By William Kelly. Re-Published From August 22, 2024 Edition of Shore Local at Home – Shore Local Newsmagazine.
While Richard Somers’ historic exploits in Tripoli have been well documented and retold in books, murals and plays, the story of the Somers-Washington ring is not as well known.
Richard Somers was born during the American Revolution at his father’s tavern at Shore and Bethel Road in Somers Point. When he reached school age Richard was sent to Philadelphia to live with his sister Sarah Somers Keen and attend the Philadelphia Free Academy (now the Episcopal Academy).
At school, under headmaster John Barry, who wrote the first copyrighted spelling book, Somers met fellow schoolmate Stephen Decatur, and they became close friends.
John Barry, this educator is often confused with another John Barry, the Father of the American Navy. That other John Barry also grew up in Ireland, lived in the same neighborhood in Philadelphia, and attended the same church. Both men educated and influenced Richard Somers.
John Barry, the Father of the American Navy quickly distinguished himself as a privateer ship captain who captured many British ships along the Delaware during the American Revolution. When the U.S. Navy was disbanded after the war in 1784, that John Barry returned to merchant shipping.
In 1795, America decided to rebuild its navy. President George Washington appointed the second John Barry as its first officer to supervise the job. In 1798, that John Barry commanded the U.S.S. United States, America’s newest and largest warship. For his midshipmen, young officers in training to be ship commanders, Barry chose Richard Somers and Stephen Decatur who he knew as students at the school in Philadelphia run by the other John Barry.
In 1798 the USS United States sailed to Chester, Pa., where George Washington came aboard, had dinner with the officers
and stayed the night. That is when it is believed that Washington gave Midshipman Richard Somers a ring, a dark blue and white
enamel ring with 13 pearls and a glass locket that is believed to contain a lock of Washington’s hair. Washington received a 15 gun salute when he left the next morning.
In 1801, Thomas Jefferson, a new President sent our navy to the Mediterranean. They were sent to fight privateers, captains of private warships from four Barbary Kingdoms in North Africa who had declared war on the United States.
Richard Somers and Stephen Decatur were later put in command of their own ships. Somers commanded the schooners Nautilus. Decatur commanded the Enterprise. Before he left, Somers gave the Washington ring to his sister Sarah for safe keeping.
Two years later, in 1803, the USS Philadelphia, one of America’s largest and most powerful warships was under the command of Captain Bainbridge. He ignored orders and foolishly chased a Barbary blockade runner in shallow water near the harbor of Tripoli. It ran aground and surrendered without a fight.
Later that year, Stephen Decatur, a close friend and classmate of Richard Somers captured a ketch, a small privateer ship, near Tripoli. There, he discovered a sword that belonged to an officer from the Philadelphia. Decatur and Somers cleaned and refitted that captured ship and renamed it the USS Intrepid. Decatur and American sailors sailed it into Tripoli Harbor pretending to be Arabs. When they reached the captured Philadelphia, they boarded it, overpowered its Tripoli crew, and set fires that completely destroyed the captured American ship. Decatur and his crew then escaped with no casualties.
During the summer of 1804, America’s war against Tripoli had become a stalemate. After being defeated by the Americans, the Tripoli warships retreated to the safety of their harbor.
Richard Somers worked out a plan to turn the Intrepid into a fireship that would sneak into the Tripoli harbor and destroy the enemy warships stationed there. Somers then loaded the Intrepid with explosives. On September 4, 1804, Richard Somers and twelve others sailed the Intrepid into the Tripoli harbor. They included two other officers, Lieutenants Joseph Israel and Henry Wadsworth. (The famous American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was named after him). Their plan was to have the Intrepid sail next to the anchored enemy ships, light a fuse to the explosives, and escape in two row boats. However, something went terribly wrong. The ship exploded when it was too far away.
The next day the bodies of the 13 Americans washed ashore, were retrieved and buried under the castle walls by Bainbridge and the American prisoners who were held there.
With the death of Richard Somers, his sister Sarah’s husband, an attorney, handled Richard’s estate, which included much of Somers Point, and the Washington ring, that Sarah inherited.
When Sarah died, she was buried in a plot next to the New York Avenue schoolhouse, where an old monument to Richard Somers stands today. Her niece Sophie Leaming of Upper Township inherited the ring. Eventually her grandson Edmund Leaming inherited the ring and in 1926 he loaned it to the Pennsylvania Historical Society to be put on public display.
When Edmund died the ring was obtained by the Attwater-Kent Museum in Philadelphia, where it was kept in storage. When the Pennsylvania Historical Society took an inventory of items and found many missing, including the Somers-Washington ring, the FBI’s Art Crime unit was brought in to investigate. They discovered that a night janitor Ernest Medford, had been selling items to a private collector George Csizmazia. Csizmazia had taken some of the musium items to an antique show where other collectors
recognized them as being museum pieces. When the FBI raided Csizmazia’s apartment they found it full of the stolen museum pieces, some, like the Somers-Washington ring being priceless.
Both Medford and Csizmazia were sentenced to four years in prison and the stolen items returned to the museum, where the ring remains in storage today.
Just as there have been numerous attempts to obtain the remains of Somers and his men from “the shores of Tripioli,” the attempts by the Somers and Leaming families to have the Somers-Washington ring rightfully returned to the family have not succeeded, at least so far. The idea is for the family to regain possession of the ring, return it to Somers Point and have it put on public display at a secure location, such as the Atlantic County Historical Society.
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