Disaster Favours the Daring: Shipwreck at Honda Point
Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford
Pushkin Industries
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 29 August 2025
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 1923, legendary navigator Captain Dolly Hunter led a squadron of warships into America’s worst peacetime naval catastrophe. The mission was supposed to be a speed trial, a display of the squadron’s skill. But it ended in a maritime pile-up, with some destroyers stranded on rocks, others sinking fast, and deadly oil leaking into the Pacific Ocean. How?
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Transcript
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| 0:34.1 | Pushkin. |
| 0:45.5 | Captain Donald Hunter, or Dolly to his friends, was a legendary navigator. |
| 0:54.4 | One historian described his reputation as having the homing instinct of a riverbound salmon. |
| 1:02.0 | He'd spent years at the Naval Academy teaching other US Navy officers how to navigate. |
| 1:09.1 | Friendly, easygoing, a little overweight. |
| 1:12.8 | Captain Hunter was nevertheless a decisive, confident man. |
| 1:19.1 | This particular mission certainly called for decisiveness. |
| 1:23.8 | It was 1923. |
| 1:26.0 | Budgets were tight after post-war demobilization, |
| 1:29.9 | and to save money on fuel, U.S. Navy vessels were understanding orders to travel slowly. |
| 1:36.9 | But not this time. |
| 1:40.5 | Fourteen new warships from Destroyer Squadron 11 had permission to travel fast, from San Francisco to San Diego. |
| 1:51.3 | These manoeuvres were designed to test the turbines of the destroyers, checking that they could run at high speed. |
| 1:58.3 | And they were designed to test the sailors too. |
| 2:01.7 | Could Squadron 11 keep tight together in formation, following the lead of the flagship with a |
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