15/11/2025
On this day, 83 years ago, November 13, 1942, 42-year-old Lieutenant Commander Herbert Emery Schonland of the United States Navy fought to keep the heavy cruiser USS San Francisco afloat during one of the fiercest engagements in naval history.
He was serving as the ship’s damage control officer during the First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, part of a desperate fight to halt a Japanese night attack aimed at retaking the island and destroying U.S. supply lines.
At approximately 1:40 a.m., the San Francisco was illuminated by Japanese searchlights and immediately raked by enemy gunfire.
The bridge and superstructure were shattered.
Shells from Japanese battleships and cruisers tore through the ship, killing Rear Admiral Daniel J. Callaghan, Captain Cassin Young, and nearly every senior officer on the bridge.
The heavy cruiser was left a floating wreck, her topside blasted, her steering damaged, and fires spreading below decks.
Amid the chaos, Lieutenant Commander Schonland was below in the depths of the ship, directing the damage control teams.
When word reached him that command of the vessel had fallen into confusion, he left the engineering spaces and worked his way to the shattered bridge through choking smoke and flooding compartments to discover that nearly all superior officers were dead.
Recognizing the desperate situation, he ordered that command be formally passed to Lieutenant (j.g.) Bruce McCandless, the surviving officer on the bridge, while he returned below to take full charge of keeping the ship alive.
At this moment, San Francisco had been hit by at least forty-five enemy shells.
She was listing heavily to starboard, flooded in multiple compartments, and losing power.
Schonland immediately organized the surviving repair parties and began counterflooding to stabilize the ship.
To do this, he had to enter compartments already filling with seawater.
He waded through waist-deep flooding, sometimes in complete darkness, to reach the flooding valves himself.
Pumps failed, bulkheads bulged, and power cables sparked in the dark.
He worked by feel and with the light of hand lamps, moving up and down eight decks while the ship rolled and groaned under the strain of battle damage.
Under his direction, the crew contained the flooding by carefully opening sea valves on the opposite side of the ship to counter the heavy list.
He directed welded repairs, shored up buckling bulkheads, and oversaw the sealing of leaking compartments.
For nearly eight continuous hours, Schonland remained below decks, wet, exhausted, and covered in oil, ensuring that San Francisco would stay afloat long enough to clear the battle area.
By dawn, the crippled cruiser was still afloat.
Her fires were largely extinguished.
Her crew, acting under Schonland’s orders, had prevented her from capsizing despite catastrophic damage.
His leadership and technical skill directly saved the ship and the lives of hundreds of surviving sailors aboard her.
For his extraordinary heroism and composure in the face of overwhelming damage and danger, Lieutenant Commander Herbert Emery Schonland was awarded the Medal of Honor.
His official citation commended him for his “extraordinary heroism and distinguished conduct in the line of his profession” while serving as damage control officer on board the USS San Francisco during the naval battle of Guadalcanal.
On January 12, 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt presented the Medal of Honor to Lieutenant Commander Schonland at the White House, alongside fellow recipients Lieutenant Commander Edward Nelson Parker and Lieutenant (j.g.) Bruce McCandless, who had also distinguished themselves aboard San Francisco that same night.
Herbert Emery Schonland remained in the Navy after the war and rose to the rank of captain before retiring from service.
He died on November 13, 1984, in Kennebunkport, Maine, exactly forty-two years to the day after the action that earned him the Medal of Honor.
He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, where his grave bears the simple inscription of a sailor who saved his ship.
