For additional items please see our many other listings as well.

In the winter of 1952, New England was battered by the most brutal nor’easter in years. In the early hours of February 18, the men at Coast Guard Lifeboat Station Chatham manned the radios in anticipation of distress calls sure to come. Two tankers, the Pendleton and the Fort Mercer, built with low quality steel, found themselves 10 to 20 miles offshore in the same horrifying predicament.

Soon both tankers soon split in two, leaving the men on board utterly at the Atlantic’s mercy. The men held out little hope. But the Coast Guard soon responded, dispatching cutters, and motor lifeboats CG-36383 and CG-36500 at Station Chatham made preparations to respond. These small but sturdy wooden boats were dwarfed by the enormous sixty-foot seas and seventy knot winds, which far exceeded the boats’ design.

By noon, BMC Donald Bangs, with his crew EN1 Emory Haynes, BM3 (P) Antonio Ballerini, and SN Richard Ciccone, left Stage Harbor in the CG-36383 and headed for the Fort Mercer’s last known position. BM1 Bernard Webber and his crew, EN3 Andrew Fitzgerald, SN Richard Livesey and SN Irving Maske, also left in the CG-36500 powered only by its 90 horsepower gasoline engine. The men were aware that they were embarking on a possible suicide mission.

As the CG-36500 approached Chatham’s treacherous outer bar, she was smashed by mountainous waves and thrown high in the air. From Coast Guard accounts, the boat landed on its side, recovered, and was struck again. Tons of seawater crashed over the boat breaking its windshield and compass and flattening coxswain Webber. Shown are survivors of the tanker Fort Mercer following their rescue, arriving in Boston on the cutter Acushnet.

Webber struggled to regain control and steer into the towering waves to bring CG-36500 across the bar. Engineer Fitzgerald worked in the cramped compartment to keep the engine running as the weather and visibility worsened. Miraculously, the searchlight soon revealed a mass of twisted metal – the PENDELTON, heaving high in the air with each massive wave. Shown are 5 survivors with Coast Guard CWO Daniel W. Cluff.

Soon, a Jacob’s ladder was lowered over the side, and unbelievably, men clamored down the ladder!” Coxswain Webber skillfully maneuvered the CG-36500 along the Pendleton and, one by one, the survivors either jumped and crashed on the tiny boat’s bow or fell into the sea, where Webber’s crew assisted them onboard at great personal risk. After multiple approaches and 20 survivors safely recovered, the CG-36500 began to handle sluggishly, but there was no turning back. It was all or nothing. And, so it went as Webber and his crew “stuffed” their human cargo aboard and risked life and limb again and again. Finally, 32 of 33 survivors were onboard the CG-36500. There remained only one giant of a man, George (Tiny) Myers, left on board. But before the CG-36500 had maneuvered under the Jacob’s ladder, Myers jumped too soon and was swallowed up by the sea. There was now nothing left to do but return – dangerously overloaded, lost, with no compass to steer by and in zero visibility.

Coxswain Webber decided to put the wind and seas on the boat’s stern and let them force the vessel ashore. In time, a red flashing light appeared! The boat’s searchlight soon revealed the buoy that marked the entrance to Chatham and safe water! Although not all of the eighty-four men caught at sea that night survived, it is a testament to the Coast Guard crews that any came home at all.

To this day, the rescue of 32 men by the crew of the CG-36500 remains the greatest small boat rescue in Coast Guard history! The rescue made international headlines and for their heroism, the four stubborn Coast Guardsmen would receive the Congressional gold life-saving medal. In 1968 CG-36500 was retired. She languished in the bushes on Cape Cod for thirteen years until she was acquired by the Orleans Historical Society.

Today CG-36500 has been lovingly restored by area volunteers and is again seaworthy. She is on exhibit as a floating museum dedicated to the memory of the life-savers of Cape Cod.

A few years ago I was fortunate to have been aboard CG-36500 as she again approached that dreaded Chatham Bar in a light wind and rain, bringing to mind that time sixty years ago. For me it was a thrill indeed, bringing to me a heightened sense of respect for the Coast Guard crews that day that I will never forget.

(Information taken from US Coast Guard accounts.)

This summer Walt Disney Pictures is developing a long awaited film on these Coast Guard crews, to star Chris Pine, based on the book The Finest Hours (available below) by Michael J. Tougias and Casey Sherman. They will be filming at studios in Quincy, Mass. and in Chatham on Cape Cod. We have been working to obtain items and uniforms for the production and we will keep you posted on the progress.

Update: The movie is complete and will be released in Chatham on January 28, 2016 and worldwide the following day.

We have the DVD’s available.