![\"1981-CG-in-water\"](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/1981-CG-in-water-300x174.jpg\")
<\/a><\/center><\/p>\nEggs sends us a link to Fox News<\/a> about an event that happened 62 years ago on February 18, 1952 when Petty Officer 1st Class Bernie Webber, Petty Officer 2nd Class Andy Fitzgerald, Seaman Ervin Maske and Seaman Richard Lively took off from the station at Chatham Harbor, Massachusetts in a 36-foot wooden boat to rescue the survivors of the SS Fort Mercer and SS Pendleton which had broken up off the coast. Their small wooden craft was built to carry 12 men, and there were 76 men clinging to the hulls of the two ships;<\/p>\n “The first wave they encountered was so big and so ferocious that it picked up their little life boat and tossed it into the air, slamming it back onto the sea.”<\/p>\n “They lost their compass. Their windshield was smashed. The glass was now embedded in the captain\u2019s skin,” [Casey Sherman, co-author of “The Finest Hours”] said.<\/p>\n Other boats were headed for the scene as well, including five Coast Guard cutters. But it was the faster, smaller CG-36500 that would be the star of the effort, in which 70 of the stranded sailors were saved. Reaching the stern section of the Pendleton, the four found 33 men hanging on for their lives. They herded 32 of the men onto the boat. One man, identified as George “Tiny” Myers, died when the rescue boat collided with the Pendleton’s stern, pinning him between the two vessels. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n The small craft returned to Chatham Station with 32 survivors, while other ships rescued the others, but according to the Fox News story, the Coasties never consider the rescue a success because they hadn’t saved “Tiny” Myers. CG-36500 has been restored to a museum and you can visit it in Orleans, Massachusett<\/a>s. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"