American Sanctuary: Mutiny, Martyrdom, and National Identity in the Age of Revolution by A. Roger Ekirch (review)

American Sanctuary is simultaneously a gripping tale of betrayal, pursuit, and extradition and a powerful analysis of the concepts of belonging and protection in the early American republic. A. Roger Ekirch painstakingly reconstructs the mutiny aboard the H.M.S. Hermione in September 1797—an event that has yet to garner significant scholarly attention but about which Thomas Jefferson wrote, “No one circumstance . . . has affected the popular mind more” (xii). On the one hand, Ekirch’s book is a captivating narrative that will absorb readers across generations and disciplines. On the other, the book has all the virtues of rigorous scholarship, its story crafted almost entirely from archival sources and Admiralty records, many of which have not been previously examined. Although a dominant theme is how this mutiny shaped America’s vision of itself as an “asylum for mankind” (xii), Ekirch does not cleave to one argument.¹ Instead, he uses this story of resistance and martyrdom to engage a range of dynamic debates in American and British imperial history.

The first two parts of the book immerse readers in the Anglo- American Atlantic world of the 1790s, from its international conflicts to the grievances of seamen and the brutality of life aboard British naval ships. This was a complex world where Britain and the United States signed the Treaty of Amity, Commerce, and Navigation (1795) even as the British, desperate to man their vessels during the French Wars (1793– 1815), impressed an estimated ten thousand American sailors. Although resistance to impressment and subsequent naval discipline was hardly unknown, official British responses to mutiny on the Hermione assumed a new urgency amid public anxiety sparked by the French Revolution and inflamed by the April 1797 strike aboard seventeen ships at Spithead. Such responses became emblems of Britain’s unflagging determination to stand against challenges to established authorities.

In February 1797, command of the Hermione had fallen to naval lieutenant Hugh Pigot, widely known for disciplining by brutal flogging. Ekirch notes that things would have turned out differently “had its captain enjoyed the trust of his crew” (28), particularly as there were few prizes to be found in the Caribbean during the summer of 1797 to offset the hardships common on board naval ships. But Pigot’s penchant for inspiring fear through corporal punishment would prove to be his undoing. Early on September 21, the Hermione’s crew witnessed the flogging of “twelve or fourteen” (32) compatriots for tardiness. That night, within sight of the western coast of Puerto Rico and with the revolutionary era’s promise of social equality in the air, the crew slaughtered their captain and his senior officers with a savagery few would have imagined possible the day before. In the light of the early morning, the ringleaders headed for La Guaira, colonial Venezuela’s largest port, hoping to leverage global conflict and seek the protection of Britain’s enemy. Once they arrived, the crew admitted to having mutinied against their captain’s brutality but claimed they had left officers in a shallop with provisions off the coast of Puerto Rico. The Spanish governor granted them twenty-five dollars and liberty to roam in the port. In exchange, the Hermione was renamed the Santa Cecilia.

This surrender of their ship to the enemy in time of war was the crew’s final and most damaging act of treachery. Calls for retribution resounded across Britain, goading both the government of William Pitt the Younger and the Admiralty to tighten the “dragnet” (45) in searching for mutineers. Dispatches were sent to all colonial governors in the Caribbean offering rewards for those who turned king’s evidence against principal perpetrators. By late 1798, “some seventeen” (64) members of the Hermione’s crew had been apprehended and eleven hanged. For the British, the manhunt for these mutineers was a matter of national pride, though in their eyes it was also...