SOMERS POINT — About three dozen people gathered Sept. 4 at Richard Somers Park to mark the anniversary of the death of the city’s most famous son.
The civic group Liberty and Prosperity has held the event each year since 2005, after the city had hosted a major event in 2004 marking the 200th anniversary of Somers’ death.
Somers was born in 1778, during the American Revolution, and later joined the fledgling U.S. Navy. Serving as a master commandant of the ship Intrepid, he led a daring mission to attack Barbary Pirates at their base in 1804.
The Intrepid was a floating bomb filled with barrels of gunpowder and fixed shells.
Somers led 12 volunteers to sail the ship into Tripoli Harbor in an attempt to destroy the pirate fleet. However, the ship exploded prematurely, killing all aboard.
The bodies of all 13 crewmen washed ashore the next day and were buried in an unmarked communal grave. The Libyan government unearthed the remains in 1949 and moved them to the Old Protestant Cemetery in Tripoli.
“He was 5,000 miles away from his home in Somers Point, New Jersey. He is still remembered here,” Liberty and Prosperity co-founder Seth Grossman told the crowd gathered at the park, which includes a bust of Somers and a wall mural depicting his life and death.
Somers Point also has a much older monument to Somers by the old New York Avenue School that was placed there in 1850.
Grossman said Somers and his monuments are mostly forgotten outside of Somers Point.
“We need to change that. Knowing the story of Richard Somers explains why America was great in the past, and how it could be great again,” he said.
He said the story notes how Quakers settled in southern New Jersey five years before William Penn built Philadelphia, teaching every girl and boy to read and write at an early age.
“They recognized equal rights for women and gave them leadership positions. They opposed war and slavery. They did not live on any land claimed by Native Americans unless the Indians agreed to sell and received a fair price. They built a society based on those ideas and they had spectacular success,” Grossman said.
He said the Quakers faced a moral dilemma in 1776. They opposed war, but when British and Hessian troops invaded New Jersey, they fought to preserve their way of life.
Richard Somers’ father was a colonel in the Gloucester County militia, helping Gen. George Washington win the Battle of Trenton.
Americans won independence in 1783, but Barbary “Pirates” from North Africa attacked and seized U.S. merchant ships and cargoes, selling the crews into slavery.
Because America had no navy, it made treaties with the Barbary Kingdoms and paid tribute for the next 12 years.
However, in 1798, Americans had enough.
“We said ‘Millions for defense, not one cent for tribute!’” Grossman said.
The U.S. Navy began to form, and Somers, then 20 years old, was one of the first to join.
In 1802, Thomas Jefferson sent his ship to North Africa. In 1803, Somers was put in charge of converting a merchant ship into a warship. Two months later, at age 23, he took command of the Nautilus with 12 cannons and 103 men. He then sailed it to North Africa.
During the next year, the American Navy under Commodore Edward Preble fought dozens of battles against warships from Morocco, Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli. Almost all of the ship commanders were less than 25 years old.
In just one year, all of the Barbary kingdoms made peace with America except Tripoli.
Somers and his fellow officers decided to make a daring attack inside the harbor. They had a captured Arab ship that they renamed the Intrepid. They then packed it with explosives and sailed it into Tripoli Harbor.
The mission failed. The Intrepid exploded prematurely without damaging the enemy fleet. Somers and all 12 of his crew were killed instantly.
During last week’s event, Maryann Cannon, the Millville artist who painted the mural in 2015, explained the images.
She said she was pleased that the mural has held up so well after 10 years, noting she recently applied another coat of sealer to help maintain it.
Miss South Jersey 2025 Molly Pugliese sang the national anthem and “Columbia the Gem of the Ocean,” while Amvets 911 Color Guard presented colors.
– STORY and PHOTOS by CRAIG D. SCHENCK/Sentinel staff
