The storm that broke the Pendleton also tore apart the Fort Mercer. Off Cape Cod on February 18, 1952, rescue crews faced two tankers divided into four separate sections.
The Fort Mercer rescue was its own emergency, involving several vessels and different groups of men who could no longer move freely from one part of their ship to another.
A ship breaking in two does more than reduce its size. It separates people, equipment and access routes that had been designed to work together. Rescue crews had to establish what remained on each section and how to reach those still aboard.
Fort Mercer: Separate pieces, separate approaches
The Coast Guard’s history of the cutter Acushnet records the removal of eighteen men from the Fort Mercer’s stern in heavy seas.
The bow presented a different problem. An official lifesaving-medal account describes a surfboat being lifted and swept against its hull during an approach. Two men jumped into the water and were recovered by the rescue crew under John Kiely.
The collision left the surfboat badly damaged and taking water. It had to return to the cutter Yakutat.
The remaining two survivors on that bow section were subsequently taken off using a rubber life raft. The section capsized soon afterward.
Elsewhere in the same storm, another crew was approaching the Pendleton. At the Fort Mercer, the damaged surfboat and the raft were part of a separate struggle to get people off the broken tanker.
The danger moved with every attempt
The Fort Mercer account shows how a rescue craft could become another vessel in difficulty. Moving close enough to assist the stranded men exposed the surfboat to the tanker’s motion. Saving the first survivors did not leave the crew with a sound boat for the next pass.
The raft provided another means of completing the transfer before the bow overturned. Eighteen men taken off the stern and four saved from the bow represent different operations within a wider response, not the complete total of every rescue effort at the wreck.
Each transfer solved only the problem immediately in front of a crew. Saving people from one section did not give rescuers a safe route to everyone still waiting on another.
The Fort Mercer was no longer one place. Its survivors were waiting on pieces of it, while the storm continued to change what those pieces—and the boats approaching them—could withstand.
Sources and reporting
Researched reporting: an original narrative based on the published records linked below.
