Re: Sea Books
hlg@pacbell.net
Thu, 7 Oct 1999 21:16:47 -0700
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West Wight Potter Website at URL
http://www.lesbois.com/wwpotter/
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Tragedy at Honda is a good read. It is about the loss of seven destroyers
at Honda near Pt. Arguello (around 1921- 1923) when a navigation error
caused a whole formation of destroyers to steam into the rocks at cruising
speed at night in poor visibility. It describes the accident, the rescues,
and the investigation that followed. The book is out of print but is
available in some libraries. The accident was a blunder, but the
performance of the officers and men on the seven ships after the grounding
was incredible. It's written by a Navy officer, and the writing is somewhat
flowery, as was the style then, but seems to be very well researched.
I became interested in the story after Pottering out to the remains of the
destroyer Thompson in South San Francisco Bay. The Thompson was in the rear
of the formation at Honda and avoided making the fatal turn and grounding.
The Thompson was decommissioned later, to be scrapped, but instead became a
floating restaurant somewhere in the South Bay. Then in WWII, the Navy
bought it back, grounded it in the middle of the South Bay and used it as
a bombing target. There are photos of the Thompson, as it was and as it is,
on the Potter Yachters web page <http://potter-yachters.org>.
Harry Gordon
P14 #234, Manatee
Mountain View, CA