Named Port-de-France on its annexation by France in 1854, Noumea featured a spacious inner harbor in Dumbea Bay. It was slow to develop. Nearly a century later, it had but a single large pier, and the marine railway serving it could handle only small vessels. Its yard could not repair damage such as Japanese battleships were likely to inflict. Arriving ships sometimes found no harbor pilots to guide them in, which was unfortunate seeing as the channels into Great Roads, the outer harbor, passed through a treacherous barrier reef ten miles to seaward and old French mines were known to be about. The progress of the world seemed to leave Noumea behind. The energies of even the most vigorous empires seemed to fade in the fronded South Pacific.

American logisticians came to see that their cargoes would have reached Guadalcanal faster if they were routed through the more capacious facilities in Auckland, more than a thousand miles farther south. Noumea's principal value lay in its potential. Its location would be the foundation of everything that would follow. If it was located too far south to serve as a staging and support area for operations in the Central Pacific, but not far enough to the rear to be an arsenal secure against all enemy threats, American military surveyors found it was the best place in Oceania from which to manage Operations Pestilence and Watchtower. Reasonably close to both New Zealand and the east coast of Australia, it was a natural way station for flights originating in the eastern Pacific. The island was large enough for several armies to garrison there. Great Roads, well sheltered by reefs, could accommodate almost every U.S. warship in the Pacific.

On the Astoria, Keithel P. Anthony, a water tender, was racing through the machine shop, aiming to reach the ladder that descended to the number three fire room, when a powerful kinetic force seized the whole bulkhead in front of him and swung into his path. He was standing there perplexed, his way blocked, when a lieutenant named Thompson found him and said, "There are men in the forward mess hall who need help. Will you go with me?" Anthony assented and, strapping a gas mask over the top of this head, was preparing to venture forward when another explosion bedazzled him. "The lights went out and there were millions of sparks everywhere - like electrocution. I was knocked out and don't know how long I laid there on the deck. When I came to, there wasn't a soul moving in the compartment."

When Anthony saw Lieutenant Thompson again, he was dead, "blown clear through a wire mesh and his body wrapped around the main steam stack." His left arm and leg useless, bleeding and in severe pain, Anthony entered the machine shop and found bodies two-men deep. He wondered how he had survived, and soon found that is was only because he had somehow managed to snap the chinstrap of his gas mask that he would live with the curse of being a sole survivor. Poisonous gases killed everyone else. Anthony pulled himself through an escape hatch to the main deck by the starboard side galley. "I sat there and listened to hits coming in from left and right overhead. Everything was burning."

By midmorning on November 12, three hundred miles north of Guadalcanal, Abe arrayed his force into battle formation. The light cruiser Nagara led the two battleships, with destroyers arrayed like shields off each bow. By 4 p.m., cruising at eighteen knots, they were within two hundred miles of the island. Abe's flagship, the Hiei, catapulted a floatplane to explore the sound ahead. As dusk fell, Abe's force pressed ahead into a heavy bank of storm clouds. Then the rain began. Hara, commander of destroyer Amatsukaze, would write, "In all the years of my career, I never experienced such a rain. It was completely enervating." One of Captain Hara's ensigns said he would rather fight the Americans than the rain. For a time, the storm drifted south with the task force, concealing it from snooping eyes. Abe dismissed the concerns voiced by his staff that poor visibility would make stationkeeping difficult and risk the integrity of his formation. Abe had confidence in Rear Admiral Susumu Kimura, flying his flag in Destroyer Squadron 10's lead ship, Nagara. He was reputed to be one of the Imperial Navy's top navigators. Abe's vindication came when the floatplane pilot reported more than a dozen enemy warships off Lunga Point - Callaghan's force. If the rains cooperated, the Japanese force might avoid detection altogether. "This blessed squall is moving at the same speed and on the same course we are," Abe said. "If heaven continues to side with us like this, we may not even have to do business with them."

These newcomers to the Ironbottom Sound surface striking force, most of them reassigned from carrier escort duty, were a bit like replacement troops going to the front lines from rear-area antiaircraft battalions. They wore the same uniforms and wielded the same weapons, but they weren't wise in the bitter discipline of close combat. None of the four cruisers had had any part in the four surface actions fought in Savo Sound to this point. It could not be said, either, that they were commanded by the officer best equipped to prepare them for that new type of fight. The only surface force flag officer alive who had fought and beaten the Japanese Navy, Willis Lee, was back in port with his squadron, tending to the Washington at Noumea. Though both were veteran cruiser commanders, neither Kinkaid nor Wright had fought a night action before, nor executed a tactical plan as they were now designing.

They departed Espiritu Santo's Segond Channel anchorage at 11:30 p.m. on November 29, following a van composed of the destroyers Fletcher, Drayton, Maury, and Perkins. When they reached the eastern entrance to Lengo Channel at nine forty the next night, Wright's task force encountered some friendly transports. Augmenting his tag team, Halsey ordered two of their escorts, the Lamson and Lardner, to fall in astern the Northampton. And so another pickup squad with fresh leadership and big ideas headed north toward its destiny.