[NAVAL] Geo. Brown - Rear Admiral, Commanding U.S. Naval Force, Pacific Station. TLS, U.S. Flagship Charleston, Feb. 5, 1890, 1p, to Lioeut. Commander Henry W. Lyon, Commanding U.S.S. Nipsic, Honolulu, Hawaii. Says Secretary of the Navy "...indicates that your request for detachment from the command of the Nipsic has been favorably considered...." Delayed, however, because Commander Wingate "....having been condemned by survey and therefore unable to execute his orders...." Damped stained. Provenance: Estate of Admiral Henry W. Lyon, who had a distinguished Naval career, was honored for his service in the Spanish-American war where he commanded the U. S. S. Dolphin. Lyon and his wife, Liela, bought a house in Paris Hill, Maine in 1899 and moved there full time when he retired from the Navy in 1907. Picture of Farquhar is not included here.The Samoan Crisis was a confrontation standoff between the United States, Imperial Germany and Great Britain from 1887ñ1889 over control of the Samoan Islands during the Samoan Civil War. The incident involved three American warships, USS Vandalia, USS Trenton and USS Nipsic and three German warships, SMS Adler, SMS Olga, and SMS Eber, keeping each other at bay over several months in Apia harbour, which was monitored by the British warship HMS Calliope.The standoff ended on 15 and 16 March when a cyclone wrecked all six warships in the harbour. Calliope was able to escape the harbour and survived the storm. Robert Louis Stevenson witnessed the storm and its aftermath at Apia and later wrote about what he saw. The Samoan Civil War continued, involving Germany, United States and Britain, eventually resulting, via the Tripartite Convention of 1899, in the partition of the Samoan Islands into American Samoa and German Samoa.

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