biggest fraternities?

[MysticCat]

Originally posted by Firehouse
Tom, as I understand it - and we'd have to get a member of Chi Psi to set us straight - the captain was a paranoid sort who suspected mutiny and went plundering through the personal effects and papers of his officers. He discovered on young Midshipman Spencer a sealed box containing a coded list of names on a slip of paper. Spencer refused to reveal that they were in fact the names of his Chi Psi Fraternity brothers, and he was hanged because the Captain was convinced they were the names of mutineers.

There is actually a book on the subject of the mutiny: A Hanging Offense: The Strange Affair of the Warship Somers. Note that the Chi Psi in question, Phillip Spencer, was indeed the 19-year-old son of the Secretary of War. Here is the review from Publisher's Weekly as shown by Amazon:

This coherent and absorbing study from Melton (The First Impeachment) is the first full-scale study of the "mutiny" aboard the U.S.S. Somers in nearly a generation. The brig Somers was on a training cruise in 1842, with more than 100 apprentice seamen aboard. The son of the secretary of war, 19-year-old Philip Spencer, began talking and writing wildly about leading a mutiny. When the captain, Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, had Spencer and his two confederates, Cromwell and Small, put in irons, several incidents occurred suggesting attempts to rescue the men. After consulting with his officers and petty officers, Mackenzie decided that in view of the "clear and present danger" of a bloody mutiny, he should hang the three suspects, and did. The Navy conducted a formal inquiry into Mackenzie's conduct, then brought him before a court-martial. Melton, professor of law at the University of North Carolina, does his best to render the ensuing legal thickets intelligible to the 21st-century lay reader, without complete success. Better are his accounts of where the Somers affair fits into maritime history and the manner in which the isolation of the sailing ship made the captain's power nearly absolute. His final verdict is similar to that of the 19th-century Navy: Mackenzie exceeded his authority, but not wantonly or frivolously, and Spencer was a clear-cut and dangerous sociopath.

Do note the "Spotlight Review" from "Phillip Spencer" himself:

O here's to Philip Spencer, who when about to die.
When crashing down beneath the waves, loud shouted out Chi Psi!