The Finest Hours

by Michael J. Tougias

  Webber was assisted by seaman Richard Livesey and a longtime friend, engineman first class Mel Gouthro, who was battling the flu in addition to the elements. The nor’easter reminded Livesey of the 14 months he had spent on an icebreaker in the northern Atlantic. At age 22, he was a couple of years younger than Webber, but, like his boss, what Livesey lacked in age, he made up for in experience.

  Richard Livesey was born in South Boston, Massachusetts, in 1930 but was raised 58 miles south in Fairhaven, a fishing village on the shore of Buzzard’s Bay. Livesey was steered toward a life at sea early on, thanks to the countless stories told to him by his father, Oswald, who had spent 22 years as a chief water tender in the U.S. Navy.

  Livesey was one of those young men who seemed to have salt water coursing through his veins. He had wanted to join the navy for as long as he could remember, and when he was old enough, he asked his father to accompany him to the recruiting office. “Sure,” said the elder Livesey, beaming that his son was carrying on the seaman tradition.

  Their excitement flickered out briefly when the recruiter informed them that there was a ten-month wait for enlistment. It was 1947, and Richard Livesey was 17 years old. Ten months felt like a lifetime to an anxious teenager who was eager for action and adventure. As they walked out of the recruiting office, Richard told his father he would join the U.S. Air Force instead. At that moment, they noticed a sign for the coast guard recruiting office just a few doors down. The teenager’s hopes for an adventure at sea were not dashed after all.

  Livesey had only one question for the recruiter. “When can I get shipped out?” he asked. “Tomorrow,” barked the man. Livesey signed up on the spot but did not ship out the next day as promised. Instead, he had to wait a full week before heading off to boot camp.

  Grinding his way through boot camp, Richard counted the days until he could go to sea. He spent the next four years serving on coast guard cutters and icebreakers around the United States before finding his way onto a patrol boat at the New Bedford station. He left the coast guard briefly in 1951 after his enlistment period was over. He first tried his hand at road construction and then working in a few fish plants. The pay was better, but the jobs lacked the excitement he had experienced in the coast guard, so he reenlisted. Now here he was, retying fishing boats to their moorings on this brutal Monday morning in mid-February.

  When the work was completed, Webber, Livesey, and Gouthro secured the motor lifeboat to its mooring, then hopped in the dory, a small boat used for transportation to and from larger vessels, and headed to shore. The men were exhausted, hungry, and cold, and could not wait to get back to the Chatham Lifeboat Station for a hot meal and a change of clothes. The ice-cold seawater had soaked through their foul-weather gear right into their aching bones. Gouthro was shaking from both the cold and the flu he was suffering from.

  As the tired men paused on the Chatham Fish Pier to survey their work, a coast guard truck pulled up alongside.

  “Get over to Orleans and Nauset beach,” the driver yelled. “There’s a shipwreck offshore, and they need help.” Ground confirmation of the Pendleton’s plight came from a woman living in the Nauset inlet. She had heard the ship’s horn sounding seven times offshore.

  Webber and crew were instructed to join the Nauset Lifeboat Station crew in their amphibious vehicle to try to locate the tanker and give aid if possible. The Duck, as it was called because its manufacturing code was DUKW, was a six-wheel-drive amphibious military truck developed during World War II. It was most prominently used during the Allied invasion of Normandy on D-day. And now, used by the coast guard at Nauset Beach, the Duck was the perfect vehicle to carry the coasties over the sand and through shoreline surf as they hunted for the drifting Pendleton. But first Webber and crew had to get to Orleans.

  The drive up the arm of Cape Cod on snow-covered Route 28 to Orleans was a white-knuckle ride for the three coasties. Under the snow lay a sheet of ice, and their Dodge truck pressed ahead slowly along the winding road. Fortunately, the heater in the truck was working, but the comfort only made Webber think about his friend Donald Bangs, who was out in the icy ocean, hopefully still alive.

  Webber, Livesey, and Gouthro finally reached Orleans and met the rest of the crew from the Nauset Lifeboat Station. The men piled into a Duck and continued on to Nauset Beach, where they parked at a hill. At any other time, the hill would have provided them with a perfect vantage point to scan miles of shoreline. But the high perch offered no help on this day because the shoreline had virtually disappeared. The seas were now running over the beach, across the parking lot, and halfway up the hill. However, after a few moments, the snow abated briefly and the men were able to spot a gray hulk, an object darker than the ocean, rolling rapidly along the towering waves. It was half a ship, drifting swiftly south toward Chatham!

  The coast guardsmen knew there was no way the Duck could catch her now. Bernie, Richard, and Mel immediately started back to the Chatham Lifeboat Station.

  Meanwhile, the coast guard issued a directive to all the ships currently involved in the Fort Mercer rescue operation. The alert was classified “operational immediate” and was printed in bold type:

  DEFINITE INDICATION THAT TANKER PENDLETON HAS BROKEN IN TWO—STERN SECTION IN BREAKERS OFF CHATHAM—BOW SECTION DRIFTING NEAR POLLOCK RIP LV—NO PRIOR INDICATION REGARDING CASUALTY TO PENDLETON—PENDLETON DUE IN BOSTON YESTERDAY AND NOT ARRIVED—THIS IN ADDITION TO FORT MERCER.

  * * *

  Back at the Chatham Lifeboat Station, the nasty weather had kept engineer Andy “Fitz” Fitzgerald inside the relative warmth of the station’s “motor-mack shack.” The 20-year-old was the youngest coast guardsman at the station. Fitz was not born to the sea, and in fact, he hadn’t even become a strong swimmer until he joined the guard. He grew up in Whitinsville, Massachusetts, and while attending high school in the 1940s, he played football. At 140 pounds, he was an undersized linebacker, but he loved the competition.

  This period was a bleak time in Whitinsville and the surrounding Blackstone Valley. The mighty mills along the Blackstone River that had given lifeblood to the Industrial Revolution during the 19th century were dying. When Fitzgerald graduated from high school, he had no money for college and no prospects for a future in Whitinsville. This prompted him and a friend to hitchhike to the local train station, ride into Boston, and join the coast guard.

  Part of Fitzgerald’s morning duty in Chatham was to row out to the station’s three boats. He would make sure that each vessel’s tank was topped off with gasoline, and he would also start their engines and give them a good running before returning to shore. On this morning, Chatham Lifeboat Station’s new commanding officer, Daniel Cluff, had ordered Fitzgerald to stand down. The storm had become too severe to risk sending the young engineer out in a tiny rowboat.

  * * *

  Late afternoon was giving way to the darkness of evening as an exhausted Bernie Webber and crew continued driving back to Chatham Station. Webber needed to inform Cluff that the stern section of the Pendleton was heading their way fast.

  Arriving at the station, Webber found his boss pacing the floor, trying to decide the best course of action. This was the first big emergency of Cluff’s tenure as commander at Chatham Station. Some coasties wondered if he was up to the challenge.

  Daniel Cluff was a native of Chincoteague, Virginia, a small fishing village on Virginia’s eastern shore and home to the famous Chincoteague Pony Swim. The commanding officer had spent little time involved in the boat work of the station, thinking he needed first to get to know the town’s business leaders.

  Cluff called Webber toward him and in his Southern drawl said, “Webber, pick yourself a crew. You got to take the 36500 out over the bar and assist that ship, ya hear?”

  Bernie felt his heart drop to his feet. He could picture himself trying to steer the tiny wooden rescue boat over the hazardous Chatham Bar and into the high seas. The bar is a collection of ever-shifting shoals of sand, which lie only
a few feet below the surface. When swells, formed in the deep ocean, hit the bar, they become steep and their tops break off, crashing with incredible force. One cubic yard of water weighs nearly 1,700 pounds; when that force hits a vessel, the boat can splinter in a matter of seconds. And there was no way to avoid the bar. Because of the way nature had designed the channel, there was only one way in and one way out. Bernie and his men had to cross the bar.

  The images of the bar burned in Bernie’s memory as he received Cluff’s orders. He immediately thought of the coast guard’s official motto, Semper Paratus, Latin for “Always Ready.” However, it was the unofficial coast guard motto that now weighed heavily in his mind: You have to go out, but you do not have to come back.

  “Yes, Mr. Cluff,” Webber replied. “I’ll get ready.”

  Privately, Bernie wondered why he had been chosen for this dangerous mission when there were equally seasoned officers on duty. Still, he accepted without hesitation. Now he needed some like-minded men to follow his lead. “Who’ll come with me?” he asked aloud.

  Richard Livesey was more than a little concerned. He had seen the mighty waves crashing over North Beach and knew such a mission would be horrendous. Still, he fought the fear, fatigue, and cold running through his body and raised his hand. “Bernie, I’ll go with you,” he said.

  Andy Fitzgerald was also in the room and said, “Mel’s as sick as a dog. I’ll go.” Fitz had been fighting boredom all day and was eager to volunteer.

  The crew was still in need of a fourth man. Ervin Maske was hanging around in the mess hall when he heard Webber’s call. Maske was a guest at the station and easily could have said no to the mission. The 23-year-old native of Marinette, Wisconsin, was a member of the Stonehorse Lightship. He had just returned from leave and was awaiting transport back to his ship, which was stationed about a mile off the southeast tip of Monomoy Point.

  Like Webber, Maske also had a wife waiting for him at home. He was newly married to the former Florence Silverman, whom he had met at a dance hall in Brooklyn. He had much to lose, and not much to gain, on this operation with a crew he had never met before. Still, he volunteered for the rescue mission without a second of uncertainty. Webber shook Maske’s hand and told him to get ready.

  The crew of four was ready and willing, but were they able? Webber, at just 24 years of age, was the oldest of the group and the most experienced. The others were in their early 20s, and Andy was fresh out of engineman school training. He had never been on a rescue but had heard about the difficulties of crossing Chatham Bar in high seas. The engineman hoped that his lack of experience would not be a detriment to the crew. Although he didn’t know Bernie very well on a personal level—with Bernie being older and married—Andy had been on the CG 36500 with Bernie during routine duty. If Andy could have chosen any man at the station to navigate the lifeboat over the bar and into the surrounding waters during a storm, he would have picked Bernie. But this was no ordinary storm. Andy had been listening to the various reports coming in on the marine radio, and they were talking about unimaginable seas, in some cases over 60 feet.

  Maske, Webber, Fitzgerald, and Livesey had never trained as a unit, and in fact, the three crewmen from Chatham had never even met Maske until that day. But the foursome had as many similarities as differences. All were in great physical shape, and all had joined the coast guard to save lives—now was their chance. Webber was the tallest, at six foot two, with a lanky build and a reserved demeanor. Livesey, about four inches shorter, had a happy-go-lucky outlook with a good sense of humor. Andy, just short of six feet tall, had a ready smile and made friends wherever he went. Maske, the shortest of the group, was a relatively quiet young man, but certainly one with gumption—not many men would put their lives at risk by volunteering to go into a maelstrom with strangers. All four felt gripped by fear, thinking of the storm-tossed seas, but each mustered the determination to keep his anxiety in check and do what had to be done.

  6

  BLOWOUT AT CHATHAM BAR

  With great trepidation, Webber, Livesey, Fitzgerald, and Maske departed the Chatham Lifeboat Station and drove back down to the Chatham Fish Pier. Webber parked the Dodge truck and stepped out into the snow. Through the thick snowflakes, the crew could barely see the small wooden lifeboat they would be taking on their journey, rocking violently back and forth in the distance. The coast guardsmen walked to the side of the pier and climbed down a ladder and into a small dory. They were getting it ready to row out when Webber heard a voice call from the pier above them. “You guys better get lost before you get too far out,” cried local fisherman John Stello. It was his way of saying “turn back while you still can.”

  Stello and Webber had become close friends over the past couple of years. The two lived across from each other on Sea View Street. “Call Miriam and tell her what’s going on!” Webber shouted back.

  Bernie had not spoken to his wife in two days. He thought of her home sick in bed, and his heart ached. Webber looked into the faces of the three other men in the dory, wondering how they’d hold up in the hours to come. He thought back to his wife again and hoped she would be able to cope if he didn’t make it home. Bernie could handle risking his own life on what looked to be a suicide mission, but a wave of emotion swept over him when he thought of the life he had begun to build with Miriam.

  * * *

  Bernie and Miriam’s relationship had been one of great persistence, especially on her part. It had begun over the phone two years earlier. Webber and a couple of his mates had taken his 1939 Plymouth two-door sedan up to Provincetown for a date with three local girls. They had made it as far as Orleans when the car suddenly broke down. Webber walked until he found a pay phone and called his date to explain the mishap. His night on the town was ruined.

  Webber had the old Plymouth towed back to Chatham. A few nights later, a young woman called the Chatham Lifeboat Station looking for a gentleman named Webb. As it turned out, the woman had the wrong name but the right man. Bernie grabbed the phone and began talking to this mystery woman, who wouldn’t offer her name or anything else about herself. She playfully told him that she had seen him before and that she knew who he was.

  The game played on over several more telephone conversations as Webber’s curiosity continued to grow. During their long talks on the phone, he found it strange that she would constantly interrupt him. “Wait a sec,” she would tell him before leaving the line for a few moments. The mystery was solved when the woman finally told Webber that she was a telephone operator in nearby Wellfleet. In fact, she was the operator who had patched Webber’s phone call through to his date on the night his car had broken down on the way to Provincetown.

  Bernie and Miriam eventually married and made a life together in Chatham. But their marriage was coupled with a dangerous job, and a price had to be paid for such happiness.

  * * *

  As the crew rowed out into the harbor, Webber sized up the CG 36500, which appeared to be staring back at him in the distance. Much would be expected of this wooden lifeboat. The lives of his three crewmembers, whoever was still alive aboard the stern section of the Pendleton, and the children he planned to have with Miriam all depended on it. Are you up to the challenge, old girl? he wondered.

  Like all lifeboats of its shape and size, the CG 36500 had been built at the U.S. Coast Guard Yard in Curtis Bay, Maryland. She was 36 feet, eight inches long with a ten-foot beam and a three-foot draft. The boat weighed a solid 20,000 pounds and was self-righting and self-bailing, thanks to its 2,000-pound bronze keel. The double-ended vessel had been designed to withstand just about anything Mother Nature could put in its way, although Bernie wondered whether its builders had contemplated a winter hurricane like the one that was now pounding the coast of New England.

  * * *

  Webber and his crew finally reached the CG 36500 and climbed aboard. They secured the dory to the buoy and settled in for the arduous journey ahead. Webber, Fitzgerald, and Livesey were all famili
ar with the lifeboat. Webber took his position in the wheelman’s shelter, and they departed; it was 5:55 P.M. The sky had gone from charcoal gray to pitch-black. The lights onshore grew smaller as the four men made their way across Chatham Harbor.

  The crew could now see the waves breaking on North Beach. Each man was weighing the possibilities for getting over Chatham Bar. Webber tied a long leather belt around his waist and fastened himself to the wheelman’s shelter. The CG 36500 made a turn in the channel, where the men were met by the sweeping beam of Chatham Lighthouse. In the distance, Webber could see dim lights glowing in the main building. What’s going on in there? he wondered. For a moment, he prayed that he would get a call on the radio ordering him to turn back. Webber grabbed the radio and called the station, giving Cluff an update, hoping for a change in orders.

  “Proceed as directed,” Cluff responded with his Virginia twang.

  Webber and crew pushed on. They were already fighting the severe cold; their tired feet felt like blocks of ice inside their buckled rubber overshoes. Reaching the end of Chatham Harbor, the men heard the roaring at the bar, where the crashing waves created acres of yellowish white foam.

  This is not going to be a good trip, Richard Livesey thought. As the tumultuous sound at the bar became louder, Livesey had the distinct feeling he was experiencing his last minutes on earth. Andy Fitzgerald, who manned the searchlight mounted on the forward turtlebacked compartment, also felt trepidation as the torturous roaring of the breakers became louder. He was putting his faith in Bernie’s experience and in the construction of the CG 36500. Andy had always thought of the lifeboat as a floating tank—slow but seaworthy, no matter what the weather. Now this little tank was the only thing that stood between him and the frigid ocean.