On the night of February 18, 1952, two World War II-era T2 oil tankers, the SS Pendleton and SS Fort Mercer were caught in a nor’easter with waves up to 60 feet. Just 10 miles off the coast of Chatham, Massachusetts, the crew aboard the 504-foot SS Pendleton (shown above) heard explosive cracking sounds. Within minutes, the ship broke in half, leaving the captain and seven crew members stranded on the bow section, while the chief engineer and 32 crew were left on the stern.
The tanker split so quickly that the crew was unable to send out an SOS, although someone on land heard the Pendleton’s whistle and went for help. Coxswain Bernard Webber was told to form a team and with three volunteers set out on what was considered a suicide mission. They rode into the storm in a 36-foot boat, CG-36500, which was designed to hold 16 men. Amidst 60-foot waves, snow and almost zero visibility they suffered a terrifying ordeal when two consecutive breakers threw the boat on its side, smashed the windshield, destroyed the compass, which was their only means of navigation, and sent shards of glass into Webber’s face.
The scene they encountered was later described at Naval Institute Proceedings. “The searchlight soon revealed a pitch-black mass of twisted metal, which heaved high in the air upon the massive waves and then settled back down in a frothing mass of foam.”
Dwarfed by the Pendleton’s stern section, the wooden rescue boat pulled up alongside the tanker’s steel hull. On the Pendleton’s deck, the crew threw a Jacob’s ladder over the side, which allowed 32 of the men to cram aboard the lifeboat. One of the crew aboard the stern section was lost. Meanwhile, the bow section was swept southward and the captain and seven crew all perished. The four rescuers were awarded the Gold Lifesaving Medal, the Coast Guard’s highest honor, for “extreme and heroic daring.”
That same morning, hours after the Pendleton had split in half, the SS Fort Mercer‘s hull also cracked, fully splitting within hours. A horrifying rescue attempt that night saw five crew die. After rescuing the remaining crew in the morning, the Mercer‘s bow completely sank just minutes later.
These lifesaving acts still stand as some of the most intense rescues in Coast Guard lifesaving history. The Pendleton rescue was made into a 2016 film, The Finest Hours, but the SS Fort Mercer rescue remains lesser known.
This article was originally published in the July 2024 issue.
