In the Pendleton rescue of 1952, Bernie Webber’s crew crossed the Chatham Bar in a storm. Thirty-two sailors returned in a thirty-six-foot lifeboat.
The Pendleton’s radio room was gone. The tanker had broken in two off Cape Cod, leaving men aboard the stern without the normal means of broadcasting their emergency.
On February 18, 1952, a Coast Guard crew under Bernard “Bernie” Webber took the thirty-six-foot motor lifeboat CG-36500 into the winter storm. Three other men went with him: Andrew Fitzgerald, Richard Livesey and Ervin Maske.
The Pendleton rescue would bring thirty-two merchant mariners back in that same small boat.
Pendleton rescue: A damaged boat going toward a damaged ship
Another tanker, Fort Mercer, had also broken apart in the storm. Much of the response was already directed toward it when an aircraft discovered the Pendleton’s predicament near Chatham.
Webber’s crew had to cross the Chatham Bar after daylight was gone. Breaking seas damaged the lifeboat’s windshield and dislodged its compass. They continued without the instruments and protection they had started with.
The rescue demanded more than reaching a coordinate. A small boat had to approach a large, moving section of wrecked tanker closely enough for people to transfer, then retreat before the relative motion crushed them.
Men descended a ladder over the ship’s side. Webber maneuvered repeatedly to receive them. The difference in size between the two vessels made every pass consequential.
The return was part of the emergency
Thirty-two men were rescued from the stern. The operation could not save everyone who had survived the ship’s initial breakup.
With the survivors aboard, the lifeboat still had to return through the storm. Its missing compass made that final journey a continuation of the danger, not a quiet epilogue after the dramatic part.
The crew reached Chatham. All four rescuers later received the Gold Lifesaving Medal.
The vessel’s length and the number rescued are often repeated together because they convey the scale so clearly: thirty-two survivors, four rescuers and thirty-six feet of boat. But the numbers can also obscure how the rescue actually worked. The people came down one at a time, while a coxswain judged the changing distance between a lifeboat and an enormous piece of ship.
Every transfer depended on the space between the ladder and the moving boat. After the last survivor came aboard, Webber’s crew still had to carry everyone back across water that had torn two tankers apart.
Sources and reporting
Researched reporting: an original narrative based on the published records linked below.
