DEADLY GAME OF `FOLLOW THE LEADER'; SURVIVOR REMEMBERS 1923 NAVAL DISASTER.

Byline: John Antczak The Associated Press 

It's been 75 years, but Gene Bruce can still remember the sirens wailing somewhere ahead in the line of Navy destroyers speeding down the foggy California coast.

``We thought maybe it was `man overboard' - that's all it could be,'' the 91-year-old North Hollywood resident recalled.

But it was much worse than that. The sirens in the night were the first shrieks of alarm in one of the Navy's worst peacetime disasters.

Moments after the sirens sounded, Bruce's ship, the USS Chauncey, ran aground.

In all, seven of the 15 ships of Destroyer Squadron 11 were wrecked on a rocky point on the Santa Barbara County coast. Twenty-three sailors were killed - most on the USS Young, which had quickly rolled over - but more than 800 were saved.

A mistake in navigation aboard the lead ship, the USS Delphy, had turned the southbound column into the rugged coast rather than the Santa Barbara Channel 20 miles to the south.

Today what came to be called the tragedy at Honda Point has been largely forgotten. And it is a living memory to only a dwindling number who can say they were there the night of Sept. 8, 1923.

On Tuesday, Bruce will return to the scene, now part of Vandenberg Air Force Base, for a ceremony to commemorate the 75th anniversary.

Only one other former sailor from the squadron is scheduled to make it back to Honda Point, where the Chauncey's anchor was raised in 1973 and made into a memorial on the base. Bruce said he thinks this will be the last reunion with any survivors, noting that at 16 he was one of the youngest people in the accident.

``Both of us will probably be gone pretty soon,'' he said.

Sitting in the pleasant San Fernando Valley home he shares with his wife, Anne, Bruce said Saturday that age has made him forget much of what happened.

Still, he can recall the night when he was a 16-year-old seaman second class from Albuquerque, N.M., and the squadron was sailing south after Fleet Week in San Francisco.

The squadron was moving fast, at about 20 knots, en route to San Diego.

``We were just playing follow the leader,'' Bruce said. ``The Delphy . . . they were doing the navigating. We were just following them.''

Shortly before 9 p.m., the squadron commander, Capt. Edward H. Watson, turned the column left, intending to take his ships between the mainland and the Channel Islands.

``They thought that they were farther south,'' said Bruce, whose jobs on the ship included working in the crew's mess and standing watches on the wings of the bridge.

``I had just come off watch on the bridge, about 8 o'clock at night, and I went down below and had some chow and I was just hanging around . . . just yakking, and we heard a siren up above, ahead. That's the first hint we had what was happening.''

Then the Chauncey hit the rocks.

``We stopped and we were trying to back down, and this big rock was . . .'' said Bruce, pausing to cast back in his memory, ``. . . on our right-hand side. The Young, the one that turned over, was on the other side.''

Waves dragged the Chauncey along the Young's upended propeller. ``It cut us open,'' Bruce said.

Fortunately, the Chauncey remained upright against the rocks. According to accounts of the rescue, survivors on the Young made their way to the Chauncey by means of a lifeline that was dragged between the ships by a heroic sailor from the Young.

Help also came from local ranchers and residents of the nearby town of Lompoc. They helped crewmen wading ashore or needing to be hoisted up the bluffs.

The Southern Pacific Railroad's main West Coast line runs near the crash scene, and special trains were sent to bring the injured to hospitals and take other survivors some 240 miles south to San Diego.

Bruce got off the Chauncey the next day.

Watson, the commander who turned the column of ships into the rocks, also survived the wreck, but lost an expected promotion and retired from the Navy six years later.

After his own six years in the Navy, Bruce later worked as a sign painter and for a building materials company.

Daily News Staff Writer Lee Condon contributed to this story.

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2 Photos

PHOTO (1) Survivor Gene Bruce displays a photo of the wrecked warships.

(2) This undated Navy file photo shows some of the seven destroyers that ran aground at Honda Point on Sept. 8, 1923.