Disaster Favours the Daring: Shipwreck at Honda Point

Pushkin. Captain Donald Hunter, or Dolly to his friends, was a legendary navigator. One historian described his reputation as having the homing instinct of a river bound salmon. It spent years at the Naval Academy teaching other US Navy officers how to navigate friendly, easygoing. A little overweight, Captain Hunter was nevertheless a decisive, confident man. This particular mission certainly called for decisiveness. It was nineteen twenty three. Budgets were tight after postwar demobilization, and to save money on fuel, US Navy vessels were understanding all to travel slowly, but not this time. Fourteen new warships from Destroyer Squadron eleven had permission to travel fast from San Francisco to San Diego.

These maneuvers were designed to test the turbines of the destroyers, checking that they could run at high speed, and they were designed to test the sailors too. Could Squadron eleven keep tight together in formation following the lead of the flagship with a minimum of radio chat. That was the sort of swift, unfussy maneuvering that would be called for in war. The head of Destroyer Squadron eleven commodore Watson was on board the flagship Captain Hunter's ship, USS Delphi.

Together they would demonstrate just how skilled the sailors of Squadron eleven could be. And so on the eighth of September, the fourteen destroyers left San Francisco, each with about one hundred men on board. They would scythe southeast, hugging the coast of California. They'd pass the prominent Point Arguello with its lighthouse and radio station, and then turn sharply east into the Santa Barbara Channel, between the beaches of Los Angeles and the channel islands offshore. You had to turn pretty soon after passing Point Arguello. Wait too long and you'd hit those islands, such as the vicious rocks of the Island of San Miguel. They could, of course swing wide around the outside of the islands well clear of trouble,

but that would take longer, and the whole point of the speed trial was to test Squadron eleven under pressure. Captain Hunter certainly didn't seem worried, but his young assistant Lieutenant Larry Blodgett was. The sea was rough, with strong currents and strong winds. Visibility was poor, but at least there was the radio station at Point Arguello. Radio direction finding was a new technology, and as a young officer, Lieutenant lodget had eagerly learned all about it. Neither fog nor darkness could interfere with those radio beams. It was amazing.

Captain Hunter had been an expert navigator long before radio direction finding had been introduced, and he was less impressed. Radio technology produced a fundamental ambiguity. The radio aerial would identify the shortest line between ship and radio station, but it wouldn't show which direction that line ran in. So if the line was running north south, that was either a bearing of zero or a bearing of one hundred and eighty degrees. The ship was either directly north of the station or directly south. Often that was obvious, sometimes not.

At two point fifteen PM, young Lieutenant Lodgett called for a bearing from pointe Arguello station. Your maaring is one sixty seven degrees. One hundred and sixty seven degrees. That was literally impossible. That would mean they'd already passed south of Point Arguello, but in fact they were barely even halfway there. At the speed they were going, it was about twelve hours from San Francisco to Point Arguello. They'd only been at sea for six Tell Point Arguello to give us the reciprocal bearing, said Captain Hunter. North. Of course, Captain Hunter could easily have calculated the reciprocal bearing himself, so this was a passive aggressive request. He was making a point to blodge it. This new fangled radio technology

can't even tell north from south. No, forget the radio best to trust in traditional methods and to the skill of perhaps the best navigator in the US Navy. That navigator, in the opinion of many sailors, including Captain Hunter, was Captain Hunter. I'm Tim Harford, and you're listening to cautionary tales.

Sailors would tell stories about Dolly Hunter's prowess as a navigator. Once he guided a huge battleship, the USS Idaho, up Cook straight and into anchorage in the middle of a fog so thick you could have walked on it. He hadn't needed radio technology then, and he planned to do things the old fashioned way now, steaming down the California coastline on the flagship USS Delphi with thirteen other warships following his lead. But a lot of the old fashioned options weren't available to Captain Hunter. The thickening haze made it impossible to take bearings from the sun, nor could they mark the lighthouses as they passed them. Pigeon Point, sur Point Piedros blancas Point Aguello. Anyone who frequented the

seas off California would have those names memorized as surely as the alphabet. But the lighthouses were little use after Pigeon Point they were swallowed up in a coastal fog. Another time tested option was to take a sounding, dangling a knotted rope from a ship until it dragged on the bottom, telling them how deep the water was and therefore how close they were to land. But that meant slowing down, and this was a speed trial. They weren't about to slow down, which left just one option. Figure out how fast you're going and for how long and in what direction, making adjustments for wind and waves and currents.

The technique of dead reckoning not easy, so young Lieutenant B. Loodgett was worried. The sea was rough, with strong currents and strong winds that made it hard to be sure exactly how fast they were traveling USS Delphi's gyro compass wasn't working, which meant that they were relying on the less accurate magnetic compass that made their direction finding less precise.

The Santa Barbara Channel was just twenty three miles wide, plenty in broad daylight, but a narrow target if you'd been traveling on dead reckoning at about twenty five miles an hour from dawn until nightfall turned too early and you hit Point Arguello too late, and you smash into San Miguel Island. But Captain Hunter wasn't worried. He was a master of dead reckoning. It had steered him into the fog bound harbor at Anchorage. It would see him safely into the Santa Barbara Channel. As the fog thickened and the sun began to set, some of the captains of the other destroyers started to wonder if it might be wise to change plans. Me I like to do things the easy way, mused one captain. Hard Head out

passed San Miguel into the clear. The channel, with all its traffic and fishing boats, is sure no place for a speed run at night and in a fog, But it wasn't up to him commodore. Watson's orders were that everyone should follow Captain Hunter and the USS Delphi. Some fools might run aground on San Miguel Island, but Dolly Hunter wasn't one of them. A week earlier, Tokyo had been devastated by a catastrophic earthquake. It caused landslides, building collapses, widespread fires, and the deaths of more than one hundred thousand people, and its effects rippled across the Pacific Ocean, setting up unusual currents. Hunter couldn't have known the exact effects of the earthquake on the way the very ocean

under his keel was moving, but he would have known that the sea was chopping with huge swells from behind the boats, lifting their sterns so high that the propellers raced as the screws broached the surface, the hulls of the destroyers vibrating as they did that might slow them down. And in the churning seas, the ships were yawing left and right, left and right, requiring constant corrections from the steersmen that might slow them too. And again the wind and the sea were behind them, pushing them forward faster.

The squadron Commander Watson was aboard the flagship USS Delphi with Captain Hunter in the vessel's chart room. The two men pondered the matter, examining the charts carefully. I feel we have two factories in our favor, Watson announced. The wind and sea are pushing us along, and we have a slight assist from the Japanese current. Captain Hunter agreed, right, sir, that will take care of any loss of speed due to bad steering or even some racing of the screws.

So that was that. Then some of the conditions would slow them down, others would speed them up. They would all come out the same in the end, wouldn't it. Cautionary tales will be back after the break. As the warships of Destroyer Squadron eleven steamed southward towards Point Arguello, all closely following Captain Hunter, news came through on the radio.

Another US Navy ship not traveling with them had encountered lifeboats near the Santa Barbara Channel. They turned out to be from a civilian steamer SS Cuba. It had run aground in the fog on San Miguel Island. The news of the wreck of SS Cuba provoked an argument over the radio amongst the leadership of Destroyer Squadron eleven. Commander Walter Roper, in charge of one of the warships that was following information, requested permission to peel away from the others and join in with the rescue of SS Cuba's passengers and crew. Commodore Watson wouldn't have any of it, absolutely not. There was already one US Navy ship on the scene that would be quite sufficient. Roper, a pugnacious character,

robustly repeated his request. Watson robustly refused. With every other captain in the squadron listening in. The two men argued for a while before Roper accepted his commanding officer's authority and went off to sulk. No such unpleasantness between Captain Hunter and Commodore Watson. The two men seemed to be in complete agreement, reassuring each other that there was nothing really to worry about. Some fools might run aground on San Miguel Island like SS Cuba, but Dolly Hunter wasn't one of them. Then the most junior man in the room piped up. Lieutenant Blodgett reported that he had requested another bearing from the radio station at Point Arguello, but the fog was so bad that lots of other ships

were asking for bearings too. The radio station had a backlock, so they'd have to wait their turn, and who knows how long that might be. Ah, sir, perhaps we should stop and take a sound in. We would then know with much greater certainty just how far we are from the coast. Hunter wasn't a fool. He understood that perfectly well.

He also understood that would mean stopping the speed trial. I can't see that's necessary, and we'd have to break radio silence with the other ships and stop this whole parade. Hunter then turned to the squadron commander, Commodore Watson. Surely, he asked. The Commodore didn't want to stop. No, indeed, not, Well, everything is going so well through the fog and the darkness.

Squadron eleven plunged on. By half past eight that evening. Captain Hunter reckoned they were past Point Arguello and steaming southeast towards the island of San Miguel. Before long they should swing left to the east into the Santa Barbara Channel. Best not to leave it too late, then the bearing came through from the Point Arguello radio station three hundred and thirty degrees. Captain Hunter didn't bother to disguise his contempt that amateur radio man at Point Arguello had given them the opposite bearing. Again, tell the station that we are well south of Point Arguello. They are to give us the reciprocal bearing. God, I wish they would get these things straight. San Miguel Island must be looming ahead

by now, and Hunter wasn't about to make the same mistake as the unfortunate captain of SS Cuba. It was time to make that sharp left turn before they smashed straight into it. Uss Delphie sounded two blasts on her whistle to signal the turn, then gracefully arcd left in unison. The rest of the squadron followed. They were traveling at twenty knots, nearly twenty five miles an hour, or eleven yards a second, and in close formation. Each ship's prow was less than one one hundred and fifty yards behind the stern of the ship in front of it, or at the pace they were traveling thirteen seconds. The lookout for Delphi, and then therefore for the entire column of ships was a young sailor named John Morrow. He was

standing directly in front of the steering wheel, gazing out of an open window, feet apart. To keep his balance, he strained to see ahead of him, scanning the dark waters for signs of danger. The seconds tipped passed with each one. Uss Delphi bucked and sliced another eleven yards through the rough waves. In fifteen minutes there'd be in the karma, more protected waters of the Santa Barbara Channel.

Captain Hunter, looking back, could see the lights of the other ships strung out behind him in a curve. Despite the haze, he reckoned, he could still see a mile or so to the ships at the back. But then suddenly the lights behind Captain Hunter were gone. The fog was so thick he could see nothing. Ensign Morrow peered out, he also could see nothing. This fog was as thick as that time Captain Hunter had guided uss Idaho into Anchorage.

Pee soup, he said, raising an eyebrow. He wasn't afraid. And then the whisper of a gentle rasp against the hull, the sound perhaps of Delphi brushing a sandbank, and then too quick for anyone to respond. A shuddering sequence of crunching bumps, followed by the all engulfing smash of the ship hitting solid rock at twenty knots and stopping dead.

Dolly Hunter, Larry Blodgett, and every other man on the bridge was hurled forward at more than twenty miles an hour, hitting the unforgiving bulkhead, and slumping to the floor. Hunter regained command before he regained his feet, barking out orders, stop the engines, switch on the breakdown lights, sound the danger signal, four blasts, get down below and forward and survey the damage. And then something awful looming out of the mist and the darkness was a massive, jagged black rock towering over the stricken ship. Oh god, they must have hit San Miguel after all, and US Splee was thirteen seconds behind them. Sailors on Splee had seen the lights on DELFI simply vanish. A few seconds later, sp

Le plunged into the fog bank, and a few seconds after that what Delphi's lights suddenly rushing towards them. The captain of sple immediately ordered full speed astern and a sharp left turn. The ship wobbled slipped sideways, propellers thrashing in full reverse trying to slow the ship as the bough swung around from facing east to facing north. Sple missed Delphi by a whisker that was then carried by its own momentum sideways onto the rocks by those towering cliffs. Stranded, sp Le's hull began to rock backwards and forwards on sharp blades of rock as the breakers toyed with a once proud destroyer, and thirteen seconds behind USS sp Le was USS Young. The crew on USS Young had no warning of danger, Like a water skier mounting a ramp.

The ship rose out of the water and plunged back again without even slowing down. The hull had been pushed up by a submerged reef and sliced open. The ship listed to starboard and began to sink. Within seconds, the engine room was under fifteen feet of water, and every light on USS Young went out. Thirteen seconds behind USS Young was USS Woodbury. Perhaps the seeds of the disaster had been sown years before in Alaska, when Dolly Hunter had guided the huge USS Idaho through a pea soup fog safely up the cook straight and into anchorage. Perhaps it was at that point that his reputation for brilliant navigation had been settled, both with his peers and in his own increasingly confident opinion. And perhaps as well as

being skilled, Dolly Hunter had been lucky. The truth is that most people who achieve great success have done so through a mix of skill, boldness, and good fortune. A less skillful navigator might have run uss Idaho aground in the Cook Strait, and a more cautious one would never have attempted the risky feat in the first place. But it's most likely that Dolly Hunter was not only bold and skillful, but lucky. And the thing about luck is that it doesn't necessarily last. Hunter was unlucky on the speed run from San Francisco to San Diego, unlucky with the strange currents, unlucky with the broken gyroscopic compass, and unlucky with the fog. But none of these pieces of bad luck should have surprised him. He knew the seas

were unsettled, the compass was broken, and the fog was thick, and yet he pressed on with his plan. Why. Part of the story is that Hunter's own reputation betrayed him. The squadron commander Commodore Watson was right there on his shoulder and could have ordered him to slow down and take soundings. He didn't. It seems that Hunter felt unable to abandon the plan for a speed run while Watson was watching, and Watson was in or of his own subordinate since Hunter had such a brilliant reputation as a navigator, Perhaps without realizing it, the two men egged each other on.

Hunter felt infallible because Watson believed in him, and Watson felt infallible because he had Hunter on his team. But shouldn't someone else have raised the alarm? Larry Blodgett did, but nobody paid attention to a junior navigator. But there was another man, a senior officer, who had his doubts. That was Commander Walter Roper. Further back in the convoy, his navigators had overheard on the radio the last bearing given to Captain Hunter, three hundred and thirty degrees, But unlike Captain Hunter, they hadn't contemptuously dismissed this bearing as obviously wrong. What if it was right, that would mean they hadn't yet passed Point Arguello. And if they turned left.

Now they wouldn't be heading safely into the Santa Barbara Channel. They'd be heading straight towards the rocks just north of Point Arguello itself. The navigators raised their concerns with Commander Roper. He took that warning seriously enough to order his own ship to move to a slightly safer course, no longer directly behind the flagship. All right, if you're afraid, get over to the right. But that was all. Roper didn't feel able to share his misgivings with the men on the flagship, Hunter and Watson. Why not? We know exactly why not, because Watson had shouted him down earlier that day on an open radio band with every other ship listing.

He wasn't going to stick his chin out a second time. Hunters are confidence. Watson and Hunter giving each other false reassurance, and Roper in a sulk all played their part. But there was another reason Dolly Hunter lost his bearings. We'll get to that. After the break on the bridge of uss Woodbury, the mood was uneasy. They were closely following Delphi, Splee and Young, but visibility was terrible, and the lookout was worried that he hadn't seen the lighthouse on Point Arguello.

Then the lookout had a more urgent problem to report, Sir, I've lost sight of Delphi. S p. Lee has sheered out to port, and Young has stopped. As they looked USS, Young's lights blinked out. The ship was one hundred and fifty yards ahead, and Woodbury was closing at eleven yards. A second Woodbury sheared right to avoid it and instead hit that submerged rock behind Woodbury. A hidden rock took out the propeller on US S. Nicholas. It wallowed, turned helplessly, and wedged tight on yet more of those unforgiving rocks behind Nicholas. USS Farragut just managed to slow to a halt in time. My God, in all the ground, all back emergency. But as Farragut churned backwards, the sudden reversal of the engines temporarily robbed the ship's generator of Every

light on Farragut blinked out, which meant the onrushing USS Fuller couldn't see it. Fuller charged out of the fog and side swiped Farragut. Still the destroyers kept steaming in. USS summers smashed a propeller on a hidden wreath. USS Chauncey plowed right into the upturned propeller blades of the sinking USS Young. The blades ripped through Chauncey's hull as though it were made of tinfoil, slicing open the wall of the engine room and promptly cutting all power. Chauncey gently drifted onto the rocks and came to rest on a ledge post to the cliffs. Then there was USS Kennedy under the command of Walter Roper, who remember had suspected that Captain Hunter might be lost, and decided to move his ship to the right and not to chase

the convoy too closely. Uss Kennedy and all the ships behind steered clear of the rocks without any problem. Two ships were badly damaged but mobile, and seven were completely stranded. Some of them, like Woodbury, were stuck firmly on the rocks, in no immediate danger of sinking. Others, like USS Young, were sinking fast. Young had had its belly sliced open by a reef. Within half a minute. It was at a forty five degree angle. The starboard side of the ship was underwater, make for the port side. The orders were passed around. Stick with a ship, do not jump.

One by one, the sailors crawled up onto the upp turn side of the doomed ship, a treacherous slippery refuge from the waves, well on its way to becoming horizontal. They huddled together in the cold and the darkness. Then came a light shining from Woodbury. The men looked around. They were only now a foot or so above the churning water. Breakers were surging over the slippery side of the ship, and it was just a matter of time before they were swept into the foe. The psychologist Gary Klein tells a story about a time his wife complained that her front door key was sticking. My key works fine, Gary said, your key must be bad. So Gary Kleine went to the hardware store to cut a copy of his key. Hmm, the copy got stuck too. The key

cutting machine must be faulty. Klein went to a different store and cut a second copy. Hmm, that got stuck too. Finally, he tried his own key and actually paid attention. Funny thing, it was pretty sticky too. It failed to notice how the lock had slowly become more fussy, and that he'd adapted to that fussiness over time, shrugging it off. Now they had four keys, and all of them tended to stick.

Gary Klein got some lubricant, oiled the lock, and found that all four keys now worked fine. It's a trivial little illustration of an idea Cline calls a garden part thinking in the old idiom, when you fool somebody, you lead them down the garden path. But Gary Kleine led himself down the garden path. He began by overlooking something, the fact that his own key was also sticky. Then from a faulty premise, he went further and further along the wrong course of action. Captain Donald Dolly Hunter, one of the finest navigators in the US Navy, led himself down the garden path, too, which is how he also led nine destroyers onto the rocks. First, there'd been that bearing from the radio station that was obviously back to front,

the one that had put them south of Point Arguello when there'd been six hours north. Just as Gary Klein fixated on the thought that the keys were bad, Hunter got it into his head that the radio bearings were backwards. When the next bearing told him he was still north of Point Arguello. He took it as confirming his view that he was actually south. Then there was his fixation on not going too far south. The news of SS Cuba having run aground on the island of San Miguel reinforced that particular risk in Hunter's mind, the risk of waiting too long before turning into the channel and hitting the island. Just as it didn't occur to Gary Klein that the locke might be the problem, it didn't occur to Captain Hunter that he might be turning too early

and smashing straight into the mainland instead. In the light being shone from USS Woodbury, one of the sailors stranded on the slippery side of USS Young found a fire axe. Officer Arthur Pete. Peterson crawled along the slippery side of the ship, using the axe to smash out the thick glass of the portholes one by one. His idea was to provide handholes, and the other sailors didn't need that spelling out to them. They scrambled to grab netting that could be strung between them and the portholes to give them some purchase on their treacherous platform. The Young wasn't the only ship that was sinking, and the calamity was about to reach its final act. The desperate attempt to get as many sailors as possible off their stricken ships

and on to dry land. It was dark and foggy. Many of the men were barefoot, having been thrown out of their bunks by the force of the impacts. The sea was churning violently and was thick with leaking oil. The volcanic rock themselves were sharp enough to slice flesh. Some of the acts of heroism that night defy belief, with men diving into the foaming sea or braving the rocks in tiny lifeboats, all in the hope of carrying lines from their sinking ships to the safety of the shore, or pulling their friends, unconscious and covered with oil, out of the foam and carefully carrying them over the rocky blades.

Over the hours that followed, eight hundred men helped each other off the ships into lifeboats, or hand over hand along ropes and up the cruel rocks of the cliffs, feeling out a pathway in the darkness until they reached the flat cliff top. It was only in the morning that they could take a roll call twenty three men were missing and would later be declared dead. Two hundred more were seriously injured, burned, or cruelly cut by the rocks, And it was only in the morning that the survivors could see how narrow was the pathway to safety that many had walked in the darkness, a natural arch of rock leading to that flat cliff top just three feet wide and thirty yards down into the churning surf below.

They hadn't realized that one false step would have been fatal. The death toll would surely have been worth were it not for one stroke of luck. The drifting uss Chauncey finally came to rest just twenty five yards away from the stricken USS Young. For the sailors clinging onto nets and portholes on the slippery side of Young, this meant a hope of rescue. The crew of Chauncey could lower them a rope. One sailor began to sing, and as the waves broke around them, the whole surviving crew of Young joined in for the tune of yes, we have no bananas. They sang as one, oh, yes we have no destroyers. We have no destroyers today. As for Captain Hunter.

It was another sound that made the Master Navigator realize finally where he was. As he stood shivering on the shore, he heard the whistle of a train. There are no trains on San Miguel Island, but there is a track running right past the radio station at Point Arguelmo. Detailed source on the disaster is Tragedy at Honda by Admiral Charles Lockwood and H. C. Adamson. For a full list of our sources, see the show notes at Timharford dot com.

Cautionary Tales is written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright, Alice Fines, and Ryan Dilly. It's produced by Alice Fines and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music are the work of Pascal Wise. Additional sound design is by Carlos San Juan at Brain Audio. Bend A Dapfhaffrey edited the scripts. The show features the voice talents of Melanie Guttridge, Stella Harford, Oliver Hember, Sarah jupp, A m and Roe, Jamal Westman, and Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Greta Cohne, Sarah Nix, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries.

It's recorded at Wardoor Studios in London by Tom Berry. If you like the show, please remember to share, rate and review. It really makes a difference to us and if you want to hear the show, add free sign up to Pushkin Plus on the show page, on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm, slash plus

Disaster Favours the Daring: Shipwreck at Honda Point

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