The Navy Lieutenant’s Wife

She was young, beautiful, and vulnerable. In 1892, Bessie Hewes Hetherington was an American navy wife awaiting the arrival of her husband, Lieutenant James Henry Hetherington, in his ship’s home port in Japan. George Gower Robinson, Yokohama’s most eligible bachelor, saw Bessie and knew he had to possess her. She fell victim to his scandalous advances. Unable to stop them, her husband killed Gower, setting the stage for an unprecedented trial in the American consular court. The court delivered a vigorously debated verdict, and then the story disappeared.
This book tells for the first time the story of this love triangle and murder trial and explores broader aspects of professional and personal, societal and international life in the late nineteenth century world. Life as a navy wife, the private and public life of an American naval officer, and the elite expatriate life in Japan’s most prosperous and internationally diverse treaty port are featured. Also discussed is the media’s transformative power to deliver the story of “the tragedy in Yokohama” across oceans and continents.

Roger Dingman is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Southern California and a U.S. Navy veteran.

Roger Dingman
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 273
Bibliographic Info: 14 photos, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2025
pISBN: 978-1-4766-9522-8
eISBN: 978-1-4766-5456-0
Imprint: McFarland

Preface: Bessie’s Coffee

 Iowa Sailor

 School of the Sea

 Delaware Belle

 Marriage in Crisis

  Fateful Journeys

 Propriety and Passion

 Escalation

 Death

 Murder

 Unquiet Rest

 Celebrity

 Opening Day

 Guilty!

 Innocent!

 Shipmates

 Friends and Accomplices

 Servants’ Tales

 Suspicion

 Rage and Remorse

 Confessions

 Summing Up

 Verdicts

 Departures

 Reconciliation?

 Afterlives

Chapter Notes

Bibliography

Index