Samoan crisis

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.

Incident

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

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. 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.

Legacy

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

Gallery

File:The Hurricane at Samoa on the morning of March 16 LCCN2002699802.tif|An eyewitness drawing taken from a sketch by an officer on the Calliope. File:SMS Adler 1889 1.jpg|SMS Adler, knocked over on the beach, 1889. File:SMS Adler 1889 2.jpg|SMS Adler, view of her deck, 1889. File:SMS Adler 1889 3.jpg|The wreck of SMS Adler, circa 1938 File:USS Nipsic wreck 1889.jpg|The wreck of USS Nipsic′ File:SMS Eber 1889 1.jpg|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. File:Samoan Crisis wrecks 2.jpg|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. File:USS Vandalia and USS Trenton.jpg|A view of the sunken USS Vandalia from the deck of USS Trenton. File:Samoan crisis 7.jpg|Another angle of the wrecked warships. File:Samoan Crisis wrecks.jpg|Wrecked warships off Apia File:Samoan crisis Apia beach.jpg|Apia and the beach covered in driftwood and debris from the wrecked warships. File:Samoan crisis salvaged guns.jpg|Salvaged guns from the wrecked American ships at Apia File:Samoan crisis memorial tablet 6.jpg|A memorial at Mare Island Naval Yard for the Americans who were killed in the cyclone. File:Illustrated London News.jpg|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

References

1. Spencer Tucker. (2009). "The Encyclopedia of the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars: A Political, Social, and Military History". ABC-CLIO.
2. Chambers, John Whiteclay. (2004). "The Oxford Companion to American Military History". [[Oxford University Press]].
3. Stevenson, Robert Louis. (1892). "[[A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa]]". BiblioBazaar.
4. 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
5. LaFeber, Walter. (1963). "The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion 1860-1898". [[Cornell University Press]].