalia from the deck of USS Trenton.
Another angle of the wrecked warships.
Wrecked warships off Apia
Apia and the beach covered in driftwood and debris from the wrecked warships.
Salvaged guns from the wrecked American ships at Apia
A memorial at Mare Island Naval Yard for the Americans who were killed in the cyclone.
Illustrated London News for 27 April 1889; artist's conception of HMS Calliope being cheered on by the crew of USS Trenton as Calliope escapes from Apia Harbour. Calliope actually passed to the port of Trenton.

References

^ Spencer Tucker (2009). The Encyclopedia of the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars: A Political, Social, and Military History. ABC-CLIO. pp. 569–70. ISBN 9781851099511.
^ Chambers, John Whiteclay (2004). "Samoan Incident". The Oxford Companion to American Military History. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199891061. Retrieved 21 May 2021.
^ Stevenson, Robert Louis (1892). A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa. BiblioBazaar. ISBN 1-4264-0754-8.
^ Ryden, George Herbert. The Foreign Policy of the United States in Relation to Samoa. New York: Octagon Books, 1975. (Reprint by special arrangement with Yale University Press. Originally published at New Haven: Yale University Press, 1928), p. 574; the Tripartite Convention (United States, Germany, Great Britain) was signed at Washington on 2 December 1899 with ratifications exchanged on 16 February 1900
^ LaFeber, Walter (1963). "The Strategic Formulation". The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion 1860-1898. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. pp. 122–123.

Andre Trudeau, Noah. "'An Appalling Calamity'--In the teeth of the Great Samoan Typhoon of 1889, a standoff between the German and US navies suddenly didn't matter." Naval History Magazine 25.2 (2011): 54-59.
Conroy, Robert (2002). "Only luck kept the United States from being occupied by Kaiser Wilhelm II's army between 1899 and 1904". Military History. 18 (August).
Gray, J. A. C. (1960). Amerika Samoa: A History of American Samoa and Its United States Naval Administration. Annapolis: U. S. Naval Institute. ISBN 0-405-13038-4.
"Hurricane at Apia, Samoa, 15–16 March 1889". Events of the 1880s. Naval Historical Center. 2002. Retrieved 1 February 2010.
Kimberly, L. A. "Samoan Hurricane". Events of the 1880s. Naval Historical Center. Retrieved 1 February 2010.
Lind, L. J. (30 December 1974). "The Epic of HMS Calliope". Naval Historical Society of Australia. Retrieved 1 February 2010.
Rousmaniere, John (2002). After the Storm: True Stories of Disaster and Recovery at Sea. Camden, MN: International Marine/McGraw-Hill. pp. 87–106. ISBN 0-07-137795-6.
Sisung, Kelle S. (2002). "The Benjamin Harrison Administration". Presidential Administration Profiles for Students. Detroit: Gale Group.
Wilson, Graham (May–July 1996). "Glory for the Squadron: HMS Calliope in the Great Hurricane at Samoa 1889". Journal of the Australian Naval Institute. 22 (2): 51–54.