Chapter One


Off the island of Bali, in the silhouette of mountains made sacred by the favor of local gods, a warship plied the black waters of an equatorial sea. The night of February 4, 1942, found her moving swiftly toward a port on the southern coast of the adjoining island of Java. She had sustained a deep wound that day, an aerial bomb striking her after turret, charring and melting the gun house and its entire stalk. The great blast killed forty-six men. Her captain now sought port to patch his ship and bury his dead with honors. For the flagship of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, this was the first blow of a war not yet sixty days old.

The USS Houston, a heavy cruiser, was the largest combat vessel the U.S. Navy had committed to the Dutch East Indies. She was bound for the port of Tjilatjap. Its colliding consonants compelled American sailors to give the town the more symphonious nickname "Slapjack" or, chewing their words more bitterly, "that lousy dump." As the thunder of Japan's opening offensive washed over Indonesia in early 1942, Tjilatjap was one of three havens that Allied warships still maintained in these dangerous waters. With the enemy's invasion fleets pressing down from the north and his planes attacking from land bases ever closer to Java, those harbors were fast becoming untenable. The previous day, February 3, Japanese bombers struck Surabaya, the city in the island's east that was home to Adm. Thomas C. Hart's threadbare squadron of surface combatants. To the west, the port at Batavia (now Jakarta) was a marked target too. As Hart's commanders well knew, Japan's aviators had needed just forty-eight hours after the start of war on December 8 to smash American airpower in the Philippines, sink the two largest Allied warships in the region--the British battleship Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser Repulse--and land an invasion force on Luzon. The Imperial red tide knew no pause. Flowing southward, operating at high tempo by day and by night, the Japanese executed a leapfrogging series of amphibious invasions down the coasts of Borneo and Celebes, each gain consolidated and used to stage the next assault. The shadow of the Japanese offensive loomed over Java, where the Allies would make a last stand in defense of the old Dutch colonial outpost and aim to blunt Japan's onrushing advance toward Australia.

At midnight of February 3, alerted by Allied aircraft to the presence of a Japanese invasion fleet in Makassar Strait, north of Java, the Houston had departed Surabaya with a flotilla of U.S. and Dutch warships--the aged light cruiser USS Marblehead, the Dutch light cruisers De Ruyter and Tromp, and an escort of eight destroyers. Under Dutch Rear Adm. Karel W. F. M. Doorman, the striking force steamed by night to avoid Japanese aircraft. But the distance to their target was such that the Allied ships had no choice but to cross the Flores Sea by daylight on February 4. No friendly fighter planes were on hand to cover them. It was about ten o'clock on that bright morning when Japanese bombers began appearing overhead, ending Doorman's mission before it ever really began.

That day had started as so many of them did, with the Houston's Marine bugler putting his brass bell to the public address microphone and blowing the call to air defense. As men sprinted to their general quarters stations, they could look up and see the Japanese bombers droning by, one wave after the next, nine at a time, fifty-four in all, locked in tight V formations, silvery fuselages glinting in the sun. Nosing over into shallow power glides from seventeen thousand feet, the twin-engine G3M Nells...

 

"Ship of Ghosts would be an unforgettable book if only for its brilliantly wrought account of the massive, chaotic sea battle that destroyed the USS Houston. But that is only the beginning of a story that grows more harrowing with every chapter, and that finally leaves the reader amazed at what human beings are capable of achieving and enduring."

 

"On sea and on land, these intrepid sailors endured enough for a thousand lifetimes. In this riveting account, Hornfischer carefully reconstructs a story none of us should be allowed to forget."

 

"Hornfischer has produced another meticulously researched naval history page-turner in Ship of Ghosts. He manages to fuse powerful human stories into the great flow of historical events with a singular story-telling talent."

 

"Hornfischer has done it again. His narrative is fine-tuned and always compelling but where he truly excels is in his evocative, often lyrical descriptions of combat at sea. Those who enjoyed his previous best-seller will love Ship of Ghosts--military history at its finest."

 

"Masterly...[the] description of the huge and terrifying naval engagements are as overwhelming a stretch of historical writing as I have ever come across.... Beautifully written and heartgripping."

 

"Recounts perhaps the most devastating untold saga of World War II in piercing detail."

 

" "Hornfischer is quickly establishing himself as doing for the Navy what popular historian Stephen Ambrose did for the Army.... So great is the drama of the Houston and its survivors that this story seems to tell itself."

 

"With vivid and visceral descriptions of the chaos and valor onboard the doomed Houston...the author penetrates the thoughts and fears of adrenaline-pumped sailors in the heat of combat.... Hornfischer masterfully shapes the narrative.... breathing life into an unforgettable epic of human endurance."

 

"Hornfischer has painted a compelling picture of one of the most gallant ships and one of the grimmest campaigns in American naval history. He has a positive genius for depicting the surface-warfare sailor in a tight spot. May he write long and give them more memorials."

 

"What kind of yarn is Ship of Ghosts? Put Stephen Ambrose aboard the cruiser once known as 'the Galloping Ghost of the Java Coast.' Next, bring Patrick O'Brien for nautical detail and high seas drama. Then factor in Joseph Conrad for tales of men under stress in exotic climes.... Naval history of the highest order."

 

Ship of Ghosts by James D. Hornfischer
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