Talk:Honda Point disaster/Archive 1

Why
this article is very detailed but leaves out why exactly the ship ran aground, did the lead ship make an error in it's calculation? were there rough seas? was human error the main cause? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Chimera5 (talk • contribs) 10 June 2004

Just heard of this disaster in a talk by Paul Saffo. No sources/books mentioned, but he tells a story of (i) the captain of the lead ship navigating by dead reckoning, (ii) this captain disregarding radio navigation data that contradicted the position he had calculated, (iii) some sort of speed record being attempted, (iv) a standard operating procedure where destroyers always tried to stay clustered together, and where all ships in a cluster took their navigational information from the lead ship. From his story, the navigator of the Kennedy (I think) did his own calculations from the radio data, and his captain was worried enough to hang back a little bit when the fatal order was issued. Because of this, it was a seven ship pileup instead of an eleven ship pileup, and the captain of the Kennedy was court martialled for not sticking with the pack. A fascinating story, I haven't added it to the main article because it's not sufficiently sourced, I'd love to get more info on it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.16.229.252 (talk) 20:17, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Rating
And I thought I might point out, in my opinion, this article is probably at least a B class article. Since I'm not part of this project, I didn't feel right setting it as such (I don't even really know who's allowed to.). But I felt I ought to throw in my 2 cents, in case anyone was planning to evaluate it. Tonerman 07:40, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikilink
Minor point: the link for the word "Extricate", in the list of ships, goes to a music album. I assume that wasn't the plan. I didn't remove it, in case someone actually wanted to point it at something of value, but felt it was worth pointing out. Tonerman 07:33, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Looks like somebody changed it to a wiktionary link now. Brianhe (talk) 18:18, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Coordinate Standardization
I am a bit new to wikipedia, first, so pardon me if this has been discussed elsewhere, but as I visit various articles with coordinate links in the upper right corner there seems to be little standardization of coordinate systems. This articles coordinates (34.602067N, 120.644109W) are in a bastardization of decimal degrees and degree, minute, second. Other articles are in decimal degrees and degrees,minutes,seconds. I have not seen any in Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM), but have no doubt that one (or more) such articles exist. Could a standard be established? I'd favor degree, minute, second, but could live with any, as long as it were standard!

If a standard exists, the coordinates in the various systems are: decimal degrees: 34.602067, -120.644109 degree, minute second: 34° 36′ 7.44″ N, 120° 38′ 38.79″ W UTM: 	10S 716036 3831438 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.227.30.189 (talk) 03:01, 17 October 2009 (UTC)
 * You will probably get more responses over at WikiProject Coordinates as this is a larger issue than this one article. -- Brianhe (talk) 23:37, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Geography
This is not very readable, "sticking out about one and a quarter mile". What is sticking out about one and a quarter mile? the rocks from the ocean or the rocks from the coast? I measured the distance from the coast on Google earth (they have a ruler) and it's only 200 m from the coastal rocks to the Destroyer Rock. It's named the Destroyer Rock but called the Devil's Jaw. This needs quite a bit of clarification and editing. There are no citations for any of this information. Metricmike (talk) 02:51, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Source
I have done some research on the incident and I have found a book that offers some concrete facts about the incident itself and the aftermath of the disaster. The book also offers details as to why the ships crashed, the fate of each ship involved, rescue efforts that occurred after the disaster, and salvaging attempts that took place. This source would add new credible information to this article as well as strengthen the credibility of the information already present in the article. The name of the book is Blunders and Disasters at Sea and it was written by David Blackmore. Tshaffer92 (talk) 04:21, 3 February 2012 (UTC)Tshaffer92 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tshaffer92 (talk • contribs) 03:54, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Captain Edward Howe Watson and the Honda Disaster
I came across a scholarly journal called the Pacific Historical Review that featured an article titled Captain Edward Howe Watson and the Honda Disaster. This would be an excellent source to add to the article since it gives great background information about the disaster and about Captain Edward H. Watson, who was in command of the fleet. The date, time, and location of the disaster is also clearly defined in this article. The article also goes into great detail about how the disaster unfolded and offers a wealth of new information to add to the Wikipedia page. I feel that this source would add credibility to the information already on this Wikipedia page. Here is the citation for the source: McKee, Irving. (1960). Captain Edward Howe Watson and the Honda Disaster. Pacific Historical Review, 29 (3), 287-305. Tshaffer92 (talk) 08:49, 10 February 2012 (UTC)Tshaffer92

USS Chauncey in picture only two funnels
In the USS Chauncey picture, why are there only two funnels visible ? --Robertiki (talk) 11:50, 31 May 2017 (UTC)
 * That is odd. In other pictures of the wrecks here, four are visible. There's a cryptic caption on the image at National Archives : "Foremast has been removed and other top hanger to make her less conspicuous from a distance." - Bri (talk) 18:32, 31 May 2017 (UTC)