Pedernales Point in CA is better known as Point Honda (“Pedernales” is Spanish for “flints” and “Honda” for “deep”).
Honda Point is located on the seacoast at today’s Vandenberg Air Force Base,
near the city of Lompoc, CA. Composed of hard igneous rock, this coastal stretch consists of a steep 60-foot bluff with only little beach area. Scattered seaward are rough-surfaced boulders, knife-like submerged pinnacles and intermittent reefs. Wave action along the exposed point is constant, and with the wind and current the breakers areespecially powerful.
Pedernales Point is near the entrance to the sometimes treacherous Santa Barbara Channel, which is 12 to 25 miles wide between the coast and the Channel Islands, a popular shipping shortcut for vessels going to and from the ports of southern California. The problem with the entrance to the channel is it is one of the windiest places for mariners to go through on the west coast.
Many times winds and waves are so severe that vessels will ride the storms out at Cuyler Harbor, San Miguel Island's small port, or waves ranging up to 30 feet high will force the closure of the small harbors at Santa Barbara,
Ventura,
Port Hueneme and Oxnard. The entrance to the channel acts like a vortex, sucking the winds and waves of Pacific storm systems into the passage. The most dangerous area is from Pedernales Point eastward,
along the stretch of south-facing coast to Gaviota Creek, where U.S. Highway 101 meets the coast from the Santa Ynez Valley. Sea vessels can be blown ashore, or with the dense fog that is common on the California coast, ships can simply run aground when they lose track of their locations.
In September 1923 a chain of links, orders, events, human errors and an earthquake led to the loss of more warships than the U.S. had lost by enemy fire during the entire WW1. No single element of the chain was necessarily fatal and if only one would have been modified or any of them changed, it is possible that the tragedy would not have happened. But none was changed and that is the reason that 23 lives were lost and $13 million worth of Navy combat warships was destroyed.
Probably true for most disasters, no single cause but a series of events leading to the inevitable disaster. Usually the last in the chain gets the blame.
You put us through the wringer, again! There is no way i would have got it.
Wow, I have read Lockwood's "Tragedy at Honda" twice and it never occurred to me. I'm looking to the great photos and maps you always have in your explanations. This one was/is fun.
My first 'win'! I had that the sisters were ships first guess but assumed you were talking about an entire class retired. I remember learning about Honda Point in the Navy, probably the same lesson you are about to teach us.
1. US Fleet Organization
1923 the political leadership of the US Navy was in the hands of the 42nd Secretary of the Navy, Edwin Denby.
Photo: Chief Gunner George Bradley, USN, with Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby (left) and Admiral Edward Walter Eberle, USN, Chief of Naval Operations (right), at the White House, Washington, D.C., 4 October 1923
(with the Office of the Secretary of the Navy led by Capt. Hayne Ellis, Aide),
the Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. (right)
(with the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy led by CDR Robert L. Ghormley, Aide).
The major part of the US fleet was the “Battle Fleet” in the Pacific. On 1 September 1923 the Battle Fleet was under the command of Admiral Samuel Shelburne Robison
on the Battle Fleet Flagship USS California (BB-44, CO Capt. Harley Hannibal Christy).
... plus the Control Force (CO Rear-Admiral Montgomery Meigs Taylor,
flagship USS Savannah (AS-8, COCDR Charles Caroll Soulé Jr., with the submarines and a mine squadron),
the Base Force (CO Rear-Admiral Jehu Valentine Chase,
flagship USS Procyon (AG-11, CO Capt Robert Lawrence Berry, with the train and a mine squadron), the ships on special or other assignment (Naval Transportation Service and Special Duty ships) and the Shore Establishments.
Staffy, I only have very little sailing experience, I just think that some small sails do not add much to speed, but perhaps a little to endurance. I just found the photo interesting.
of Destroyer Squadron 9 (CO Captain William Lord Littlefield,
flagship USSSharkey (DD-281, CO CDR Walter Frederick Jacobs))
and Destroyer Squadron 14 (CO Captain Charles Mazon Tozer,
flagship USS Hopkins (DD-249, CO CDR Rufus Wellington Mathewson))
Photo: USS Warrington’s commissioning crew, circa March 1911. Officers are (left to right): Ens. Rufus W. Mathewson; Lt. Walter M. Hunt; Ens. Carleton M. Dolan; Ens. John B. Staley.
Two units were of the Battle Fleet, 38 destroyers, commanded by Rear Admiral Sumner Ely Wetmore Kittelle, Destroyer Squadron 11 and Destroyer Squadron 12.
Flagship of Admiral Kittelle was the destroyer tender USS Melville (AD-2, CO CDR Benyaurd Bourne Wygant).
On 25 June 1923 the destroyers of Destroyer Squadron 11/DesRon 11 had left their home port San Diego and headed north. From 25 June to 31 August DesRon 11 cruised along the coast of Washington, conducting exercises, tactical maneuvers and short range battle practices, putting in at Tacoma, Port Angeles and Seattle.
DesRon 11 was commanded by ComDesRon Captain Edward Howe Watson.
Before and during World War I, Capt. Watson had been in command of transport USS Celtic (AF-2) 1912,
USS Wheeling (Gunboat No. 14) from15 June 1915,
transport USS Madawaska (ID #3011, ex-German Passenger Liner SS König Wilhelm II) from 29 August 1917
and of the battleship USS Alabama (BB-8) from 28 January 1918 to 08 January 1919. He was awarded the Navy Cross for his "exceptionally meritorious service in a duty of great responsibility as Commanding Officer of the U.S.S. Alabama in the Atlantic Fleet during World War I". Following a brief preparation on the Office of Naval Intelligence, in March 1919 he became U.S. Naval Attaché in Japan, leading five Assistant Attachés, remaining in that post until May 1922. In July 1922 he took command of DesRon 11. At his side as his principal staff officers were Squadron Engineer Officer LCDR H.G. “Blinky” Donald, Squadron Gunnery Officer LCDR Howard K. “*****” Lewis and Squadron Communications Officer Lt Laurence “Jasper” Wild.
Destroyer Squadron 11 had 20 ships, the Altair class destroyer tender and Destroyer Leader USS Rigel (AD-13, CO Captain Harry Lerch Brinser,
launched as SS Edgecombe 23 November 1918) and 19 so called “four-stackers”, “flush deck” destroyers, the flagship and three destroyer divisions with six destroyers each, then the most modern destroyers in the history of the US Navy.
During the Spanish–American War (21 April 1898 – 13 August 1898), on 16 March 1898 a special war plans board, headed by Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt, issued a warning of Spanish torpedo-boats and especially the Spanish torpedo-boat destroyers.
There were the Furor-class torpedo-boat destroyers Furor
and Terror
and the improved Audaz-class torpedo-boat destroyers with Audaz,
Plutón,
Osado and
Proserpina (380 tons resp. 400 tons, armament 2× 75 mm (3 in) mm Nordenfelt cannon, 2× 57 mm (2 in) mm Nordenfelt cannon, 2× Maxim machine guns and 2× 350 mm (14 in) torpedo tubes). Furor,Plutón and Terror were then at the Canaries or already preparing to come to Cuba. The special war plans board therefore urgently pleaded for an US torpedo-boat destroyer, realizing that this type if ship was urgently needed to screen the larger warships.
Photo: Wharf J & G Thomson, Clydebank, pre dreadnought battleship HMS Jupiter and destroyers Audaz and Osado fitting out on 15 December 1887
The first real US Navy torpedo boats followed, 35 steel hull boats, designated TB-1 through TB-35. Most of them also were just experimental versions, as the 35 boats were divided into 18 different classes or better types, as 10 “classes” contained just one boat, five just two and two just three boats. Only the latest torpedo boat class, the Blakely class, had 9 boats.
Photo: USS Blakely (Torpedo Boat No. 27/TB-27/Coast Torpedo Boat No. 13) underway off Grant's Tomb during the 1909 Hudson-Fulton Celebration
Photo: From left USS Porter (TB-6), USS Stiletto (WTB-1) and USS Cushing (TB-1)clydebank. HMS Jupiter, in Narragansett Bay.
Nathanael Greene Herreshoff, Herreshoff Manufacturing Company, the builder of all three, was on board the USS Porter when the above photograph was taken, and recorded the date in his diary as having been on 18 December 1896
Photo: USS Rodgers (TB-4), USS Porter (TB-6), USS DuPont (TB-7), USS Blakeley (TB-27), USS Nicholson (TB-29) and USS O'Brien (TB-30) in Norfolk circa 1905
All but one TB were American built. The exception is USS Somers (TB-22), a steel torpedo boat, built as a private speculation by Friedrich Schichau, Elbing, Germany, purchased for the United States Navy on 25 March 1898, commissioned on 28 March 1898 with Lt. John Joseph Knapp in command and named USS Somers the next day. As the crew thought she was unfit to cross the Atlantic she was ordered to be laid up at Falmouth/UK until the conclusion of the Spanish-American War. Finally USS Somers arrived at New York, on board SS Manhattan (1898), on 2 May 1899 only.
Four of those torpedo boat “classes” were intended as “prototypes” of torpedo boat-destroyers with heavy artillery-armament (compared with torpedo-boats). Those predecessors of the first major series of US Navy destroyers were
Photo: "Torpedo Fleet, San Diego, California", early 1900s, present are (from left to right) USS Davis (Torpedo Boat # 12), USS Rowan (Torpedo Boat # 8), USS Goldsborough (Torpedo Boat # 20), and USS Farragut (Torpedo Boat # 11)
Photo: At the Mare Island Navy Yard, California, prior to World War I, (from left to right) USS Lawrence (Destroyer # 8), USS Goldsborough (Torpedo Boat # 20) and USS Farragut (Torpedo Boat # 11)
and
·
USS Bailey (TB-21, 1899, 235 tons, commissioned 10 June 1901, speed 30 kts., armament 4x 6-pdrs., 2x 18" torpedo tubes). USS Bailey was the first “four-stacker” and had more to do with high-sea destroyers, having in particular a complete bridge and a front part in “turtle back” characteristic closely derived from torpedo boats.
They experienced various problems and were logically reclassified as torpedo boats.
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