When 24-year-old Coast Guardsman Bernard Webber was given the task to rescue the crew of a 500-foot ship that had just broken in half during a storm, he thought it was a suicide mission. But after successfully saving the lives of 32 men, Webber and his brave crew of three earned gold Lifesaving medals for their efforts. The event remains the greatest small boat rescue in U.S. Coast Guard history.
A Terrible Storm
On the morning of Feb. 18, 1952, an alert came across the radio at a Coast Guard Station in Chatham, Massachusetts. It said that a T2 tanker, the Fort Mercer, had snapped in two off the coast just north of Nantucket due to a vicious storm that struck the region. Then, a few hours after the Coast Guard had sent a rescue crew to aid the Fort Mercer, their radar showed that another tanker—the Pendleton—had also snapped in half about 10 miles off the coast of Chatham.This violent storm was labeled a nor'easter due to wind and rain that came out of the northeast. New England experiences plenty of these storms and most area residents are trained on how to avoid or endure them. However, this one was especially bad as 8 1/2 inches of snow had fallen, causing hazardous road conditions and hundreds of vehicles to be buried in deep snowdrifts.
