Navy Destroyer USS ‘Stewart’ Lies Below Your Keel off Point Reyes
This doesn’t have much to do with sailing, but it does coincide with Fleet Week. An interesting sea story “resurfaced” recently after the discovery of the sunken Navy destroyer USS Stewart off Point Reyes in the Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary, back in August.
In shades of Captain “Lucky Jack” Aubrey — hero of the Patrick O’Brian novels — the USS Stewart (DD 224) was captured, repaired and reflagged as a warship of the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II. And then “captured” back!
The first incident happened in February 1942, when the then 22-year-old “four stacker” was in drydock in Surabaya (in east Java) after being damaged during the Battle of Badung Strait. Unable to get her out before the port was overrun, American forces set demolition charges to blow up the ship — and the drydock — and the coup de grace seemed to be a direct hit from a Japanese bomber. The Stewart’s name was struck from the Navy list a month later.
Imagine the surprise when American pilots started reporting an American warship operating deep in enemy waters. Turns out the Japanese navy raised the Stewart, repaired her, and commissioned her in the Imperial Navy as Patrol Boat 102! Under that designation, she participated in several operations, including the sinking of an American submarine (though she was not directly involved in that attack).
Soon after VJ Day, the ship was found laid up in Hiro Bay, only a few miles from Hiroshima.
In what was said to be an emotional ceremony, in October 1945 the USS Stewart was recommissioned into the US Navy. On the way home, her engines gave out near Guam, and she had to be towed the rest of the way to San Francisco. The old ship was decommissioned in 1946, with her last assignment being a target for bombing practice on the Cordell Bank. Navy Hellcat airplanes lit her up with rockets and thousands of 50 caliber rounds, but as before, the old gal refused to give up the ghost. It took a point-blank barrage from another Navy ship to finally send her to the bottom.
Autonomous drones operated by the marine robotics firm Ocean Infinity found the USS Stewart in August. She sits upright, and amazingly intact, in 3,500 feet of water.
