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 , the screw steamer , and the gunboat ) and three German warships (the gunboats and and the corvette ), which kept each other at bay over several months in Apia Harbour, which was monitored by the British corvette .
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.Ryden, George Herbert. The Foreign Policy of the United States in Relation to Samoa. New York: Octagon Books, 1975. (Reprint by special arrangement with Yale University Press. Originally published at New Haven: Yale University Press, 1928), p. 574; the Tripartite Convention (United States, Germany, Great Britain) was signed at Washington on 2 December 1899 with ratifications exchanged on 16 February 1900
Legacy Walter LaFeber said that the incident made some 'reticent Americans' realise the power implications of expansion in the South Pacific.
Gallery
See also Samoan Civil War Second Samoan Civil War Siege of Apia German Samoa
References
Further reading Andre Trudeau, Noah. "'An Appalling Calamity'--In the teeth of the Great Samoan Typhoon of 1889, a standoff between the German and US navies suddenly didn't matter." Naval History Magazine 25.2 (2011): 54-59.