The Virginius Affair (sometimes called the Virginius Incident) was a diplomatic dispute that occurred in the 1870s between the United States, the United Kingdom and Spain, then in control of Cuba, during the Ten Years' War.
The Virginius was a blockade runner used in the American Civil War. Originally built as the Virgin by Aitken & Mansel of Whiteinch, Glasgow in 1864, she became a prize of the United States federal government when captured on April 12, 1865. She was sold in 1870 to an American, John F. Patterson, who immediately registered her in the New York Custom House. It later appeared that Patterson was merely acting for a number of Cuban insurgents who falsely flew the American flag and were using the Virginius to deliver contraband to the insurrectionist Cubans.
On October 31, 1873, then commanded by Joseph Fry, a former officer of both the Federal and Confederate navies, and having a crew of 52 (chiefly Americans and Britons) and 103 passengers (mostly Cubans), she was captured off Morant Bay, Jamaica, by the Spanish vessel Tornado, and was taken to Santiago de Cuba. There, after a summary court-martial, 53 of the crew and passengers, including Fry and some Americans and Britons, were executed on November 4th, 7th, and 8th as pirates. The intervention of HMS Niobe and her captain, Sir Lambton Loraine, prevented further deaths.
Relations between Spain and the United States became strained, and war seemed imminent, but on December 8, the Spanish government agreed to surrender the Virginius to the U.S. on December 16, to deliver the survivors of the crew and passengers to an American warship at Santiago, and to salute the American flag at Santiago on December 25 if it was not proved before that date that the Virginius was not entitled to sail under American colors.
The Virginius foundered off Cape Hatteras as she was being towed to the United States, by the Ossipee. George Henry Williams, the Attorney General of the United States decided before December 25 that the Virginius was the property of General Quesada and other Cubans, and had had no right to carry the American flag.
Under an agreement of the February 27, 1875, the Spanish government paid to the United States an indemnity of $80,000 for the execution of the Americans, and another indemnity to the British government.
When the Virginius affair first broke out, a Spanish ironclad happened to be anchored in New York Harbor, leading to the uncomfortable realization on the part of the U.S. Navy that it had no ship capable of defeating such a vessel. The Navy hastily issued contracts for the construction of five new ironclads, and accelerated its existing repair program for several more. USS Puritan (BM-1) and the four Amphitrite class monitors were subsequently built as a result of the Virginius war scare.[1] All five vessels would later take part in the Spanish-American War of 1898.
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