“You have no choice, Captain,” said Bleakley. “Back down and hope.”
Naab knew Bleakley was right. Any hesitation meant the men in the raft would die of hypothermia, whereas forcing a break in the line gave them a 50-50 chance of survival. The captain gave the order to back down, and every man aboard the cutter held his breath. Which line would break? Or worse, would the raft be torn apart, casting the men into the seas?
The lines tightened and rose clear of the water. A half second passed. Then a sudden cheer rang out from the men on the cutter as the line between the raft and the hulk parted! Helping hands quickly pulled the raft in, and within a couple of minutes, Guldin and Fahrner were directly below the cutter. Ropes and a scramble net were lowered. The two survivors crawled over the side of the raft and into the sea to get at the ropes, but they could barely lift their arms.
The crew of the Yakutat, however, had anticipated this problem, and coasties Dennis Perry and Herman Rubinsky—already wearing exposure suits—climbed down the netting and into the water. Each man went to work on a survivor, tying lines around his chest so he could be hauled up.
As Guldin and Fahrner were being hoisted, one of them became tangled in the cargo net. Yakutat crewman Phillip Griebel saw what was happening and, without the protection of an exposure suit, he scrambled down the cargo net to free the man. Both survivors were then safely lifted aboard the cutter.
Seconds later, a coastie pointed toward the Mercer’s bow and shouted, “Look! There she goes!”
The bow reared up as if it were a living thing, pointing straight toward the gray sky. Then it pivoted, falling backward into the sea in a spray of water. Only a small portion of its keel remained above the seas. Exactly 17 minutes had passed since Guldin and Fahrner leaped off the vessel.
* * *
To warn other ships that might be coming that way, the Yakutat stayed on scene with the hazardous capsized bow until it was relieved by the cutter Unimak that evening. Then Captain Naab ordered full steam to Portland, Maine, so the survivors could be hospitalized. All were suffering from hypothermia and frostbite, but Captain Paetzel was in the worst shape with pneumonia. Newspaper reporters were dockside as the survivors were taken off the cutter, and Fahrner calmly told the Boston Herald, “It was nip and tuck whether we’d make it.”
The capsized bow of the Mercer was deemed a hazard to navigation, and the Unimak later received the go-ahead to sink the half-floating hulk. Gunnery officer Ben Stabile recalled that he first fired the ship’s 40-millimeter antiaircraft gun at the Mercer’s bow, just above the waterline “to see what would happen.” Stabile was thinking that maybe the oil would leak out of the cargo holds and be replaced by water, which is heavier than oil, or that the high-explosive incendiary projectiles they shot would make the oil tanker explode and sink. When the hulk didn’t move, the Unimak’s skipper, Captain Frank McCabe, said, “Ben, let’s fire the K-guns with depth charges.” Stabile had never fired live depth charges—explosives designed to detonate underwater—and the K-guns could push the explosives out only about 75 yards; all the crew wondered if this was too close for comfort.
After much discussion, it was decided that the Unimak should be going at full steam when Stabile fired the K-guns. That way, the cutter would be putting distance between itself and the depth charge before it exploded.
The depth charges were shaped like teardrops to better propel them through the water. They measured approximately 24 inches long and 18 inches across at the wide end. The K-gun would fire the explosives in a long arc through the air, and if all went well, they would drop into the ocean close to the hulk. They were preset to explode when they reached a depth of 50 feet.
When everyone was ready, Captain McCabe wound up the engine, and the Unimak came flying toward the hulk at a speed of 18 knots (21 miles per hour). When the cutter was adjacent to the tanker’s hull, Stabile discharged all three guns. A few seconds passed and then the charges exploded underwater, sending huge plumes of spray into the air. The Unimak shuddered violently, despite being a safe distance away, but the hulk of the Mercer barely moved.
After watching the half tanker float in the same position for 30 minutes, McCabe decided to repeat the procedure. “This time was different,” said Stabile. “The hulk rose up in the air and then down she went. We breathed a big sigh of relief. We didn’t want to be near that thing with night closing in. It was so hard to see. Even with radar, I worried we might hit it and become its last victims.”
14
A MANEUVER FOR THE AGES
One half of the Fort Mercer now lay at the bottom of the sea. The other half, the stern, was still afloat and being driven southward by the wind and waves. The 31 men on board felt the full range of emotions, their mood and outlook rising and falling like the half ship they were trapped on. When the tanker first broke apart, fear and confusion reigned on the stern. Arguments broke out over what to do, and the confusion showed signs of escalating into full-blown panic and chaos, especially because the men’s leader, Captain Paetzel, had drifted away on the bow section of the tanker. Some talked about immediately abandoning ship in the lifeboats, while others argued the lifeboats must be a last resort. Quartermaster Luis Jomidad hedged his bets, later saying, “I went up to the boat deck and climbed into a boat with a hatchet. The release was outside the boat, and I wanted to be sure it would work, that is why I took the hatchet. One guy was crazy and screamed, ‘Let’s jump overboard,’ but I said, ‘No, wait until it sinks and then we will jump.’ For the next four hours, I sat in the lifeboat with the hatchet in my hand, ready to cut the rope to release it.” The quartermaster, frozen to the core, finally went back inside, but stayed up the entire night, just in case. “If it was going down,” he said, “I wanted to be on the outside.”
Although the Mercer’s stern could capsize like the bow did, the men on board were lucky that their section of the ship still had power. That meant they had operable lights, pumps, and a functioning heating system. Unfortunately, there was no radio on the stern section, and the crew had no way to communicate with the merchant ship Short Splice, which was standing by. The survivors had made it through Monday night, and now, on Tuesday morning, they prayed the coast guard would arrive and that their fractured ship would stay upright a little longer.
* * *
The storm that threatened so many lives was far from over, and on board the cutter Eastwind, radio operator Len Whitmore lay restless in his bunk as the ship pitched and rolled. He was on break from radio duty, but between the ship’s motion and the dramatic events of the day, sleep was next to impossible, so he got out of bed, dressed, and went topside. Len learned from another crewmember that the Mercer’s radioman, John O’Reilly, with whom he’d been communicating prior to the tanker splitting, was dead. Will there be more loss of life, he asked himself, before the Eastwind even arrives at the action? He knew the cutter’s crew could make a difference after all their endless training, if only they could get there in time.
With the Eastwind almost at the site of the Mercer’s stern, Len peered into the gray skies over the storm-tossed seas and wondered how Captain Petersen would go about the rescue. Len had listened in on the Yakutat’s radio communications as that ship attempted to rescue the men trapped on the Mercer’s bow, and he knew about the lives both saved and lost.
Ensign Larry White, also aboard the Eastwind, was equally aware of the Yakutat’s mixed results, and he hoped the Eastwind’s crew would be able to get each and every man off the Mercer’s stern. But he was also concerned with the manpower aboard the icebreaker, because many of the men were seasick. “We had lightened up the ship a couple weeks earlier,” recalled Larry, “to get up the Hudson River to break ice. And now the Eastwind was really pitching and rolling. Having literally been up the river, we didn’t have much time to acclimate ourselves to the sea, and a fair share of the men were too sick to perform their duties, so others had to do double work.”
Larry himself was not seasick, and when the E
astwind was within visual range of the Mercer, he watched how the waves swept over the jagged end of the tanker, cascading off in waterfalls. The young ensign realized he and his shipmates would have their work cut out for them. He was surprised to see smoke coming out of the tanker’s stacks, but noted how the rear of the stern sloped upward so that its propeller could be seen each time a wave swept by. As the Eastwind drew closer, both Larry and Len saw several of the tanker’s crew standing along the deck rail, frantically waving at them. Slowly the Eastwind maneuvered upwind of the hulk, not wanting to be in a position where the Mercer could drift into the icebreaker.
Captain Petersen’s first onsite decision was to establish communication with the Mercer. To that end, he instructed that a line with a “monkey fist” (a piece of lead or steel to add weight to the end of the line) be shot to the tanker. At the end of the line was a portable radio in a watertight container, which the seamen on the tanker were able to haul aboard. Once they removed the radio from the container, they could begin talking to the cutter. Chief engineer Jesse Bushnell, of Pasadena, Texas, the highest-ranking sailor on the tanker’s stern section, told Captain Petersen that some of the men had decided to take their chances remaining on the hulk while others wanted to get off immediately. Petersen responded that he would have a rubber raft sent over. His crew fired another messenger line over to the tanker. Attached to it was a heavier line with the life raft tied in a fixed position. The other end of the line stayed with the coasties on the Eastwind.
When the survivors pulled their end of the line to the point where the life raft was alongside the vessel, three men immediately jumped into the sea and scrambled aboard the raft. It was not a smooth trip to the icebreaker. The seas were still on a rampage, and the Eastwind rolled so much that the line rode way out of the water, lifting the men and the raft high in the air. Then the raft would crash back down into the water, loosening the survivors’ handholds; maintaining a good grip was the only thing that kept them from certain death in the frigid sea.
A cargo net was lowered from the Eastwind, and three coast guardsmen, John Courtney, Roland Hoffert, and Eugene Korpusik, volunteered to man the net, waiting by the waterline to assist the survivors. Each time the Eastwind rolled, the volunteers were totally dunked, but they held firm. When the raft was alongside the icebreaker, the coasties were able to tie lines around the survivors and pull them on board.
During the rescue, a second coast guard cutter, the Acushnet, arrived on the scene, having steamed for 24 hours into the teeth of the storm from Portland. Coastal Maine had been hit especially hard, with the Portland Herald Press reporting in bold headlines STORM PARALYZES STATE: STORM EQUALS WORST IN WEATHER BUREAU HISTORY. The Acushnet had been docked in Portland for repairs, and half its crew was scattered and marooned ashore, including its captain, John Joseph. He had been at his home in South Portland when he got the phone call about the Pendleton and Mercer: “Commander, this is the Acushnet calling. A message from headquarters in Boston came in. Two tankers have split up off Cape Cod, and we’re to go to the rescue.”
Joseph knew he’d have trouble locating his crew and responded, “Try to get the crew by telephone. If you can’t get them by phone, call the local radio stations and have them broadcast a message. I’ll be right there.”
Easier said than done. Joseph’s car stalled in the snowdrifts at Portland’s Vaughn Street Bridge. It would have taken hours to walk to the pier where the Acushnet was docked, so he called the South Portland CG Station, and they dispatched a picket boat, which came up the river, met Joseph at the bridge, and took him to the cutter. Other crewmembers struggled through the snow, but the entire crew eventually made it, and the 210-foot Acushnet nosed out of Portland Harbor and headed south into the storm.
On board were two young coasties, John Mihlbauer and Sid Morris, both of whom later recalled a very rough ride to the Mercer and were thankful to have Captain Joseph in command. “I sure was glad to see Captain Joseph come aboard,” said Morris. “He had commanded the ship admirably in several fishing boat rescues off the Grand Banks, and there was a unanimous feeling of trust and confidence by the crew for our captain, a coast guard veteran of 25 years. I knew it was going to be a bad trip, because it was difficult to maintain an upright position while we were still in the harbor. And as we sped out into open water and came abreast of the Portland Lightship, anyone who thought they might get seasick this trip was—and the others were beginning to think seriously about it.” Normally the trip from Portland to the Mercer’s position near Nantucket took 18 hours, but because of the enormous seas, it took an additional six hours, giving everyone on board plenty of time to be seasick.
Morris remembered how he gaped in awe when he saw the Mercer’s stern. “I could see gigantic, jagged slivers of broken steel at her midsection, and a group of frantic, pleading sailors clutching the rails.” John Mihlbauer remembered arriving just in time to watch the Eastwind haul the life raft with survivors back toward the cutter. “We could see the trouble the Eastwind was having with the raft,” recalled Mihlbauer. “The raft was flying up, then down, and spinning too. My heart was in my mouth, knowing there were men in that raft.”
Captain Joseph also watched, thinking how lucky the men in the raft were to have made it to the Eastwind alive. It was about this time that he started to think of another way to perform the rescue. “The way the sea was raging,” said Joseph, “it looked like the stern section would soon join its forward half in Davy Jones’s locker. Something had to be done fast. I went to the radio room and signaled the commander of the Eastwind, saying, ‘Commander, I’d like to take the Acushnet in alongside the tanker so the survivors can jump to our deck. It’s risky, but I think we can do it.’”
On the Eastwind, Captain Petersen, who was the on-scene commander for the entire rescue operation, hesitated before answering, weighing the risk to both the survivors and the Acushnet itself. The Acushnet, a coast guard oceangoing tug, was smaller and more maneuverable than the Eastwind, but still, the tactic was highly unusual, particularly in a storm. If the vessels collided due to the wildly heaving seas, the crew on the Acushnet could find themselves in almost as much peril as the survivors on the tanker. Captain Petersen was aware of these dangers, as well as the scrutiny he’d be under if the maneuver failed, but they were out of options. He radioed back to Captain Joseph to give it a try.
Joseph outlined his plan to his helmsman, Harvey Madigan, instructing him to turn the Acushnet in a semicircle, approach the tanker from the rear, and glide alongside it until ten feet remained between the two ships. Then, when the Acushnet was abreast of the tanker, they would stop the engines and let the cutter glide a bit closer so the survivors could jump on the fantail. Joseph added these words of caution: “Harvey, we can make it, but you’ve got to be careful. Don’t let the bow swing into the tanker. If you do, we’ll be smashed against her, surer than hell. Keep her pointed out, and we’ll be okay.” Both men took another moment and silently studied the current and the wind, trying to determine how fast they would drift when the propellers stopped turning.
Joseph positioned himself in the wing of the bridge, where he could see his cutter’s fantail. He had Madigan slowly make the semicircle and bring the cutter toward the rear of the tanker, where he had the engines killed so he could again gauge the rate of drift. As the diesel engines fell silent, the momentum of the Acushnet propelled it toward the wallowing tanker looming just ahead. A thousand thoughts raced through Joseph’s mind: What if a sudden swell should smash the ships together and sink them? What if the survivors should fall between the ships and be crushed? What if the oil in the tanker should blow up upon impact? And what of my future if we fail? The possible outcomes made him pause, but only for a second or two. “Ahead one third!” he shouted.
They were now close enough to clearly see the desperation etched into the faces of the survivors lined up at the rail of the tanker. Just then, a mountainous sea pushed the bow of the Acushnet toward the tanker’s prope
ller. Madigan swung the wheel furiously, and Joseph shouted into the power-phone connected to the engine room, “Ahead on starboard, back on port,” and the engines churned the ocean to even more of a froth. Just a few feet from impact, the cutter’s bow stopped, and slowly began to reverse itself.
Joseph and Madigan breathed a sigh of relief, and when the Acushnet was directly alongside and perpendicular to the tanker, Joseph shouted, “Back on both engines!” Careful to keep the bow pointed away from the tanker, Madigan worked the wheel so that the stern of the cutter eased closer to the tanker. The distance between the Acushnet’s fantail and the Mercer closed from ten feet to just a couple feet, then a slight shudder went through the cutter as her stern hit the tanker. “Stop both engines!” Joseph shouted.
Now was the time for the survivors to jump, but not one made a move. And who could blame them? They were paralyzed with indecision, watching how the two ships, just inches apart, were rising and falling chaotically.
Coast guard lieutenant George Mahoney, Sid Morris, John Mihlbauer, and a handful of other men were out on the Acushnet’s rear deck, slipping and sliding, waiting for the tanker crew to jump. Mahoney screamed, “Come on, you guys, jump! We’ll catch you!” Still no one even lifted a leg over the rail. The tanker and cutter were like two ends of a seesaw, and it was only for the briefest of moments that the cutter’s stern rose up within three or four feet of the deck before plunging back down.
Mahoney, frustrated by the survivors’ lack of action, cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed, “Look, we can’t stay here all day! Jump!”
Finally one survivor awoke from his trance, climbed over the rail, and paused, waiting for the cutter to rise on the next wave. When the cutter was three feet below him and just two feet out from the tanker, he threw himself forward and landed on the deck.
The Finest Hours Page 8