The Miraculous Rescue That Inspired ‘The Finest Hours’

On February 18th, 1952, a distress call came into a Massachusetts Coast Guard station. Not one, but two T2 oil tankers — the SS Fort Mercer and the SS Pendleton — had split in half off the coast of Cape Cod. Much of the Coast Guard’s fleet was sent to aid the Mercer. Four remaining servicemen were sent to save the lives of 33 men adrift in the Atlantic on the Pendleton’s stern. The Coast Guard’s daring rescue of those men is one of the most famous in its history. 

Now, this heroic tale is being pulled up from the depths of history in Disney’s latest dramatic film, The Finest Hours. Chris Pine stars as Bernie Webber, the real-life Coast Guard service member who skippered that famed 1952 mission 64 years ago. The Finest Hours tells Webber’s story of courage and faith, based on the book of the same name, by author Michael Tougias. 

“The rescue was so remarkable it bordered on the miraculous,” Tougias tells Guideposts.org.

Tougias spent four years researching and talking to the then three surviving members of the rescue crew, including Webber. He was a 24-year-old First Class officer when he and his team of three volunteers were sent out on the dangerous mission to rescue survivors of the SS Pendleton.

Tougias tells Guideposts.org that Webber believed the rescue to be a suicide mission– he was steering a 36-foot rescue boat into 60-foot waves and raging winds in the middle of the night in order to assist the sinking ship.

A man of faith and the son of a minister, Webber had seen failure and loss during his time in the Coast Guard.

 A year and a half earlier, Webber led a rescue mission that ended in the loss of five fisherman and damaged Webber’s reputation among town members and his fellow service men.

“It always haunted him,” Tougias says of those fisherman who he wasn’t able to save. “He couldn’t let that happen again.”

So when the call came to assist the Pendleton, Webber went, in spite of his fear and the very-real risk to his life and the lives of his crew.

His first test was in crossing the Chatham Bar, a shallow stretch of sand where the storm’s monstrous waves were crashing onto shore. It took Webber three attempts, a stalled engine, a blown-out windshield and the loss of his compass before he was able to maneuver the tiny boat over the Bar. At one point, the vessel was completely submerged before breaking through the water.

Webber was left without a heading – radar wasn’t around at the time – or a way to contact his station.

Tougias said Webber’s faith guided him during the mission.

“Bernie said, ‘There had to be a higher power directing me because I didn’t know what I was doing out there. I was just groping around in the dark.’”

Webber made the decision to forge ahead, searching in the dead of night for the massive tanker. He discovered it only after hearing the groaning of steel on the ocean’s rock floor. He was then faced with another difficult decision. His rescue boat was only meant to hold 12 passengers, yet there were 33 men on board the sinking Pendleton. They scrambled down a Jacob’s ladder and jumped into the rolling waves in the hopes of making it on board the rescue boat. Too many men might sink the boat, but any left on the Pendleton would surely die.

Webber ended up cramming the 32 survivors plus his crew of four on board the lifeboat – one shipmate was sadly lost after being swept into the Pendleton’s hull – and braving the harsh seas again in order to make it back to land.

For Tougias, who had the privilege of getting to know Webber, a man he describes as “humble,” “modest” and the perfect representation of that famed “Greatest Generation,” the story of the SS Pendleton rescue is one he  believes will inspire hope.

“Heroes aren’t born, they’re made,” Tougias says. “These guys are no different than most of us. They’re not fearless. Bernie was afraid. They just did their job, in spite of their fear.”