The Samoan crisis was a standoff between the United States, the German Empire, and the British Empire from 1887 to 1889 over control of the Samoan Islands during the First Samoan Civil War.

Background

In 1878, the United States acquired a fuelling station at the harbor at Pago Pago, on the island of Tutuila, in exchange for providing guarantees of protection to Samoa. The German Empire on the other hand desired concessions at the harbor at Apia, on the island of Upolu.

Incident

The incident involved three U.S. Navy warships (the sloop-of-war USS Vandalia (1876), the screw steamer USS Trenton (1876), and the gunboat USS Nipsic (1863)) and three German warships (the gunboats SMS Adler and SMS Eber (1887) and the corvette SMS Olga), which kept each other at bay over several months in Apia Harbour, which was monitored by the British corvette HMS Calliope (1884). The standoff ended when the 1889 Apia cyclone, on 15 and 16 March, wrecked all six warships in the harbour. Calliope escaped the harbour and thus survived the storm. Robert Louis Stevenson did not witness the storm and its aftermath at Apia but after his December 1889 arrival to Samoa, he wrote about the event. The Second Samoan Civil War, involving Germany, the United States, and Britain, eventually resulted in the Tripartite Convention of 1899, which partitioned the Samoan Islands into American Samoa and German Samoa.

Legacy

Walter LaFeber said that the incident made some 'reticent Americans' realise the power implications of expansion in the South Pacific.

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