⚓ The Night the Bar Didn’t Win

The Night the Atlantic Split a Ship in Two

On the night of February 18, 1952, a brutal nor’easter bore down on New England.

Wind hardened out of the northeast. Snow thickened into near-whiteout conditions. Offshore, seas rose into the 40- to 60-foot range. Gusts approached 70 knots.

About ten miles southeast of Chatham, near Monomoy Island, the oil tanker SS Pendleton — a T2 tanker carrying heating oil from Louisiana to Boston — fractured.

There was no distress call.

The hull failed suddenly. The bow separated and sank. Eight crew members were lost.

The stern remained afloat — engines running, lights still burning — but structurally destroyed.

Thirty-three men were stranded on half a ship in a winter Atlantic.

For hours, no one ashore knew.

A Station Already Saving Someone Else

The United States Coast Guard station in Chatham was not waiting idly that night.

Another tanker, the Fort Mercer, had also split in the same storm off Nantucket. Crews and cutters were already committed to that emergency.

Then radar revealed something new.

The Pendleton had broken in two.

Orders were given to launch a small rescue craft from Chatham Coast Guard Station.

Four Coast Guardsmen stepped forward.

Bernard “Bernie” Webber, 24, Boatswain’s Mate First Class, was placed in command. He chose Andrew Fitzgerald, Richard Livesey, and Ervin Maske.

Their vessel was CG36500 — a 36-foot wooden motor lifeboat designed for surf conditions.

It was sturdy.

It was not large.

The Part That Ends Most Attempts

Before reaching open ocean, they had to cross the Chatham Bar — one of the most treacherous sandbars on the Atlantic coast.

Locals do not romanticize the bar. It shifts constantly. It compresses wave energy into violent breaking surf. In storms, it becomes a barrier few attempt.

That night, breaking seas struck the lifeboat hard enough to shatter the windshield and destroy the compass.

Navigation instruments were gone.

The boat continued anyway.

From that point forward, navigation would depend on experience, bearings, and the crew’s knowledge of these waters.

A Horizon Erased

Offshore, snow and spray dissolved the boundary between sky and sea.

The lifeboat climbed steep swells and dropped into troughs deep enough to stall the engine. Andrew Fitzgerald repeatedly descended into the engine compartment to restart it when it lost prime.

Somewhere beyond the shoals near Pollock Rip, the searchlight found steel.

The stern of the Pendleton rose and fell in the darkness, twisted and unstable.

Men were visible.

Thirty-Two Descents

There was no possibility of securing alongside.

A Jacob’s ladder was lowered. The lifeboat maneuvered beneath it, rising and falling violently against the tanker’s broken hull.

Timing determined survival.

One by one, the crew of the Pendleton descended.

The CG36500 was rated to carry far fewer than what it would ultimately hold.

By the time the transfer ended, thirty-two survivors were aboard.

One crew member, George “Tiny” Myers, was lost as the stern finally rolled and sank.

Thirty-six men now stood on a 36-foot wooden lifeboat.

The boat rode low in the water.

There was no compass.

The Decision That Made the Headline Possible

A proposal came over radio: transfer the survivors to a larger cutter offshore.

Webber declined.

In those sea conditions, another transfer introduced new risk.

Instead, he turned west — toward Chatham — and the bar they had already crossed once.

Visibility remained poor. Navigation relied on memory and shoreline light patterns.

At some point during the approach, a red flashing buoy marking the entrance to Old Harbor became visible through snow and spray.

The lifeboat crossed the bar again.

All thirty-two rescued men survived.

The rescue is still regarded as The Coast Guard’s Greatest Small Boat Rescue.

What the Morning Papers Could Not Capture

By dawn, newspapers reported 32 saved from the Pendleton. Combined with rescue efforts involving the Fort Mercer, seventy of eighty-four crew members from the two tankers survived the storm.

Webber and his crew were later awarded the Gold Lifesaving Medal.

He did not publicly describe the event in dramatic terms. In later years, he credited teamwork and faith.

The story would go on to inspire a bestselling book and the Disney film The Finest Hours.

But the scale of what happened is better understood in wood and steel than in cinema.

The Boat Is Still Here

The CG36500 was restored to working condition and now operates as a floating museum owned and maintained by the Orleans Historical Society.

In the summer, she is berthed at Rock Harbor in Orleans.
In the winter, she’s moved to protected waters.

In 2005, she was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Those are the official facts.

The unofficial one is this:

She is smaller than you think.

Stand beside her long enough and the math becomes uncomfortable.

Thirty-six men.
Seventy-knot winds.
A compass torn away at the bar.
A February Atlantic that had already split two ships in half.

Nothing about that night was inevitable.

It was a decision — made in real time — by four men who could see the same weather everyone else could.

That’s what stays with you.

Not the movie.
Not the medals.
Not even the headline.

Just a wooden boat at Rock Harbor — quiet, weathered, present.

Proof that sometimes the story people call heroic is simply this:

Someone launched.

Learn more:
https://www.orleanshistoricalsociety.org/rescue