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In the harbor, the Helena went alongside a tanker to refuel. A sailor on the oiler surveyed the shrapnel-pocked light cruiser and hollered over the rail, “What happened?” A wag on the Helena replied, “Termites.” Schonland refused an instruction to go alongside a tanker to refuel and requested an anchorage instead. With the flag lowered to half-mast, the San Francisco was assigned a berth, and as she eased in, the ships nearby gave her a hero’s welcome. Ship whistles blew loud and long. Schonland arranged with Hoover for the Helena’s band to come aboard, and for her chaplain to conduct a funeral service on the San Francisco.

The mobile base hospital at Espiritu Santo was crowded. Ship’s doctors, seeing the facilities available ashore, lamented the butchery they had been forced to perpetrate in the battle area: amputations, crushing tourniquets, dressings soaked through and dried into open wounds. In combat, you did your best with what you had. With his legs shot through with more than 130 shrapnel wounds, the San Francisco’s Cliff Spencer was taken to a wardroom full of wounded sailors and marines. “I wasn’t near anyone I knew and at that moment I had never felt so sad and alone,” he wrote. “Next to me on the opposite tier bunk lay a muscular young sailor. He was crying. I tried to strike up a conversation with him and asked, ‘What ship are you off of?’ He said the Atlanta.… As we talked the corpsman came to dress his wounds. He threw back the blankets and lifted about an eight-inch stub of his right leg. It had been amputated above the knee and had not been surgically closed, just a raw cut covered with a large bandage. He shocked me by almost screaming, ‘The sons of bitches on the San Francisco did this! How can I ever work the farm with this bloody stump?’

“Needless to say I didn’t volunteer the name of my ship.”

The tribalisms of a naval force were still producing raw feelings. “There were some real hard feelings between the Helena and San Francisco when they got into port,” a sailor recalled. It seems there were Helena sailors who thought the flagship had turned and run at the height of the engagement, and that “the Helena had to stay there and do the job—or whatever.”

As the San Francisco underwent temporary repairs, Schonland was relieved as acting commander by Captain Albert F. France, from Halsey’s staff. The personal effects taken from the dead were turned over with an inventory to the supply officer for shipment home to the relatives whose photos had adorned stateroom bulkheads, sat framed on small metal desks, and become shattered and scattered by the many impacts of the fight. The good order of the flagship was returning.

Turner sent a message to the ships of Task Force 67 that amply reflected his feelings toward the battered ships of his command.

Task Force 67 is hereby dissolved. In dissolving this temporary force I express the will that the number 67 be in the future reserved for groups of ships as ready for high patriotic endeavor as you have been. I thank you for your magnificent support of the project of reinforcing our brave troops in Guadalcanal and for your eagerness to be the keen edge of the sword that is cutting the throat of the enemy.

I was well aware of the odds which might be against you in your night attack on November 12 but felt that this was the time when fine ships and brave men should be called upon for their utmost. You have more than justified my expectations in taking from the enemy a toll of strength far greater than the strength you have expended.

With you I grieve for long cherished comrades who will be with us no more, and for our lost ships whose names will be enshrined in history. No medals however high can possibly give you the reward you deserve. With all my heart I say God bless the courageous men, dead and alive, of Task Force 67.

The Cactus Air Force’s devastating attacks against the transports on the morning of the fourteenth would never have happened without their sacrifice.