Making movies is a slow business, but nautical history buffs are getting a taste of what Hollywood is cooking up for its big-screen treatment of the legendary 1952 Pendleton rescue off Cape Cod.
When Bernard Webber and his all-volunteer crew ventured out over the Chatham, Massachusetts, bar in a 36-foot wooden motorized lifeboat in 60-foot seas and 70-knot winds and rescued 32 crewmen from the stricken tank vessel, no one knew they would be authoring the greatest small-boat rescue in Coast Guard history.
Although we’ll have to wait until January before Disney’s “The Finest Hours” hits movie theaters, the filmmaker has released a trailer.
Webber and his crew were honored for their “outstanding seamanship and utter disregard of your own safety in crossing the hazardous waters of Chatham bar in mountainous seas, extreme darkness and falling snow during a violent winter gale to rescue from imminent death thirty-two crewmembers … minutes before the tanker capsized,” according to the official Coast Guard account.
The Cape Cod Times does a good job of offering perspective on the real-life heroism and the Hollywood version.
