by Chris Dixon
The Enterprise has, of course, seen duty all over the world. She blockaded ports during the Cuban Missile Crisis, served as a base for countless sorties over Vietnam, and in 2001, she was one of the first ships to launch airstrikes against Al Qaeda. Yet in 1985, she was very nearly undone by Bishop Rock.
At that time, her captain was Robert J. Leuschner Jr., a local boy who grew up along the paradisiacal shores of San Diego. He vividly recalls boyhood hunts for yellowtail skipjack around the offshore Coronado Islands. “It was always a race to see if we could get it in the boat before hungry hammerhead showed up,” he told me. “The sportfishing fleet also ran occasional overnight trips to what they called ‘sixty-mile banks.’ I always wanted to go, but couldn’t come up with the fare. Ironically, I got there thirty-three years later.”
On November 2, 1985, a mere month before Larry “Flame” Moore first painted a bull’s-eye on Bishop Rock, fifty-year-old Captain Leuschner stood on the bridge of the Enterprise, in charge of a five-thousand-man crew and a busy, swaying one-runway airport that resembled a floating city. The Enterprise was conducting an Operational Readiness Exercise (ORE) west of San Clemente Island that would bring her to a simulated “choke point”—an imagined tight passageway just beyond the Cortes Bank at 6 P.M. OREs are intense, fast-paced combat simulations, and Leuschner had expressed concern to his commanders that his flight crew was not yet ready for this “graduation day” level operation, but it was ordered anyway. Planes were to be launched in rapid succession while a myriad of other ship-wide drills were conducted—a man-overboard recovery being among the first. Drills and discussions pulled Leuschner off the bridge for extended periods while bad winds and course corrections eventually left the Enterprise two hours late for her choke point rendezvous. She accelerated to thirty knots and was bound for the Bank by 5 P.M.
At around 5:25 p.m., Leuschner returned to the bridge to note that an officer on duty had put the ship on a near 180-degree southerly course, heeding the navigator who intended to avoid the Bishop Rock. “That’s dumb,” Leuschner told the cowed officer, and he ordered a northerly turn to 322 degrees. Leuschner was annoyed. The southerly course would not have allowed for proper winds to recover three aircraft still in flight, and he was currently the only man on the bridge qualified to solve the wind, and swell-direction issues to reel his planes back in. Today he admits that he also became distracted by other tactical discussions, and thus missed a simple mention by the navigator that the Enterprise was nearing Bishop Rock. By the time Leuschner changed the ship’s direction, Enterprise had already crossed a deeper, southerly reach of the Cortes Bank.
Naturally, today the Enterprise would have held GPS and/or sonar to warn her of shoal water. But in 1985 the GPS satellite array was not yet operational, and carriers were not typically equipped with sonar. Navigation was conduced with LORAN and charts. “I doubt if anyone ever thought of sonar as a grounding prevention system,” Leuschner said. “That task was rightfully left to the COs [commanding officers like himself] and the navigators.”
By 5:30 P.M. , the Enterprise was ominously paralleling the outer edge of the Bank in the autumn dark. Leuschner noted white floodlights about four nautical miles off her bow. He correctly presumed it a gathering of fishing boats, but incorrectly reasoned that a dimmer, flashing red light was one boat’s net buoy marker. Leuschner tried to hail the fishermen to inform them of his position, but received no response. A new navigator, meantime, had only recently begun his shift and began anxiously trying to single out the radar signature of the CB1 (Cortes Bank) buoy on Bishop Rock amid the cluster of boats. On deck, a plane attempting to land missed the deck arresting hook and was forced to make a nerve-wracking second pass.
Disaster might still have been avoided had an alarming call not come in to the bridge at 5:35 P.M. A senior officer belowdecks reported that a man was walking around with a 9mm Uzi submachine gun, and for a critical twelve minutes he kept the junior operator on duty (OOD) on the phone trying to sort out the security issue. “This might have been appropriate on a small ship where the OOD is the action officer on all abnormal events, but not a five-thousand-population carrier,” said Leuschner.
Leuschner was consumed with airplanes, fishing boats, and a series of other decisions. A further underling, who knew the ship’s location, might have warned the OOD to get the hell off the phone, but he was simply too scared to do so. Finally, Leuschner decided to look at the bottom contours that had apparently lured the small scrum of fishermen. When the navigator told Leuschner he would “like to give the Bishop Rock a wider berth than a thousand yards,” the captain was stunned.
It was too late to turn the hulking machine hard left into deeper water, and Leuschner immediately ordered the Enterprise turned hard to the right, to a near due-northerly course, knowing she was likely already in water less than a hundred feet deep. He figured they were still a mile off the buoy, but when the ship reached a sharper angle to the Bishop Rock buoy light, he realized how close they really were. Moments later the immense aircraft carrier vibrated like a car passing over a series of washboard bumps.
The Enterprise struck the Bishop Rock a glancing bow, passing through a saddle-back formation and tearing a sixty-foot gash in her port hull. She began taking on water rapidly and was soon heeled over in an eleven-degree list. Leuschner ordered her counter-flooded to starboard to bring her off the list, while damage assessments were taken belowdecks. The next day, a contingent of marines leaned over the flight deck with machine guns, ready to blast any sharks that might threaten divers inspecting the hull. The divers found the gash, a ripped-off port keel, and severely deformed outboard port propeller blades. The tear would introduce jet fuel into the ship’s drinking water supply, but the inner hull was miraculously unbreached. Despite $17 million in damages, the Enterprise was, remarkably, able to continue her exercise.
The USS Enterprise in 1966. Photo: U.S. Navy.
The Uzi would turn out to be a convincing fake, maybe even a water gun, and ultimately, it was perhaps the final of many contributing factors to what was an extremely unusual grounding of an aircraft carrier in any type of water, much less the open ocean. Indeed, the only other time the Enterprise ever touched bottom was a year earlier in San Francisco Harbor, when she scraped across a sandbar under the command of another captain (and oddly enough, carrying actor George Takei, crewman of TV’s starship Enterprise, on board as a guest).
Admiral Leuschner called his own grounding a classic and highly dangerous “communications breakdown.” Then he added, “But none of that diminishes the unambiguous responsibility of the CO [himself] for all outcomes. That’s navy tradition, with which I wholeheartedly agree.”
Leuschner would lose his command over the incident. He would go on to serve four years as a rear admiral, overseeing the development of computer-based combat systems before retiring. Yet Leuschner is under no misconception that things might have turned out far worse, for the ship and his crew, had the Enterprise struck Bishop Rock in even shallower water. Some might call it luck that it did not, but echoing Ilima Kalama, Leuschner said, “I prefer to think of it as God’s will that no one was injured.”
Robert Leuschner and Ilima Kalama represent two men humbled by the Cortes Bank who believe God spared them from worse fates. Yet the bones of one great ship do lie atop Bishop Rock—a ship, actually, larger than almost any that has ever foundered off the coast of California. How the SS Jalisco came to lie beneath three feet of water is another lesson of hubris and utter obsession brought on by the Bank and struck down by the hand of the almighty. It’s also one of the most bizarre and harrowing stories of maritime survival I have ever encountered.
Chapter 4:
THE KINGS
OF
ABALONIA
It seldom occurs that new islands arise out of the sea. But if it should happen that a new island arise, we state that it must belong, as property, to whomever inhabit it first. But he or they who colonize it owe obedience to the lord within whose
dominion the new island arose
—Alfonse the Wise of Castille, 1265
On Halloween 1966, a story headlined “Pair Planning Island Nation off San Diego” appeared on page 11 of the Long Beach Press-Telegram. A small team of California entrepreneurs had bought a huge surplus navy freighter and planned to scuttle her atop the Cortes Bank in very shallow water. Their plan was to turn the Bank back into an island for the first time in thousands of years and then claim jurisdiction over its incredibly productive territorial waters. The men were, in short, nation builders.
What’s amazing is not that these founding fathers failed, but how close they came to succeeding.
It wasn’t until the second engine aboard Sallytender died that Joe Kirkwood began to truly fear for his life.
For the preceding hour, a twenty-six-foot fishing vessel and her ill-prepared two-man crew had been assaulted by chaotic 15-foot seas spawned by a relentless Santa Ana gale. Neither Kirkwood nor his buddy, Dick Hall, had any business venturing so far offshore. Death now seemed likely.
It was February 10, 1966, and the trip was meant to be a scouting mission to locate and simply get a feel for the waters around the submerged seamount Kirkwood planned to resurrect as Cortes Island. Not wholly unlike their ancient forebears the Kinkipar, Kirkwood and Hall had motored out past San Clemente Island late the night before. Yet, knowing nothing of celestial navigation or of following the invisible lines painted in the sky by seabirds heading toward a source of plentiful food, these pioneers had put their faith in technology, hoping to stumble upon the lighted buoy atop Cortes Bank and then spend the ensuing day leisurely snorkeling and exploring the waters around Archibald MacRae’s Rock. Yet the night passed without any sign of the buoy, and with daybreak, its flashing light disappeared, making their quest akin to finding a needle in a haystack. They scoured the trackless sea from dawn to dusk, and then turned back toward Newport just as the wind began to howl. Seas went to hell in a heartbeat, and the Sallytender was battered by an ocean blitzed with steep, angry swells.
One of her engines died, followed minutes later by the other. She turned broadside and pendulumed nearly 180 degrees in the precipitous, short-interval waves. Kirkwood and Hall gripped their seats like bronco riders but they snapped off their mounts. Kirkwood radioed the Coast Guard, who explained it would be six hellish hours before the cutter Point Divide could reach them. The men were to check in every twenty minutes so a radio bead could be maintained on their position, a feat greatly complicated when Sallytender began taking on water. The Coast Guard dispatcher’s voice rose a notch on this news. A helicopter would be sent.
The men bailed and reeled wildly across the cabin. At some point, Kirkwood, half-dead with exhaustion and seasickness, looked up to see Hall stuffing his face—a full stick of butter, a loaf of bread, anything in the galley. “How the hell can you eat at a time like this?” he asked. Hall replied through an overflowing mouth: “Whoever eats the most will last longest in the water.”
“That was cool thinking,” thought Kirkwood. “I couldn’t argue with the wisdom of it.”
Describing the moment later, Kirkwood wrote, “It almost came as a shock when I realized that the good physical condition I’d always prided myself in didn’t mean very much out there. The sea was foreign to me and I found it to be a savage environment; completely different from anything I’d ever known, and one in which man is nothing. The slamming and the thudding and heaving were never ending. We were jarred to the teeth every few seconds…We had quickly been exhausted, but the sea, far from being spent, increased in force almost as though to show us how puny, how insignificant we were.
“What the hell was I doing out here anyway? Only an idiot would attempt such a preposterous scheme as building a new country; and only a numbskull would be out here trying to do it. But even as the thought took form in my mind, while the numbing exhaustion crept through my mind and body, I knew it wasn’t true. I didn’t mean it at all. Building this country was exactly what I wanted to do—what I had to do. And my being there, being part of it from the inception, to watch it grow and take shape, from dream to reality, was just me. That was my way. Otherwise there was no joy in it.”
After another endless hour, a Coast Guard chopper appeared on the horizon and Hall and Kirkwood sobbed in relief. They were safe, but the near miss would leave Kirkwood with a stark realization: It would take far more than a twenty-six-foot boat, a loaf of bread, and a stick of butter to conquer the Cortes Bank.
He knew exactly who to call.
For James Houtz, the mid-1960s were heady days. In early 1965, the former navy demolitions expert had set a world cave-diving depth record, descending to an astonishing 315 feet with a scuba tank filled not with an exotic mixture of nitrogen or helium but simple compressed air. The accomplishment was remarkable not only because it had bested a Jacques Cousteau record by a hundred feet but had been performed in the claustrophobic depths of Devil’s Hole, an abyssal deepwater cave whose only access point is a tiny gash in the earth near Death Valley.
The expedition had earned Houtz considerable renown and a grant for further exploration. He now owned his own dive shop, was making a living doing what he loved, and was a happily married father to boot. Life was good.
Yet if Houtz was already well known at the start of 1965, a rescue attempt five months later very nearly turned him into a household name. Four young friends had descended into Devil’s Hole. When two failed to surface, Houtz was called to lead the rescue.
Houtz and his team twisted and turned through labyrinthine limestone passageways hoping to find a terrified diver dog-paddling in one of the cave’s primordial air pockets. Yet all he ever discovered was a scuba mask. “They were never found,” he said. “The only thing down there now is bones.”
All of which is to say that when, a month later, the phone rang in his dive shop, he understood the correlation between foolhardiness and death, particularly in the water.
“Hello, Mr. Houtz,” said a robust voice on the other end of the line. “This is Joe Kirkwood.”
The caller needed no introduction. In the previous decade, the tall, dark, and handsome Kirkwood had starred in a series of films and ABC television shows, playing the real-life rendition of a friendly and soft-spoken comic strip boxer named Joe Palooka. He was the son of Joe Kirkwood Sr., arguably the best trick-shot golfer who ever lived. In 1948, the men became the first father-son team to win a spot in the U.S. Open. A year later, Junior accepted the first of at least four invitations he would receive to play the Masters; he finished an impressive seventh.
By the time he phoned Houtz, Kirkwood was no longer acting or golfing professionally. He owned a bowling alley in Studio City. Shortly after the initial call, Houtz drove up to meet a man he found a charismatic wellspring of irrepressible energy. When the former celebrity boxer sat back in his chair and asked, “Have you ever heard of a spot called the Cortes Bank?” Houtz’s brows arched. He had pulled thirty-five-pound lobsters from deep caves atop Bishop Rock, and he had fished among swarms of feeding albacore so frenzied that the water boiled for miles. An hour amid a school like that, and your forty-three-foot-long sportfisher was stuffed to the gunwales with high-grade sashimi. Yeah, he was familiar with the Bank.
Kirkwood announced his intention to refloat Cortes Island, and Houtz’s jaw slackened. The effort was already well underway. Kirkwood had lined up solid financial backers and a partner with a huge rock quarry in Ensenada. He had signed a memorandum of agreement with the Los Angeles sanitation district to barge three thousand tons of landfill garbage to the Bank a day. There was money and legend to be made. What Kirkwood needed was a partner with Houtz’s diverse maritime skill set to survey the Bank and help figure out how best to proceed. Houtz immediately thought Kirkwood “was nuts,” but he was also clearly a big thinker and a risk taker. Houtz had spent his life among men of his ilk.
“The idea really got the wheels spinning,” Houtz said. “It was like, ‘Okay, I’ve got a project here. W
hat will it take to do it?’ My philosophy is, I don’t accept the word impossible—I can’t.”
He would have to convince a highly skeptical wife, and take out a second mortgage on the family home, but Houtz was in.
Today, Jim Houtz is in his seventies. He’s fit and compact with a pair of blazing blue eyes, a mischievous grin, and a few wicked scars on his arms and legs from motorcycle racing and other treasured memories of an ill-spent youth. He recounted his tale on a flawless fall day at the immaculate Laguna Beach hilltop ranch house he shares with his lovely wife, Joan. From his backyard, the Pacific is an endless cobalt expanse that stretches easily to San Clemente Island. With a telescope, it’s easy to imagine you might see waves above Bishop Rock.
When I contacted him, Houtz was surprised that someone wanted to hear of his experience atop the Cortes Bank. He was even more surprised when I showed him a sixty-page manuscript that Joe Kirkwood had written about his role in the adventure. The manuscript and a small collection of photos had reached me anonymously and out of the blue. It seems Kirkwood penned the tale around 1967 and sent it to Sports Illustrated, whose editors surely knew of Kirkwood from his golf career. For some reason, it was never published.
“His story—it’s in thirds,” Houtz said, flipping through the pages. “One-third is fact. One third is a theatrical script for a movie. One third is fantasy—over and above all to cover his rear end. I will say, if this had been published anywhere, I’d have sued his ass.”