ONE  OF  THE  GREATEST  SMALL  BOAT  RESCUES

IN  COAST  GUARD  HISTORY

On the night of February 18, 1952, a violent winter storm with winds of over 50 miles per hour and gigantic waves caused two tankers off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, to break apart.  The skipper of the SS PENDLETON opted to stand off and proceeded into the monstrous seas at slow speed.  Without warning PENDLETON broke in two so suddenly that it was unable to transmit a disaster message.  Quickly gone was the bow section with eight crewmembers but the stern section remained afloat with 33-crewmen.  Several hours later, while a USCG plane was searching for another tanker that was known to be floundering, it happened to see the PENDLETON’s stern section and alerted the Coast Guard Station at Chatham, Massachusetts, to render assistance. 

Boatswains Mate First Class Bernard C. Webber was assigned duties at Chatham and remembers thinking when a boat was dispatched to help the floundering tanker, “My God, do they really think a lifeboat and its crew could actually make it out to sea in this storm and find the broken ship amid the blinding snow and raging seas with only a compass to guide them?  And, how would they be able to get the men off the storm-tossed sections of the broken tanker?”  He would soon find out.  When the news about PENDLETON was received, Webber quickly assembled a crew of three more volunteers and in a wooden 36-foot motorized lifeboat CG-36500 driven by a single 90-horsepower engine they headed for Chatham’s Bar and certain disaster.  As the boat reached the bar it was tossed violently around by the estimated 40 to 60-foot waves, was thrown into the air by the near hurricane force winds and landed on its side between waves.  The self-righting boat recovered quickly and was struck again, this time as tons of seawater crashed over the boat breaking the windshield, knocking the compass off its mount and flattening coxswain Webber to the deck.  But, BM1 Webber regained control of the boat and managed to cross the bar although the engine would occasionally die out when waves rolled the vessel so far over that the engine would lose its prime.  Coxswain Webber also had to often reverse the engine on the backside of waves in order to slow down to prohibit the boat’s bow from burying into the next wave and swamp the small vessel.  With the weather and visibility worsening in freezing horizontal snow that lashed his face through the broken windshield Webber was miraculously able to find PENDLETON’s stern section with 33-crewmembers awaiting rescue.

Creeping toward the wreck with only CG-36500’s searchlight for illumination the black mass of twisted metal heaved high in the air upon the massive waves and then settled back down in a “frothing mass of foam.”  Without notice a Jacob’s ladder was tossed over the side and unbelievably men began to start down the ladder like a procession of ants.   Reaching the bottom the men were often dunked in the water then lifted 50 feet in the air as the wreck rolled.  Webber expertly maneuvered his boat under the thrashing wreck whenever possible, and the PENDLETON survivors either jumped and crashed hard on the tiny boat’s bow or fell into the sea and Webber’s crew assisted them onboard at great personal risk.  As the last man left PENDLETON he was swallowed up by the seas but was soon visible underneath the stern clinging to one of the 11-foot long propeller blades.  Easing cautiously, Webber felt the stem of his small boat rise as a monstrous wave drove it fast ahead toward the crewman.  Coxswain Webber backed his small craft’s engine hard but the boat smashed into PENDLETON.  The CG-36500 was ejected from underneath PENDLETON by another large wave just as the hulk was lifted one last time and capsized.  However, the crewman was no longer seen - the only man to be lost during the rescue. 

With no compass to steer by and in zero visibility conditions, BM1 Webber headed toward land hoping to beach his boat where survivors could scramble ashore.  Remarkable, as they headed toward land, a red flashing light appeared out of the darkness which marked the entrance to Old Harbor and safe water.  The day after the rescue the Commander of the First CG District sent his personal congratulations to BM1 Webber and his crew for their “outstanding seamanship and utter disregard of your own safety during a violent winter gale to rescue from imminent death thirty two crewmembers…minutes before the tanker capsized.”  BM1 Webber and his crew were each later honored with the USCG Gold Lifesaving Medal for their heroic rescue.

Bernard C. Webber remained in the Coast Guard until retiring in September 1966 with the rank of Warrant Bosun (WO1).  Following retirement he became a Harbor Master, partnered on a charter boat out of Rock Harbor, Orleans, worked for the National Audubon Society, for Hurricane Island Outward Bound School in Maine and also the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.  He died on January 25, 2009, and some of his ashes have been interred at Pleasant Hill Cemetery in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, and the remainder were scattered in a private ceremony by the Coast Guard in the waters of Chatham Harbor.  In his honor, USCGC BERNARD C. WEBBER (WPC-1101) was commissioned on April 14, 2012.

Submitted by CDR Roy A. Mosteller, USNR (Ret)