The Finest Hours (10 page)

Carmichael later remembered how he and his fellow crewmen nervously boarded the lifeboat, and the men on board the cutter began lowering them with block, tackle, and winch. “The seas were so rough that the launch swung away from the ship and then slammed back into it. We didn't realize it at the time, but I think that cracked the wooden side of the boat. When we set down on the water, that's when I fully realized how small our launch was compared to the seas, and I had my doubts whether or not I'd ever get on the cutter alive again.”

The four coasties navigated the lifeboat through the giant swells and pulled up alongside the massive steel hull of the
Mercer
, careful not to get too close.

Inside the broken bow of the
Mercer
, an argument broke out about who would jump first. Captain Paetzel said he wanted to be the last to leave, but his men felt that because of the deteriorating condition of his feet and the weakness he was showing from hypothermia, he should be the first to go. None of the men knew if the tiny lifeboat would be able to handle all four of them, nor did they know if the men in the launch were really going to be able to pluck them out of the seas. But they all felt it was a chance they'd have to take: if they stayed on board and the ship capsized, that would be the end. The crewmen told Captain Paetzel that if he didn't jump first, they'd throw him over.

The
Mercer
men—Paetzel, Turner, Guldin, and Fahrner—now moved out on the heaving deck, peering down at the lifeboat bobbing wildly in the waves below. It would be a long drop to the water. If they jumped into the trough of a wave, it would be approximately a 60-foot free fall, but if they sprang into a wave top, it would be only about 20 feet.

Ensign Kiely looked up at Captain Paetzel and signaled him to jump. Paetzel had reluctantly agreed to go first, but now he must have wondered if he was jumping to his death. The lifeboat below looked like a child's toy, insignificant against the towering seas.

Paetzel waited for a wave crest to rise up toward him. Then he jumped. He hit the water several feet from the lifeboat, first plunging completely underwater before the buoyancy of his lifejacket brought him back to the surface. The shock took his breath away and sent pain screaming through his body. He bobbed in the life-robbing seas, his arms already weak and growing numb. Precious seconds went by as he watched the lifeboat crew struggle to turn the boat toward him.

Kiely and crew did their best to maneuver the pitching lifeboat alongside the captain without hitting him. A minute had passed since the captain landed in the ocean, and they could see he was coughing up seawater. When they were an arm's length away, one of the coasties grabbed Paetzel's lifejacket, pulling him toward the boat. The waterlogged clothing on the captain doubled his weight, and at least three of the coast guardsmen used their combined strength to yank him on board.

During this time, Kiely did his best to keep the lifeboat clear of the ship's steel hull. Now that the captain was safely on board, he turned the boat and came around again to a position below the three remaining crewmembers. It was Turner's time to leap, and the purser waited on the sloping ship's deck for Kiely's signal. He had seen the difficulty the coasties had maneuvering to the captain, and he hoped they would be able to get to him without incident. Watching the little Monomoy surfboat below, he must have wondered how the men on board were managing to keep it upright in such large seas.

Kiely motioned for him to jump, and Turner did, trying to time his leap with the upward advance of a wave and clear the
Mercer
's hull with room to spare. As Turner plunged into the seas, a wave lifted the lifeboat high in the air, and a following wave sent it flying toward him. There was only an instant to make a lunge for Turner, but the young coasties grabbed the purser as they swept by. As the men were trying to drag Turner aboard, the lifeboat slammed into the hull of the half tanker.

The jolt almost knocked the coast guardsmen out of the boat, but they kept their grip on Turner and hauled him up. The lifeboat, however, did not fare as well. Its wooden side was crushed, and water came cascading in over the broken gunnel, or rim. The added weight of the water, along with that of Paetzel and Turner, made the boat ride low, and Kiely had trouble controlling the vessel.

The lifeboat was sinking!

Kiely knew he'd have to abort the rescue or risk losing all six men on board the lifeboat. Captain Naab realized the same, and over the loudspeaker, he ordered Kiely to return. The young ensign, overwhelmed at having to leave men still on the hulk, had tears in his eyes, but he turned the tiny craft back toward the
Yakutat
and ever so slowly began navigating through the seas toward safety.

“I kept expecting our boat to capsize,” said Carmichael. “We were very low in the water, and the seas were coming in the boat, entering over the sides and through cracks in the hull. The survivors lay on the bottom of the boat in the sloshing water, where they had collapsed.”

When the lifeboat reached the cutter, hooks were lowered to secure the bow and stern. “We got the bow hook on without a problem,” continued Carmichael. “But as I turned to get the swinging hook for the stern, it slammed into the side of my head, stunning me. Somehow we got that hook on our stern, and we were raised to the cutter's deck. That's when I fell unconscious. The next thing I remember, I woke up in my bunk.”

Back on the
Mercer
's bow, Guldin and Fahrner stood outside on the deck, relieved to see the lifeboat safely hoisted on board the cutter. But they also knew they had just lost their best chance of being rescued. The crushed lifeboat could not be used again, nor would Captain Naab risk another boat and crew, and these last two survivors wondered if the floating steel hulk they were standing on would be their coffin. There was nothing they could do now but wait.

*   *   *

On board the
Yakutat
, at approximately ten
A.M.
, the radioman sent the following message to the Coast Guard Communications Center in Marshfield, Massachusetts:

TWO SURVIVORS, FREDERICK C. PAETZEL (MASTER) AND EDWARD E. TURNER (PURSER), RESCUED BY BOAT. WEATHER CONDITIONS WORSENING. NOT ABLE TO USE BOAT FOR REMAINING TWO MEN. WILL ATTEMPT RESCUE BY SHOT LINE AND RUBBER RAFT.

Captain Naab, realizing the wind had eased a bit from the prior day, reconsidered the option of sending over a life raft. He thought a messenger line could be successfully shot to the
Mercer
's bow. The plan was to have a rubber life raft tied to the end of the messenger line and another line that would extend from the life raft back to the
Yakutat.
If all went well, the two remaining survivors would pull their end of the line and bring the raft toward them, securing their end to the tanker to keep the raft in place. Eyewitnesses differ in their accounts regarding what was supposed to transpire next. One scenario was to have a survivor jump off the tanker and swim to the raft, and once he got himself safely on board, the next man was to untie the messenger line from the tanker and fasten it around his waist. Then he too would leap off the tanker, and the first man would haul him to the life raft and help him aboard.

The second scenario was that the two survivors would slide down the secured messenger line, and once safely aboard the life raft, they would use a jackknife and cut the line between them and the wallowing hulk. Either plan would allow the coasties on the
Yakutat
to quickly haul in the other line, pulling the survivors and raft back to the cutter before hypothermia killed them.

Both plans also depended on the successful firing of a line from the
Yakutat
to the
Mercer
, a strategy that had ended in failure the previous night. On the one hand, Naab needed the
Yakutat
to be as close to the hulk as possible for the line not to fall short; on the other hand, the
Mercer
was swinging and pitching so wildly, he dared not get too close.

Naab brought the
Yakutat
upwind of the tanker, maneuvering as close as he dared, and shouted over the bullhorn to the survivors, “Stand by to receive a shot line—we'll secure a raft to it.”

By this time, the
Mercer
's bow was jutting out of the ocean at a 45-degree angle, with the front end completely out of the water and the broken end entirely submerged. Guldin and Fahrner had to hang on to the outside rail tightly to keep from sliding down the sloping deck and into the foam that churned around the jagged pieces of steel where the tanker had split.

Naab positioned the
Yakutat
so that its bow was pointing directly toward the port side of the tanker. The men on board the cutter watched silently as the shooter, Wayne Higgins, prepared to fire the line. The messenger line gun was a modified Springfield rifle with a grenade charge that would fire the projectile, an 18-inch steel rod inserted in the gun's barrel. On the end of the rod, protruding from the rifle barrel, was a 13-ounce brass weight with a small circular eye attached to it, and tied to the eye was a thin messenger line. This extended back into a canister about eight inches long, mounted on the gun's barrel. The line was coiled inside the canister, ready to be taken across the seas when the projectile was fired.

“I was in the very tip of the bow,” recalled Wayne later, “and I was concerned about sliding on the ice, especially because I couldn't use my hands to grip the rail, as both were needed on the rifle. I knew we had to get this line over immediately, because it looked like the broken hulk of the ship was going to sink. When I fired the gun, the recoil was tremendous, and my left hand slipped and my index finger was slashed open on the line canister. But the shot looked good.”

On that first try, the line went arcing through the air, landing almost directly on top of Guldin and Fahrner. Naab motioned for the survivors to begin hauling the line in, and the raft at the other end was tossed from the cutter into the sea.

When the raft was near the
Mercer
's bow, Fahrner and Guldin secured their end of the line, then hesitated before climbing over the rail, perhaps mustering their courage. One of the men—it's not known which—slid down the line to the water. He landed about 50 yards from the raft and clawed his way through the icy seas toward salvation. Then, when he tried to hoist himself into the raft, it capsized. Immediately, the second man, perhaps in an effort to help his shipmate, slid down the messenger line and into the ocean.

The
Yakutat
crewmen, helpless to assist the men in the water, watched as Fahrner and Guldin struggled in the breaking seas, desperately trying to get a firm grip on the raft before hypothermia made their limbs useless. For a moment, it looked like the ocean would claim two more victims, but the men fought valiantly, and both managed to grab hold of the raft, flip it right side up, and crawl aboard, collapsing on the bottom.

They were far from saved, however. The second man who jumped had not untied the line from the tanker before leaping, and now both were too frozen to open a jackknife to sever the line. This meant the raft could not be pulled to the cutter.

Communications officer Bill Bleakley, staring out a window of the
Yakutat
's bridge at the drama unfolding, worried that the scene he had witnessed the previous night—of survivors perishing before his eyes—was going to happen again. Bleakley had not been able to forget the vision of men jumping off the tanker, and he was particularly upset when he saw one man jump and get slammed back into the hull of the tanker before crashing into the water.

Naab, who was standing next to Bleakley, said, “Now what do I do? If I back down and the line between us and the raft breaks, we've lost them.” (Backing down means to reverse the engines.) “If the line between the raft and the hulk breaks, we've got them.”

“You have no choice, Captain,” said Bleakley. “Back down and hope.”

Naab knew Bleakley was right. Any hesitation meant the men in the raft would die of hypothermia, whereas forcing a break in the line gave them a 50-50 chance of survival. The captain gave the order to back down, and every man aboard the cutter held his breath. Which line would break? Or worse, would the raft be torn apart, casting the men into the seas?

The lines tightened and rose clear of the water. A half second passed. Then a sudden cheer rang out from the men on the cutter as the line between the raft and the hulk parted! Helping hands quickly pulled the raft in, and within a couple of minutes, Guldin and Fahrner were directly below the cutter. Ropes and a scramble net were lowered. The two survivors crawled over the side of the raft and into the sea to get at the ropes, but they could barely lift their arms.

The crew of the
Yakutat
, however, had anticipated this problem, and coasties Dennis Perry and Herman Rubinsky—already wearing exposure suits—climbed down the netting and into the water. Each man went to work on a survivor, tying lines around his chest so he could be hauled up.

As Guldin and Fahrner were being hoisted, one of them became tangled in the cargo net.
Yakutat
crewman Phillip Griebel saw what was happening and, without the protection of an exposure suit, he scrambled down the cargo net to free the man. Both survivors were then safely lifted aboard the cutter.

Seconds later, a coastie pointed toward the
Mercer
's bow and shouted, “Look! There she goes!”

The bow reared up as if it were a living thing, pointing straight toward the gray sky. Then it pivoted, falling backward into the sea in a spray of water. Only a small portion of its keel remained above the seas. Exactly 17 minutes had passed since Guldin and Fahrner leaped off the vessel.

*   *   *

To warn other ships that might be coming that way, the
Yakutat
stayed on scene with the hazardous capsized bow until it was relieved by the cutter
Unimak
that evening. Then Captain Naab ordered full steam to Portland, Maine, so the survivors could be hospitalized. All were suffering from hypothermia and frostbite, but Captain Paetzel was in the worst shape with pneumonia. Newspaper reporters were dockside as the survivors were taken off the cutter, and Fahrner calmly told the
Boston Herald
, “It was nip and tuck whether we'd make it.”