"HMS Calliope at Apia 1889" Topic

"In 1889 United States and German naval units were eyeing each other in an armed confrontation which Britain, represented by the screw corvette HMS Calliope, watched as a neutral but cautious observer. A false move by any party could well have triggered a shooting war with immeasurable historical consequences. The United States, up to then underestimated as an emerging Great Power, and the newly established German Empire – dating only from 1871 – were both taking their first steps towards projection of military and naval, as well as commercial, influence on a global scale. As new players, both were conscious – perhaps over conscious – of the importance of prestige. The scene of the confrontation was an unlikely one – the harbour of Apia on the northern coast of the Pacific island of East Samoa.

A civil war had been in progress since 1886 – and indeed was to drag on to 1894 – and it involved a struggle between two Samoan factions for control of the Samoan Islands. German trading and plantation companies already had significant commercial interests in copra and cocoa-bean processing, competing in the process with American traders. Almost inevitably, Germans and Americans found themselves backing different Samoan factions and Britain too, though to a lesser extent, had a business presence. Tensions heightened in 1887 when a German naval vessel, ostensibly sent to protect German commercial interests, shelled a village in which American-owned property was destroyed – thereby resulting in despatch of an American naval force to protect American interests. The situation worsened the following year when one Samoan faction inflicted casualties on a German landing-party and destroyed German-owned plantations.

National pride was now at stake – the more so in view of the growing self-confidence of the newly- emerging powers of Germany and the United States. German, American and British naval units were despatched to Samoa and by March 1889 were moored in Apia harbour, each waiting for the other to make a move. Suspicion was greatest between the German and Americans. The British maintained a position of neutral observers. Annexation by either Germany or the US was a distinct possibility and national prestige was at stake – to what now seems a ludicrous extent. One more incident involving the rival Samoan groups, an incident likely to be outside the control of the foreign forces, could have been enough to shift the situation from armed confrontation to outright war between the German and American naval units…."

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HMS Calliope is the name of the current RNVR base at Newcastle upon Tyne.

I was a member of HMS Calliope in the early 1980s. Each year, on or about 16 March, the wardroom have a "Samoa Night Dinner" to celebrate Captain Kane's feat of seamanship involved in extricating Calliope from Apia during the great hurricane.

Interesting….

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