02336cam a2200277 i 4500 253822051 TxAuBib 20160220120000.0 150804t20102009||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 9781416567226 paperback 1416567224 paperback TxAuBib rda Tougias, Michael J. The finest hours : the true story of the U.S. Coast Guard's most daring sea rescue / Michael Tougias and Casey Sherman. First Scribner trade paperback edition. New York : Scribner, 2010. ℗2009. 204 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 22 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier Includes bibliographical references (page199 - 202) and index. Prologue -- Tanker sections and their rescue boats -- Part one -- Chatham Lifeboat Station -- The Pendleton -- The Fort Mercer -- "It can't be true" -- "You got to take the 36500 out" -- Blowout at Chatham Bar -- Chatham mobilizes -- "He came to the surface floating" -- Losing all hope: on board the Pendleton stern -- All but one: the rescue of the Pendleton stern -- Thirty-six men in a thirty-six foot boat -- Pandemonium in Chatham -- Part two -- The Mercer's boat capsizes -- A maneuver for the ages -- Tuesday at Chatham Station -- Thirteen men still on board -- Search of the Pendleton bow -- Part three -- The inquiry -- Being labeled a hero can be a burden -- Tanker trouble -- Beyond the rescue -- The restoration -- Epilogue: they were young once. In the winter of 1932, New England was battered by the most brutal nor'easter in years, wreaking havoc on land and creating a wind-whipped peril of the freezing Atlantic. In the early hours of Monday, February 18, while the storm raged, two oil tankers, the Fort Mercer and the Pendleton, broke in two. The Coast Guard raced its cutters to the Fort Mercer to rescue the men huddled in the halves, and when the Pendleton proved to be in danger of capsizing, sent out into the storm two 36-foot wooden lifeboats, each manned by four crewmen, in what every crewman realized could be a suicide mission in the enormous seventy-foot seas. 20160220.