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Authors resurrect drama of 1952 sea rescue off Cape
Coast Guard saved 70 tanker crewmen
On the evening of Feb. 18, 1952, a howling northeaster split in half the Pendleton, a 500-foot oil tanker, approximately a mile off the coast of Cape Cod. Twenty miles away, a second oil tanker, the Fort Mercer, ripped in half as well.
Thirty-two men stranded on the Pendleton’s stern were rescued by four coast guardsmen in a 36-foot life boat - the CG36500 - meant to carry no more than eight. Of the 84 seamen aboard the four tanker portions that night, 70 survived.
At the time Coast Guard officials said the rescue was “unparalleled in the entire annals of maritime history,’’ yet it’s received little attention since then.
But now Michael Tougias of Franklin and Casey Sherman of Marshfield have coauthored a book about the dramatic rescue, “The Finest Hours: The True Story of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Most Daring Sea Rescue.’’ The book was released in May.
The authors describe the Pendleton rescue as “ ‘Saving Private Ryan’ meets ‘The Perfect Storm.’ ’’
“This was front-page news for a week, just a huge story,’’ Tougias said.
In the book, the authors relate how one of the coast guardsmen still vividly remembers watching helplessly as a seaman from the Pendleton, trying desperately to make it to the rescue boat, slipped beneath the raging sea, never to be seen again.
In researching the book, the authors spoke to at least 80 people and tracked down two of the four men who served on the 36500 rescue boat that night: skipper Bernie Webber and engineman Andy Fitzgerald. (The other two, Richard Livesey and Evrin Maske, had died.The wooden rescue boat left Chatham at 5:30 p.m. in search of the halves of the Pendleton.
Eventually, the crew spotted the stern of the Pendleton, “a big hunk of steel sticking 30 or 40 feet up in the air,’’ Fitzgerald said. There were men on the ship and using a rope ladder, the coast guardsmen began guiding them onto the rescue boat.
“They kept coming and coming - they didn’t want to quit,’’ Fitzgerald said.
As the rescue boat filled up, George “Tiny’’ Myers, who some estimated to weigh 350 pounds, tried to jump aboard, but missed and toppled into the water.
“He was holding onto the rope,’’ Fitzgerald said, “with his eyes closed. I said, ‘Come over here, we’ve got people who could pull you up.’ He didn’t react at all, and just disappeared.
“He’s the hardest to get out of my mind,’’ Fitzgerald admitted, “but I don’t know what we could have done differently.’’
© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.
