The Pendleton Disaster Off Cape Cod: The Greatest Small Boat Rescue in Coast Guard History, A True Story

Theresa Mitchell Barbo · W. Russell Webster

sept 2010 · Arcadia Publishing

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A first-hand account and fascinating new details of the 1952 rescue of the SS Pendleton, the true story behind the film The Finest Hours.

On February 18, 1952, off the coast of Cape Cod, a fierce nor’easter snapped in half two 503-foot oil tankers, the Pendleton and the Fort Mercer. Human grace and grit, leadership and endurance prevail as Theresa Mitchell Barbo and Captain W. Russell Webster (Ret.) recount the historic, heroic rescue of thirty-two merchant mariners from the sinking Pendleton by four young Coast Guardsmen aboard the 36-foot motor lifeboat CG 36500. A foreword by former Commandant Admiral Thad Allen (Ret.) and an essay by Master Chief John “Jack” Downey (Ret.), a veteran of thousands of modern-day small boat rescues, round out the special third edition of this classic work on Coast Guard history.

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Theresa M. Barbo is the founding director of the annual Cape Cod Maritime History Symposium, partnered with the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History, now in its fifteenth year. She presents illustrated lectures on maritime history and contemporary marine public policy before civic groups and educational audiences. Her area of expertise in merchant marine research is on nineteenth-century Cape Cod sea captains when American deep water skippers ruled global maritime commerce. She holds bachelor of arts and master of arts degrees from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and has studied executive integral leadership at the University of Notre Dame. Captain Webster is a maritime historian who specializes in Cape Cod, area rescues. Webster retired from the U.S. Coast Guard in 2003 after serving twenty-six years' military service. While in the Coast Guard, Webster was Group Woods Hole rescue commander from 1998 to 2001 and led his service's operational response to the John F. Kennedy Jr. and Egypt Air 990 crashes. He is a graduate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, and the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, and holds a master of science in systems technology and a master of arts in national strategic studies. Webster is New England's first Preparedness Coordinator for FEMA in Boston, where he coordinates with states, communities and individuals to better prepare for both man-made and natural disasters.