On the night of February 18, 1952, the Atlantic off Cape Cod was all iron wind, breaking water, and snow. Somewhere beyond Chatham Bar, the stern half of the tanker Pendleton was drifting with 33 men aboard. The ship had split in two. Her radio room was gone. No distress call had reached shore.
Against that darkness went a wooden 36-foot Coast Guard motor lifeboat carrying four men: Boatswain’s Mate First Class Bernard “Bernie” Webber, Engineman Second Class Andrew Fitzgerald, Seaman Richard Livesey, and Seaman Ervin Maske. Their boat, CG-36500, would return carrying 32 survivors in one of the most extraordinary small-boat rescues in American maritime history.
Two Tankers Broken in the Same Storm
The first emergency that seized the Coast Guard’s attention was the 502-foot T2 tanker Fort Mercer, which had broken apart about 40 miles east of Provincetown. Cutters, aircraft, and a Navy vessel rushed toward her. Those forces would save 38 merchant mariners.
Then a Coast Guard aircraft spotted another disaster closer to Chatham: the nearly identical 502-foot Pendleton, also broken in two. The fracture had destroyed the radio room near the bridge, leaving the vessel unable to send an SOS. On the stern section, 33 men waited while the hulk rose and slammed in the seas.
Station Chatham had already sent its most experienced crew in another 36-footer, but that boat found no survivors. Webber, who had spent the day helping grounded fishing vessels, was ordered to assemble a second crew. Fitzgerald, Livesey, and Maske joined him. At 5:55 p.m., with daylight gone, they prepared CG-36500 and got underway.
A 36-Foot Boat Built for Heavy Water
CG-36500 belonged to the generation of rugged motor lifeboats that formed the backbone of coastal rescue work before the Coast Guard’s later steel 44-footers. Coast Guard records describe the 36-foot Type T family as heavily framed, self-righting, self-bailing, and powered by a 90-horsepower engine. These boats were meant to cross dangerous inlet bars and work in rough surf.
Even so, no design makes the sea harmless. The official rescue account says winds ran 40 to 50 miles per hour, with extremely high seas, darkness, and snow squalls. The route out crossed Chatham Bar, a shifting shoal where ocean swell can rear up and break with little warning.
If you enjoy the traditions behind crews who answer calls like this, explore our guide to Coast Guard history and traditions and the Coast Guard Life collection.
Across Chatham Bar Without a Compass
The first heavy sea over the bar picked up CG-36500, turned her around, and threw her back toward the harbor. More breakers smashed through the windshield opening. The violent motion tore the boat’s compass from its mount and shattered the windshield.
Webber fought the bow back into the seas and kept going. Snow drove horizontally through the open windshield. When the lifeboat rolled hard enough for its engine to lose prime, Fitzgerald crawled into the cramped machinery space and restarted it. The boat climbed the face of each sea, raced down the back, and met the next wall of water.
They had no radar. They had lost the compass. What they still had was a searchlight, seamanship, and the judgment to handle a small boat one wave at a time.
A Black Wall in the Snow
The men heard the wreck before they clearly saw it—a grinding, crashing presence somewhere ahead. The searchlight finally caught the Pendleton: a towering black mass of steel lifting in the sea and dropping into white foam. Webber worked around to the stern’s starboard side, where deck lights showed men gathered at the rail.
The survivors lowered a Jacob’s ladder. Bringing them off required repeated passes beneath the tanker’s side. Each roll of the ship sent the ladder and the men on it swinging. Webber steered with one hand and worked the throttle with the other, edging close enough for a man to jump or fall aboard, then backing away before the hulk came down.
Fitzgerald, Livesey, and Maske hauled survivors from the bow and the freezing water. The crew repeated the maneuver until 32 merchant mariners were aboard. One man was lost during the rescue. Shortly after the final survivor came off, the Pendleton stern rolled over and disappeared.
Thirty-Six Men and One Red Light
CG-36500 was now carrying 36 people—four Coast Guardsmen and 32 survivors—through zero visibility. The compass was gone. The windshield was broken. Webber chose a course and the crew searched the darkness for any recognizable light, land, or buoy.
At last they found a small red light marking the inside turn at Chatham Bar. It led them back through Old Harbor to the Chatham Fish Pier. The overloaded lifeboat and every man aboard her reached shore safely.
In May 1952, Webber, Fitzgerald, Livesey, and Maske each received the Gold Lifesaving Medal. The Coast Guard still remembers them as the “Gold Medal Crew.” Their achievement belongs beside other service stories such as Rasmus Midgett’s 1899 rescue from the wreck of the Priscilla: different boats, different storms, the same duty to go when others are in peril.
Why the Pendleton Rescue Still Matters
Maritime history is full of celebrated captains and famous ships, but the Pendleton rescue endures for a plainer reason. Four working Coast Guardsmen were given an ugly job in impossible weather. They took the boat they had, trusted their training and one another, and kept moving toward people who needed them.
That is the heart of the sailor’s code: courage measured not by noise, but by the next good decision—the helm held steady, the engine restarted, the hand reaching over the rail. Fair winds are welcome. Character is what carries a crew when the winds are anything but fair.