Two Tankers Down: The Greatest Small Boat Rescue in US Coast Guard History" "Two Tankers Down"
A new book by maritime writer Robert R. Frump
Cape Cod. Chatham, Massachusetts. February 1952. Bernard C. Webber
and the others at the U.S. Coast Guard Lifesaving Station, were
battened down as a fierce gale struck.
Twenty-five
miles out to sea, the tankers the SS Pendleton and the SS Fort Mercer
split cleanly in two at nearly the same time. Suddenly, more than 80
men were at risk. The big cutters were miles
away. So Webber and others took to their small lifeboats and headed
into 40-foot waves and 70 mph winds. What happened next, said
Collier's Magazine, was the Coast Guard's 'finest hours."
Now
author Bob Frump ("Until the Sea Shall Free Them)," tells the full
story for the first time from the standpoint of the men in the boats
and the men in the ships.
Order it now.
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Melbourne, Fl. January 26, 2009 -- Bernard C. Webber, who steered his small boat into the impassable waves of Chatham Bar on an impossible mission to rescue the crew of a stricken tanker off Cape Code, died Saturday at age 80 in Melbourne, Florida.
Mr. Webber, one of the U.S. Coast Guard's most fabled and honored rescuers, was stationed in Cape Cod in February of 1952 when two tankers, the Pendleton and the SS Fort Mercer, split in half on the same day in rough weather.
"Bernie Webber represented the very best values of the Coast Guard and of America," said Robert R. Frump, a maritime writer who had interviewed Webber recently. "The code he followed and the culture he engendered through his actions will live on so long as there is a U.S. Coast Guard."
Webber and his makeshift crew were dispatched on what was considered a suicide mission in an era when the informal motto of the Coast Guard was, "You have to go out, you don't have to come back."
His orders were to perform four virtually impossible tasks that night. He was to take a small motorized lifeboat over the perilous bar at Chatham, Ma. Then, in a blizzard and 60-foot waves in the darkness of night, he was supposed to find the Pendleton stern section, rescue more than 30 men in a boat rate for 20, and then find his way back to Chatham - all without the help of radar.
Most thought Webber's rescue effort would end at the Chatham Bar. There, churning seas from the storm hammered down on a shallow bar as breakers pound the beach. Webber was counseled by friends in the fishing community of Chatham to say he got lost or could not shoot the bar because the bar had previously been thought impassable at such times.
Instead, Webber revved up the CG 36500 lifeboat, and headed straight into breakers as high as a house.
The waves picked up the little boat and slammed it down hard on the bar, shattering the windshield and destroying the compass. Shards of glass were embedded in Webber's head and face. But he and the crew managed to right the boat and survive the breakers.
Then they faced 60-foot swells and the dead of night and the confusion of a blizzard, but through luck and skill found the stern half of the Pendleton - the second impossible task.
The third task was evacuating 30 men down the side of a storm-tossed tanker into a boat rated to carry only 20. They lost only one man in the process, and, loaded so that the boat was barely clear of the water, turned back toward land.
Again, through skill and luck, Webber and his crew were able to find Chatham. The entire town turned out to welcome him home and to treat the half-frozen crew and tankermen.
The rescue was front-page news worldwide the next day. Webber and his crew were awarded the Coast Guard's highest honor - the Gold Lifesaving Medal - and Webber toured on behalf of the Coast Guard for several years.
At heart, he was a humble man who yearned for little more than the ranks of the Coast Guard, and he often wore his hero's status uncomfortably. He told an interviewer in 2008 that he still thought daily of the man they lost on the Pendleton and it was that sorrow he carried with him rather than a sense of heroism or being special.
He also revealed in later years that he refused the Gold Medal initially because his crew was offered only the Silver Medal. The Coast Guard agreed to grant the whole crew the gold meda.
The U.S. Coast Guard honored Webber and his crew again in 2002 on the 50th anniversary of the rescue. He steered the restored CG 36500 over the Chatham Bar yet again on a mild day in May.
Webber's widow, Miriam Webber, told the Cape Code Times that a memorial service would be scheduled on the cape in the spring.
For more information about Bernie Webber, go to www.cg36500.org -- the website of a non-profit organization that restored Bernie's rescue boat -- and at http://www.coastguardheritagemuseum.org. Information is also at www.twotankersdown.com
Reviews of "Until the Sea Shall Free Them"
More about "Until the Sea..." and the Wreck of the Marine Electric
"This
is a spellbinding and eloquent story of tragedy, courage and the
triumph of one man determined to see that his shipmates did not die in
vain. Frump is a master reporter, and his prose grabs you and doesn't
let you go. Until the Sea Shall Free Them is in the finest traditions
of literary and investigative journalism."
Mark Bowden, author, "Black Hawk Down"
"This
is a story told with riveting intensity. Frump captures both the feel
of the cruel sea and the determination of a group of individuals who
worked together to fix a broken system. Until the Sea Shall Free Them
is maritime journalism at its best."
Paul Stillwell, US Naval Institute
"...a
masterfully told tale of corruption, survival and
redemption...Combining elements of salty derring-do, courtroom drama
and modern corporate morality tale, it makes Sebastian Junger's 1997
best seller The Perfect Storm read like child's play."
Jim Haner, The Baltimore Sun
More about the SS Marine Electric
Reviews of "Man-eaters of Eden"
More about The Man-eaters of Eden
"Robert
Frump weaves the central story of human suffering with, in the case of
"The Man-eaters of Eden," gripping accounts of horrific lion attacks.
He's a master story-teller who leaves readers wondering what they enjoy
most: the import debate of 'man versus nature' or the many gruesome
tales of predator versus prey."
--John von Brachel, deputy managing editor of Time Inc. Custom Publishing.
"A
masterful account of encounters between man and beast....a stunning
portrayal of a little-known phenomenon -- the killing and eating of
Mozambican refugees by the lions of Kruger National Park in South
Africa. This is a richly detailed narrative that is brutal and
honest. Anyone intersted in wildlife preservation and human rights
should read this remarkable book."
-- David Zucchino, correspondent for The Los Angeles Times and author of "Thunder Run" and "Myth of the Welfare Queen."
"The
Man-eaters of Eden" is a much-needed antidote to the Diseneyfication of
African wildlife. Robert Frump portrays lions as neither virtuous nor
villainous but as what they are: adaptable carnivores...As Frump shows,
it's not so much the lion the bush we should fear; it's our simplistic,
theme-park view of nature."
-- David Baron, author of "Beast in the Garden." |