Philip Spencer (January 28, 1823 – December 1, 1842), a midshipman aboard USS Somers, was executed for mutiny without a court-martial, after being suspected of conspiring to kill opposing crewmembers and turn the brig into a pirate ship.

Reassigned to USS John Adams, he was involved in a drunken brawl with a Royal Navy officer while on shore leave in Rio de Janeiro.

In November 1842, during the return home from a voyage to Liberia, suspicion arose that Spencer had formed a plan to seize Somers and sail her as a pirate ship.

His friendship with crew members Samuel Cromwell and Elisha Small was cited as evidence, as both these men were rumored to have sailed aboard slavers in the past.

[citation needed] The circumstance of Spencer, Cromwell and Small's deaths is one reason the U.S. Navy stopped training boys at sea and founded the United States Naval Academy.

[3] Philip Spencer and the USS Somers affair were almost certainly a model for much of the story Billy Budd, by Herman Melville, who was the first cousin of Lieutenant Guert Gansevoort, an officer aboard the ship.