2010 • 159 pages • Softcover
ISBN: 978-1-60949-050-8
The rescuers weren’t supposed to survive. But they did. Here’s what happened...
On February 18, 1952, four young Coast Guardsmen manned the 36500, a 36’ motor lifeboat, into a Nor’easter five miles off Chatham, Cape Cod. Their mission was to rescue thirty-three survivors from the wrecked 503’ oil tanker, the Pendleton. Sustained by guts, faith, and duty, Coxswain Bernie Webber, Richard Livesey, Ervin Maske and Andy Fitzgerald returned to port hours later very much alive and with thirty-two survivors (they lost one crewman during the rescue). It was a feat unequaled and is the acknowledged greatest small boat rescue in Coast Guard history.
The Pendleton Disaster Off Cape Cod contains exclusive interviews with all four Gold Medal Lifesaving Crewmen from the CG36500 and Charlie Bridges, a young sailor rescued from the Pendleton in ‘52.
What’s left of the Fort Mercer, another tanker traveling in tandem with the Pendleton. That ship, too, split in two during a Nor’easter on February 18, 1952. Image courtesy of Bernard C. Webber.
After the rescue, the late radio newsman Ed Semprini interviewed two survivors in Chatham at the Coast Guard station. Image courtesy of Richard C. Kelsey.
Undersecretary of the Treasury Edward H. Foley congratulates Seaman Ervin Maske after presenting Maske with the Gold Lifesaving Medal in Washington, D.C., in 1952. Image courtesy of Bernard C. Webber.
Description and credits:
Book cover: Famed photographer Richard Kelsey photographed the hulk of the tanker Pendleton off Chatham, Cape Cod, on February 20, 1952, some two days after a storm destroyed the vessel. Image courtesy of Bernard C. Webber.
