About The Somers Affair Collection
The Somers Affair comprises nine documents pertaining to the alleged mutiny aboard the brig U.S.S. Somers in 1842, and its immediate aftermath. The documents include military court proceedings, correspondence, and contemporary reprints of official reports and proceedings.
Originals of all nine documents can be found in the Special Collections & Archives Department, Nimitz Library. Seven of these items were digitized by Nimitz Library staff for use in this collection, comprising 170 pages of scanned text and nine pages of transcriptions. The two remaining items, the Proceedings of the Court of Inquiry and the Proceedings of the Naval Court Martial, were digitized previously for inclusion in Google Books and the Internet Archive respectively.
Technical Details
Manuscript letters and unbound periodicals were scanned in color as high-resolution TIFFs (600 ppi) on an Epson Perfection V700 Photo scanner utilizing Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0. Bound items were scanned in grayscale as high-resolution TIFFs (400 ppi) on a Minolta PS 7000 scanner utilizing Adobe Photoshop CS 2. Bound items unfit for scanning on a large planetary scanner were photographed in color as low-resolution JPEGs (72 ppi) using a Sony Cybershot 8.1 Mega Pixel camera and retrospectively converted to high-resolution TIFFs (600 ppi). Master images were converted to lower-resolution service images (150 ppi TIFF). Service images were converted to PDF and OCRed utilizing Adobe Acrobat 8 for online delivery.
Accessibility
The digitized documents are delivered as embedded PDFs, which require the use of Adobe® Reader 9.1 or better. To ensure proper functionality, download and install the latest versions of all required software, including web browsers and PDF viewing applications.
Production
The Somers Affair was developed under the auspices of the Nimitz Library Digital Initiatives Group.
Site Design: David D'Onofrio, Special Collections Librarian
Original Content Development: Jennifer Bryan, Head of Special Collections & Archives/Archivist and Barbara Manvel, Reference-Bibliographer for History and Mathematics
Scanning: David D'Onofrio, Special Collections Librarian
Transcription: Jennifer Bryan, Head of Special Collections & Archives/Archivist
Conditions of Use
It is the responsibility of the researcher to secure written permission to publish, reprint, or reproduce material from the Nimitz Library Digital Collections. The researcher assumes responsibility for infringement of copyright or literary or publication rights. In any published work, proper acknowledgement must be given to Nimitz Library, United States Naval Academy