The Ghost Ship, the Wrong Submarine, and the USS Stewart That Wouldn’t Stay Sunk

When I lived on Galveston Island, I frequently toured the USS Cavalla (SS-244), a World War II submarine on display at Seawolf Park.  This produces one of those small historical misunderstandings that only a tourist attraction can create.  Because the submarine is in Seawolf Park, many visitors naturally leave with the impression that they have toured the USS Seawolf. This is impossible, unless the Navy has developed a very aggressive museum-restoration program involving recovery from the bottom of the Pacific, because USS Seawolf (SS-197) was lost in 1944, most likely to friendly fire.  The Galveston Naval Museum identifies the submarine on display as the Cavalla, and the destroyer escort beside her as USS Stewart (DE-238).

The friendly-fire part of the Seawolf story is one of those grim little naval footnotes that make history feel less like a marble monument and more like a dimly lit office with too many filing cabinets.  The evidence indicates that Seawolf was probably sunk by the destroyer escort USS Richard M. Rowell after failing to respond properly during a tense anti-submarine search.  The Navy did not exactly put “We may have sunk our own submarine” on a recruiting poster, but the friendly-fire explanation was part of postwar accounting rather than a secret locked away until the age of the internet.  The Naval History and Heritage Command say the evidence suggests friendly fire was the most likely cause.

Still, I was not there primarily to solve the Seawolf confusion. I was there to tour the Cavalla, the submarine that sank the Japanese aircraft carrier Shōkaku, a veteran of the Pearl Harbor attack.  That is a pretty good résumé.  Most museum ships can say they served their country, the Cavalla can say she helped send one of the Pearl Harbor carriers to the bottom.  That gives the tour a certain edge.  You are not just ducking through hatches and trying not to bang your head; you are walking through a machine that once changed the balance sheet of the Pacific War.

But I always ended the visit by touring the ship tied up beside her: the USS Stewart (DE-238), an Edsall-class destroyer escort.  Destroyer escorts were not glamorous in the way battleships and carriers were glamorous.  They did not get much help from Hollywood.  They were the practical shoes of naval warfare: sturdy, necessary, and unlikely to be featured in a recruiting poster unless all the battleships were busy.  The Galveston Naval Museum says Stewart is one of only two remaining destroyer escorts in the United States, and the only surviving Edsall-class destroyer escort.

Reading up on Stewart, I discovered that there were actually three U.S. Navy ships named USS Stewart, all named for Rear Admiral Charles Stewart, who commanded the USS Constitution during the War of 1812.  This is where the story stops being merely interesting and starts behaving like it was written by a screenwriter who had been told, “Make it weirder, but keep the ships real.”

The first USS Stewart (DD-13) was one of the Navy’s earliest destroyers, a Bainbridge-class vessel from the dawn of the destroyer age.  She was small, narrow, fast for her time, and armed with the kind of optimism that early destroyers required.  In World War I, she escorted convoys off France, and even attacked the German submarine U-108 in 1918.  The Naval History and Heritage Command photo caption notes that Stewart’s funnel carried a star signifying that she had sunk or disabled a German submarine, though later evidence showed U-108 survived.

The second USS Stewart (DD-224) had the truly fabulous career, by which I mean a career that included almost every indignity short of being converted into a floating seafood restaurant.  She was a Clemson-class “four-stacker,” commissioned in 1920, and by World War II she was already an elderly antique destroyer in the Asiatic Fleet.  In peacetime, she had done the usual imperial-era chores: showing the flag, visiting China, rescuing people after the Kanto earthquake, patrolling rivers, and reminding everyone that the United States Navy could appear in your harbor whether or not you had invited it.  In 1938, Stewart even helped search for the missing Pan Am Hawaii Clipper, which vanished between Guam and Manila.  According to one timeline, Stewart left Manila on July 30 to search for the missing flying boat and was ordered to abandon the search on August 6.

The Hawaii Clipper mystery deserves its own shelf in the library of prewar weirdness.  The aircraft disappeared with fifteen people aboard, and no confirmed wreckage was ever found.  One rumor held that passenger Wah Sun Choy, also known as Watson Choy, was carrying millions in gold certificates intended for Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Nationalists.  That led to theories that Japanese agents hijacked or destroyed the plane, something Japan vigorously denies, but we shouldn’t let that get in the way of a good story.

Then came World War II, and Stewart’s life became genuinely strange.  In February 1942, during the desperate defense of the Dutch East Indies, Stewart was damaged in battle and made it to Surabaya, Java, for repairs.  There, in one of those moments that makes a sailor consider changing careers, she slipped off the blocks in a floating dry-dock and bent her propeller shafts.  With Japanese forces closing in, the Americans destroyed the ship with demolition charges, scuttled the dry-dock, and left her for dead.  The Navy struck her from the list in March 1942.That should have been the end of it.

It was not the end of it.

After nearly a year underwater, the Japanese raised her, repaired her, and commissioned her as Patrol Boat No. 102.  This is where Stewart became the “Ghost Ship of the Pacific.” Allied pilots began reporting the extremely awkward sight of what looked like an old American four-stack destroyer operating deep behind enemy lines. 

One can imagine the debriefing.  “You saw what?”  “An American destroyer.” “Where?”  “In Japanese waters.” “Have you been sleeping?”  “No.”  “Would you like to start?”  The Naval History and Heritage Command says multiple Allied pilots reported seeing the ship behind enemy lines after the Japanese commissioned her as Patrol Boat No. 102.

At war’s end, American occupation forces found the battered former Stewart afloat near Japan.  In a ceremony that was either touching, bizarre, or both, the U.S. Navy recommissioned her in October 1945 as DD-224.  Her crew nicknamed her RAMP-224, borrowing the language used for Recovered Allied Military Personnel, as if the ship herself had been a prisoner of war.  This is sentimental, absurd, and somehow exactly right.  Ships are just steel until sailors start talking about them; after that, they become characters.

The Navy brought Stewart back to San Francisco, but there was no real future for an old four-stacker that had served both sides, been sunk, raised, captured, recovered, and insulted by every ocean she met.  On May 24, 1946, she was used as a target ship and sunk off the California coast.  Even then, she did not go quietly.  Reports say she absorbed rockets, machine-gun fire, and naval gunfire for more than two hours before finally going down.  Some ships are sunk, Stewart had to be persuaded.

For decades, that was the end of the story.  Then, in August 2024, undersea searchers found the wreck of USS Stewart (DD-224) in the Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary off northern California.  She lies in about 3,500 feet of water, largely intact and nearly upright.  The National WWII Museum says the discovery was made by a team including Ocean Infinity, the Air/Sea Heritage Foundation, SEARCH, NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, and the Naval History and Heritage Command.

So there she rests: an American destroyer, a Japanese patrol boat, an American destroyer again, and finally a ghost on the seafloor.  If one is willing to be mischievous, she may be the closest wreck of a Japanese warship — sort of — to San Francisco.  Legally, historically, and emotionally, that statement requires several footnotes and possibly a naval lawyer.  But as a punchline, it is irresistible.

The next time someone visits Seawolf Park and says they toured the Seawolf, let them down gently.  They toured Cavalla, which sank Shōkaku, and Stewart, whose predecessor had one of the strangest careers in naval history.  That is not a disappointment.  That is an upgrade.  After all, any ship can have a service record.  Very few can say they served two navies, died twice, came home, and still managed to become a ghost story.

New York and the Search for the Last Taxpayer

There is an old joke that New York City could tax oxygen if only the air could be properly assessed and invoiced.  Given recent political trends, I fully expect a future press conference announcing the “Progressive Atmospheric Equity Contribution Fee,” payable quarterly by anyone breathing south of Yonkers.

This raises a serious question hidden beneath the humor: At what point does New York’s increasingly enthusiastic effort to tax the rich begin to resemble a man trying to drain a sinking boat by drilling new holes in the bottom?

To hear some people tell it, the rich are already fleeing New York in biblical caravans.  Hedge fund managers are supposedly racing across the Florida border in armored Bentleys while investment bankers rappel out of Midtown office towers carrying sacks of untaxed capital gains.  Somewhere in Palm Beach, according to this narrative, there is now a gated community populated entirely by former Upper East Side residents wearing linen suits and complaining about how hard it is to find decent bagels.

The truth, as always, is less cinematic and more interesting.

There is, in fact, real evidence that wealthy people have been leaving New York City.  New York’s own tax data show that millionaire out-migration increased sharply during and after COVID, with relocation rates rising well above historic norms.  Some of the ultrarich, especially those earning tens of millions annually, clearly decided that sunshine, lower taxes, and fewer regulations sounded preferable to paying both New York State and New York City income taxes while carefully navigating feces-laden sidewalks on the way to dinner.

And honestly, from a purely mathematical standpoint, one can understand their concern.  New York State already imposes one of the highest income tax burdens in the country.  Add New York City’s local income tax on top, then pile on property taxes, corporate taxes, sales taxes, mansion taxes, congestion pricing, assorted fees, and Mayor Mamdani’s threat of a pied-à-terre tax, and eventually even a billionaire may begin quietly Googling “residency requirements in Florida.”

Florida, meanwhile, waits offshore like a giant tax-free aircraft carrier.

No state income tax.  Warm weather.  Palm trees.  Private airports.  And an endless supply of real estate agents whispering, “Sir, your taxes alone could pay for this waterfront estate.”  New York tax officials admit almost 1,700 millionaires moved their tax address out of New York in just 2024.  New York hasn’t released the data for 2025 or 2026, but I doubt that many moved back.

Not surprisingly, Miami and Palm Beach have become popular landing zones for finance executives and wealthy retirees.  Texas has benefited too.  Wealth migration toward lower-tax states is real enough that entire industries now exist to help wealthy individuals establish legal residency elsewhere while keeping one tasteful Gucci loafer still planted in Manhattan.

But before we declare New York a post-apocalyptic wasteland populated only by rats and deranged graduate students, it is worth noting that the “everyone is fleeing” story is also wildly exaggerated.  New York is not in the red-light danger zone, but it is in the warning orange zone.  The NYC Comptroller says the city is already operating with a structural deficit, meaning spending is already running ahead of recurring revenue, and the budget relies on optimistic revenue projections, reserve drawdowns, unspecified savings, and reduced fiscal flexibility.  The state comptroller also warned that the city’s budget reduced contingency reserves, including the general reserve, down to the $100 million statutory minimum.

New York remains one of the most economically powerful cities on earth.  It still dominates finance, media, publishing, fashion, advertising, law, and international business.  People continue to move there because it offers opportunities unavailable almost anywhere else.  The city still attracts massive tourism, investment, and foreign capital.  And despite all the horror stories, the overall tax base has not collapsed.  Official projections still show growing tax revenue in coming years, although that may be offset by predictions of even faster growing expenditures.

This is because wealthy people are often less mobile than politicians and cable news hosts imagine.  Moving is not just a tax decision—it involves business networks, schools, family ties, social status, office locations, cultural institutions, and personal identity.  A hedge fund manager may enjoy saving millions on taxes in Miami, but he may also discover that his entire professional ecosystem still functions in Manhattan.

In other words, it turns out that civilization is annoyingly sticky.  But, with each arrival of a new millionaire or business in a Southern state, a small part of that missing social infrastructure is re-established, making it easier for the next hedge fund manager to set up shop. 

Still, New York faces a genuine long-term risk, and it is not necessarily the dramatic overnight collapse people imagine.  The real danger is something slower and far more bureaucratic: a gradual erosion of the tax base combined with increasingly optimistic government spending.

This is where economics stops being exciting and becomes terrifying.

Suppose Mamdani inevitably announces yet another new “tax the rich” proposal that is anticipated to raise $500 million annually.  Headlines celebrate.  Advocacy groups cheer.  Editorial boards declare that fairness has finally arrived.

Then reality intervenes.

More wealthy residents leave.  Others restructure income.  Investments are delayed.  Real estate transactions slow.  Businesses expand elsewhere. Capital gains are realized in different states.  Accountants suddenly become the most powerful people in America.

Instead of raising $500 million, the tax brings in $300 million.  Unfortunately, by this point the government has already spent the imaginary $500 million three times over and created six new agencies to administer it.

Now there is a budget gap.

The response, naturally, is to propose another tax, and triggering even more capital flight.

This is how cities wander into fiscal quicksand.  Not through a dramatic catastrophe, but through an endless cycle of optimistic revenue forecasts colliding with human behavior.  This is how Detroit, St. Louis, and Philadelphia triggered rapid economic decline.

The core problem for New York is concentration.  A tiny percentage of taxpayers provide an enormous share of tax revenue.  Millionaires account for a massive portion of New York’s income tax collections.  This means the city’s financial health increasingly depends on the continued willingness of a relatively small number of highly mobile people to remain exactly where they are and continue earning exactly as much money as before.

That is not a stable long-term strategy.  It resembles balancing the city budget atop a stack of champagne glasses.

And yet, the political incentives always favor more taxation because the immediate math looks irresistible. If one billionaire pays millions annually in taxes, then taxing him a little more appears painless.  Multiply that across thousands of wealthy taxpayers and politicians see visions of balanced budgets dancing in their heads.

The trouble is that economists are forced to deal with the horrifying reality that human beings react to incentives.

Raise cigarette taxes and fewer people smoke.  Raise gasoline prices and people drive less.  Raise taxes on capital and wealth, and eventually some capital and wealth relocate.

This should not be controversial, but somehow every generation of politicians acts shocked when it happens.

The final irony is that if New York ever truly succeeded in driving out large numbers of wealthy taxpayers, the burden would not vanish into thin air.  It would simply shift downward onto the remaining middle class, homeowners, renters, and businesses.  By the time officials realized the rich did not produce the projected tax revenue after all, the spending commitments would already exist.

And then a new politician would arise with a fresh PowerPoint presentation explaining why one more tax increase will finally solve everything forever.

At which point the last remaining taxpayer in Manhattan will quietly board a flight to Miami carrying nothing but a laptop, a residency affidavit, and a deep appreciation for palm trees.

The Mystery of the Lost Mysteries

I have always loved mysteries, probably because I worked my way through the entire Hardy Boys series in the second grade.  I was hooked early by secret panels, hidden staircases, stolen jewels, mysterious strangers, coded messages, and the absolute certainty that two boys with flashlights could outwit every adult in town.

Eventually, I moved on to Ellery Queen, Agatha Christie, Rex Stout, Lawrence Block, John D.  MacDonald, and a host of other great mystery writers.  The best of them understood something important: a mystery is not just a crime story.  It is a puzzle, a game, a contest between the writer and the reader.  The writer lays out the clues, hides the truth in plain sight, and then dares the reader to arrive at the solution first.

Good mystery books are still being written, and it is not hard to find one.  If you are looking for your next mystery, I would recommend subscribing to the newsletter from The Mysterious Bookstore, the “World’s Oldest and Greatest Mystery Fiction Specialty Store,” run by Otto Penzler.  You can find them here.

What I cannot find, or at least cannot find very often, is a good mystery movie or television mystery.  There are plenty of television shows and movies that call themselves mysteries, but most of them are not mysteries at all.  They are police procedurals, character dramas, revenge stories, thrillers, or episodes of “watch the star solve the case while everyone else stands around looking suspicious.” They may have a corpse, a detective, a lab report, and a confession, but that does not make them mysteries.

They all seem to fail in the same ways.

First, they frequently are not actually mysteries.  In the opening act, we often see who commits the murder.  We watch the killer creep into the room, pull the trigger, push the victim off the balcony, or poison the wine.  Then the rest of the episode consists of the detective slowly discovering what the audience already knows.  That can be suspenseful, but it is not a mystery.  It is a waiting game.

There is nothing wrong with that form, exactly.  Columbo made an art of it.  The pleasure of Columbo was not guessing who did it.  The pleasure was watching Peter Falk’s rumpled, shambling, apparently harmless detective worry the murderer to death with “just one more thing.”  But Columbo worked because it knew what it was.  It was not pretending to be a whodunit.  It was a how-will-he-catch-him.

Too many modern television mysteries give us the murderer early and then still expect us to pretend we are solving something.  We are not.  We are just watching the hero catch up.

Second, in the vast majority of television mysteries, the murderer is the highest-paid guest star.  This may be the single greatest weakness of television mystery writing.  The casting department destroys the plot before the first commercial break.

If a familiar actor shows up in the first ten minutes, has no obvious reason to be there, and then disappears into the background, you can safely arrest him immediately.  Television cannot resist this pattern.  The famous guest actor is never just the victim’s lawyer, the dead man’s neighbor, or the slightly rude restaurant owner.  He is there because the show paid for him, and, by heaven, they are going to get their money’s worth in the final scene.

This is especially true when the actor is just famous enough to be recognizable, but not famous enough to be above doing one episode of a network crime drama.  The moment he appears, the mystery is over.  You do not need fingerprints, blood spatter, or motive.  You need only ask, “Which guest star has the strongest IMDb page?”

Third, the suspect list is usually too small.  A real mystery needs room to breathe.  It needs several people who could plausibly have committed the crime, several motives that overlap, and several clues that point in different directions.  In a good mystery novel, almost everyone has something to hide, even if only one person is hiding murder.

Television usually gives us three suspects, and one of them is obviously innocent because he cried too much in the interrogation room.  One is too obvious, one is too sympathetic, and one is the guest star.  That is not a mystery.  That is a seating chart.

The problem is partly time.  A television episode has perhaps forty-two minutes after commercials.  In that time, it has to introduce the crime, interview witnesses, include a lab scene, give the regular characters something to do, provide a red herring, solve the case, and leave time for a final emotional conversation in a dimly lit office.  There is not much room for real detection.

Fourth, the structure gives the game away.  Television mysteries are often built on a rigid rhythm.  The first suspect is wrong.  The second suspect is also wrong.  The third suspect seems impossible, then suddenly becomes obvious after a late-breaking clue.  Someone lies.  Someone else says, “I should have told you this earlier.”  The detective sees something tiny, stares thoughtfully into the middle distance, and suddenly knows everything.

Once you know the rhythm, you are not solving the crime so much as reading the clock.  At minute twelve, the angry spouse did not do it.  At minute twenty-four, the business partner did not do it.  At minute thirty-five, the sweet old friend says something odd, and there it is.  Cue the confession.

The formula is so familiar that it drains the story of tension.  We know the first explanation is wrong because it came too early.  We know the second explanation is wrong because there are still eighteen minutes left.  We know the killer will be revealed at the exact moment the episode needs to start wrapping up.

Fifth, the detective often knows more than the audience.  This is a fatal flaw.  A fair mystery lets the audience reason alongside the detective.  We should see the important clues, even if we do not understand them at first.  When the solution is revealed, we should be able to say, “Of course.  I should have seen it.”

Too many television mysteries cheat.  The detective notices something the camera did not show us clearly.  Or a lab result appears at the last minute.  Or the hero remembers a detail from an earlier conversation that was not emphasized enough for any sane viewer to retain.  Then, in the final scene, the detective explains everything as if the solution had been obvious all along.

That is not mystery writing.  That is withholding evidence.

Agatha Christie, at her best, played fair.  Rex Stout played fair.  Ellery Queen practically invited the reader to stop before the final chapter and solve the case.  Television usually does the opposite.  It hides the usable clue, then congratulates itself for revealing it.

Sixth, character drama replaces detection.  Many television mysteries are less interested in the murder than in the detective’s personal problems.  The detective has a divorce, trauma, a drinking problem, a dead partner, a troubled daughter, a dying father, a corrupt boss, or all of the above.  The murder becomes a coat rack on which to hang the regular character’s weekly emotional burden.

Again, there is nothing wrong with character drama.  We like detectives with personality.  Sherlock Holmes had cocaine, a violin, and a tendency to be insufferable.  Nero Wolfe had orchids, beer, and an unwillingness to leave the house.  Travis McGee had a houseboat and a deeply complicated view of paradise.  But the mystery still mattered.  The character did not replace the puzzle.

On television, the crime often exists only to illuminate the detective’s feelings.  A murdered teenager reminds the detective of her own daughter.  A dead soldier reminds the detective of his time in the service.  A poisoned husband reminds the detective of his failed marriage.  By the end, the killer is almost an afterthought.  The real climax is the hero staring out a window, having learned something about grief.

Finally, the solution must be simple enough for one episode.  A good mystery needs misdirection, motive, opportunity, timing, character, and surprise.  It needs the solution to be unexpected, but inevitable.  That is hard to do in a novel.  It is much harder to do in forty-two minutes with a B-plot and recurring cast obligations.

So television reduces the mystery to something simple.  He lied about where he was.  She wanted the inheritance.  The brother was jealous.  The business partner was stealing.  The victim knew a secret.  The killer made one mistake, and the detective spotted it.

That may be enough for a crime show, but it is not enough for a real mystery.  A real mystery should make the audience lean forward, not merely wait for the reveal.  It should give us the pleasure of suspicion, deduction, failure, and sudden recognition.  It should make us think we might solve it, then punish us for being overconfident.

Television rarely does that anymore.  It gives us crimes, detectives, corpses, and confessions, but not mysteries.  The machinery is there.  The puzzle is missing.

And that is why, when I want a mystery, I usually go back to books.  The corpse may be imaginary, but at least the game is real.