The fate of the Allies rests in the hands of eccentric British Navy Captain George Hardy. Regarded as a madman by some, and viewed as a genius in naval warfare by those who serve with him, Hardy leads his ragtag fleet of warships into a deadly match of wits and wills against the determined Kern and his untested U-boats. Under cover of the ocean, the deadliest of enemies are about to engage their final battle…. Welcome to HuntersAndTheHunted.Com, the Cyberspace Home of author: Steven Wilson.

The Devil’s Jaw
by Steven Wilson, 2005

ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED AT MILITARY.COM, June 19, 2006

Fleet week was over. The summer-long exercises in Puget Sound had been replaced by a gathering of ships in San Francisco as vessels of the United States Pacific Fleet sailed into the bay in anticipation of the annual celebration. Now, they moved out again, scattering to their respective ports: ponderous battleships, sleek cruisers, and knifelike destroyers. Some left early in the morning of September 8th, the bulk of ominous Mount Diablo visible in the clear air. It would be another year, 1924, before the commission came together to discuss the great bridge that would eventually span the Golden Gate, so there was nothing to obscure the passage of the ships.

Destroyer Squadron 11, composed of Destroyer Divisions 31, 32, and 33 was headed back to San Diego, 13 flush-deck destroyers, although a division was normally composed of six of these nearly 1,200 ton vessels. They were Clemson Class destroyers, “four stackers” built in a belated response to the threat posed to shipping by German U-boats. Their most formidable weapon was their torpedoes; twelve tubes all-in-all, equally distributed port and starboard, and their speed. Geared turbine engines could generate 27,000 horsepower driving the destroyers at nearly 35 knots, top speed. Topside their armament was hardly formidable: 4, 4.5” guns and a high-angle 3.25” gun. Their enemy in early September 1923 would not respect their speed or power any more than it had done in the past with larger vessels. The sea and the rugged coastline along California and Oregon’s coast combine to create a barrier to survival called the Graveyard of the Pacific. Over the past 300 years nearly two thousand ships have succumbed to the violent, wind swept coast and ended up as rusting hulks. A twenty-five mile stretch from California’s Purisima Point to Government Point, is especially dangerous. Point Pedernales, Point Arquelia (with its comforting light), Rocky Point, Port Conception, and the Devil’s Jaw, all mark the way into Santa Barbara Channel and the sheltering bulk of San Miquel Island, Santa Rosa Island, Santa Cruz Island, Santa Catalina Island, and finally San Clemente Island. The Channel was a gentle curved avenue to home if the destroyers of Destroyer Squadron 11 had not veered off course, causing ships to impale themselves on the rocks of Devil’s Jaw. It was called the largest peacetime disaster in the history of the United States Navy. Twenty-three men lost their lives, the names of seven ships were struck from the list of commissioned vessels, and careers ceased to exist. But there were acts of unparalleled heroism and sacrifice, as men who might otherwise dismiss any notion of valor as foolhardy, demonstrated amidst those jagged rocks.

The U.S.S. Delphy, bearing Captain Edward Watson, Commander, Destroyer Squadron 11 was in the lead of the column. Division 33, followed by Division 31, and finally Division 32 were in line. It was a following sea with a light wind, but the actions of the waves made steering and navigation, difficult. The course for Delphy, as well as for the squadron was to have been 150 degrees true with an adjustment at 2100 hours taking her to port into the mouth of the Channel. The Navy Department had established radio direction finder networks along the coast, hoping to medicate the fog and foul weather that frequently swept in reducing the opportunity to take star sightings. The RDF network had its difficulties, and as Lockwood and Adamson noted in their book Tragedy at Honda, it “came in for criticism from the older generation of seamen.” Navigation, even with the added bonus of modern inventions, was never entirely reliable. Steaming at nearly 20 knots—33 feet a second, (the squadron had been ordered to make an engineering run), with the notion that just to port was disaster, trying to compensate with a raging surf, and spray obscured vision, raised the ante.

The destroyers in line were struggling to keep station but it could not be helped. The little vessels were barely over 300 feet in length with a beam just a tenth of that and they were fighting the ironically named Pacific Ocean, and the vagaries of the coast. The situation was compounded when Delphy entered a thick patch of fog just before striking the coast. The disaster began to unfold at 2105.00 hours. U.S.S. Delphy struck hard against a rocky outcropping throwing her bridge crew to the deck. Moments later S.P. Lee, her position compromised by an inexperienced helmsman, struck as well. She was several hundred yards behind Delphy, pinned on rocks just beneath the high bluffs. She, like the others, was at the mercy of the heavy surf. One after another, ships a-line, steaming at a steady pace in weather that robbed them of sight, and under circumstances that virtually doomed them, crashed into the jagged teeth of a monster. The Woodbury and Fuller, both held captive by Pinnacle Rock were farthest out from the bluffs. Chauncey completed the dismal tableau around the rocky peninsula, joining Delphy who broke in half and Young who toppled over on her side. Nicholas came to rest with her stern, fortunately, just fifty feet from S.P. Lee’s port side. Nature would dispense small favors at Honda Point that night, but she would demand payment in return.

Some distance from the wreck site, at the Railroad Section House of the Southern Pacific Railroad, John Giorvas thought he saw a light in the muddy darkness. Making his way to the edge of the cliff, Giorvas spotted one of the flares released by S.P. Lee. What Giorvas began was rescue from shore, but the men of the stranded ships were already beginning to help themselves and account for their shipmates. Chief Boatswain’s Mate “Pete” Peterson of the Young added a touch of badly needed humor to the situation. Wearing a life ring and about to jump into the icy surf to string a ling to the Chauncey, Peterson turned to Captain Calhoun of the Young and said: “Permission to go ashore, sir?” Permission was granted

Lines were being strung from ship to ship and from ships to shore, to provide means of escape for the seaman. The waves drove against the ships, grinding away at them, reducing steel plating to bizarre mirror images of the rocks that had trapped them. The force of the waves and stinging spray, the cold water, the black, greasy fuel oil that had escaped from ruptured tanks and seemed to cover everything, and the wind that never ceased howling, all playing on a darkened stage; combined to kill sailors. The destroyer’s crews tried valiantly to save themselves and their ships. Delphy lost three dead and 15 injured. Young managed to get a line to Chauncey and 70 men clambered from the former to the latter but when she had turned over, the destroyer trapped a number of her crew below decks. Twenty sailors on the U.S.S. Young died.

Help continued to arrive at Honda Point from the outlying areas. Eventually special trains were dispatched from San Francisco and San Diego, bearing food, clothing, medical supplies, reporters, and doctors. As the disaster became known, the single-most question in the minds of some navy officers was, how did it happen? The disaster accounted for 23 lives, the cost of the rescue, and $13,000,000.00 in navy property. Some money was recovered when the ships were sold for scrap where-is, but getting to them proved to be too much for the scrap buyers. Of course, that wasn’t the navy’s concern; they had just one question.

Indictments came as fast and furious as the stinging spray at Honda Point. Eleven men would be held accountable, but the question was, to what degree? As one defense counsel noted: “the error of judgment was made by men who were, at the time, intent upon doing their full duty.” He added that the methods employed by the officers were those “ordinarily observed by naval men making voyages in destroyers, and that these were unforeseen contributory causes that resulted in the various circumstances that led up to the disaster.” After hearing the evidence the General Court Martial decided on three guilty and eight not guilty verdicts. The eight were later “disapproved” by the Secretary of the Navy, an indication not that they were to be retried but that the Secretary was unhappy with the original verdict.

The incident might have been avoided if the destroyers had reduced speed by five knots and were sounding—possibly. But if they had been where they thought they were, there would have been no need to sound. If one inventories all of the “contributory causes,” as a means of coming to accounting for the disaster, what happened on the Devil’s Jaw might be explained. But events are seldom logical or circumstances perfectly clear, and the human factor in disasters such as Honda Point obscures even the participants’ viewpoint. We shall have to be content with the notion that men died and ships were lost and the sea once again reminded sailors that it was supreme.

Steven Wilson / HuntersAndTheHunted.Com E-Mail: readermail@HuntersAndTheHunted.Com