The Finest Hours (13 page)

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Margaret Fitzgerald walked the beach the next morning with her arms folded to fight off the cold. She stared out at the whipping waves, heartbroken that her husband was missing and presumed dead. She was not alone. Hundreds of people had driven down to the bluff at Chatham that day to see the
Pendleton
wreckage. The crowd was so large that special police patrols had to be called in to direct traffic. For many onlookers, the image of the shredded stern provided an ominous reminder of the power of the sea. There were others, though, who gazed at the wreckage and saw opportunity.

Rumors sprouted up that a small fortune had been left behind on one of the tables inside the stern. The story was that a group of seamen were engaged in a heated game of cards when they were notified that a lifeboat was approaching the ship. As crewmembers began to gather up their money, one player reminded the others of the sailors' superstition that says a man who picks up the stakes while abandoning ship will one day fall victim to the sea himself. The rumor might have started because the survivors later had enough cash with them to stuff Bernie Webber's sock drawer and cover the floor around his bunk. Nonetheless, the story had many true believers among the Chatham fishermen, who were also tempted by the ship's fully equipped machine shop, expensive navigational equipment, and large clothing supply. The coast guard said it would not patrol the two sections of the
Pendleton
unless ordered to do so. Such orders never came, so in keeping with the scavenger tradition of the outer Cape, David Ryder and others ventured out into the rough waters in search of treasure. Ryder used his own 38-foot-long liner, the
Alice & Nancy
, to get up close to the stern while a couple of friends climbed aboard and picked at its carcass. Ryder refused to go on board and watched as the other men slipped along the oily deck. Among the items liberated from the wreckage was the
Pendleton
's red jib, a triangular sail located in front of the mast, which remains in the Ryder family to this day.

 

16

THE SEARCH OF THE
PENDLETON
BOW

In the days following the disaster, crews from the Chatham Lifeboat Station made several attempts to board the bow section of the
Pendleton
, which was now grounded in 54 feet of water near the Pollock Rip Lightship, almost seven miles off the Chatham coast. “It looks a little choppy out there,” commander Daniel Cluff told reporters two days after the rescue. “But I think we'll make a try at boarding her anyway.” However, sea conditions remained rough and prevented crewmembers from climbing aboard the unsteady vessel. In the meantime, crews carried out beach patrols searching for bodies that might have washed up onshore. None were found.

The weather finally broke on Sunday, February 24, almost a full week after the ship had split in two. Richard Livesey, Mel Gouthro, coxswain Chick Chase, and two other coasties from the Chatham Lifeboat Station joined seamen from the salvage tug
Curb
as they pulled up alongside the bow section of the
Pendleton.
The hulk had drifted to almost the exact spot where the Pollock Rip Lightship was anchored, and the lightship had been moved a couple days earlier for fear the bow would collide with it. The
Pendleton
bow floated more or less upright, with the tip rising from the water at a 45-degree angle. The seas were calm now, and the men managed to get aboard the vessel with relative ease. Richard Livesey remained on the lifeboat, however; he could still see the face of Tiny Myers in his mind's eye. The image haunted him in his sleep and nearly every waking moment.

Livesey did not know what horror awaited the lifeboat men as they searched the bow of the
Pendleton
, but he did know that it was something he could not witness again. Mel Gouthro wasn't wild about climbing on the hulk either: “We were a little afraid to go on that hunk of steel, not knowing when it might shift.”

Nevertheless, he and the others climbed aboard, coming from the broken end and climbing hand over hand up the steep-angled deck. They moved gingerly along the railing because one false step would surely mean an unexpected trip into the icy water below. The temperature was still in the 20s, but the sun was bright, and that offered them much-needed light as they began their search. Then they used flashlights as they entered the bowels of the ship. “It was eerie,” recalls Gouthro, “because the ship was making all kinds of rumbling noises, perhaps from where the seas were hitting the area where the boat had split.”

The men scoured the broken vessel and found no bodies above the ship's waterline. It appeared that Captain John Fitzgerald and his seven-member crew had all been washed away. This thought vanished quickly when Mel Gouthro and crew approached the forecastle, where they made a sad discovery.

They entered the compartment slowly, their flashlights drawn to the figure of a man stretched out on a paint locker shelf. It was clear he was dead. He was covered in newspaper, in an apparent attempt to ward off hypothermia. Each of his feet was stuck inside sawdust bags, and his shoes and socks were found on the floor. The man had had no access to blankets, because all the crew's quarters, bunks, and galley were in the stern. It seemed the crewmember had barricaded himself in the forward locker room and had not been able to hear or see the rescue boats that had come to save him six days earlier.

“He had a frozen look on his face,” Gouthro recalls. “That young man was scared to death. What a lonely way to die.” Gouthro surmised that the sailor might have been the lookout before the split, stationed at the very front of the ship with a foghorn ready to sound if he saw another vessel.

A search of the dead seaman's body yielded a driver's license identifying him as 25-year-old Herman G. Gatlin of Greenville, Mississippi. Positive identification came later by comparing fingerprints of the dead man's left thumb with that found on the back of the man's identification card.

Gatlin was brought back to Chatham Station and placed in an outbuilding until the coroner arrived. The doctor concluded that the cause of death was exposure and shock and, surprisingly, that the time of death was during the first day of the shipwreck: “Died before 2400 [midnight] 2/18/52.”

What happened to Captain Fitzgerald and the other men on the bow will remain a mystery. Were they swept off the ship shortly after it split in two? Did they fall off the catwalk trying to reach the forwardmost part of the ship, as radioman John O'Reilly had on the
Mercer
bow? Or were they killed at the moment of the accident, as one surviving seaman, Oliver Gendron, surmised? When the ship first cracked in half, Gendron said, “a 70-foot wave lifted us till the bow pointed straight up. Then we came down, and there was a grinding, tearing crash. As we hit the trough of the wave, the mast came down. It crashed into the midship house. I should have been there, but I was aft at a pinochle game.” Gendron added that he believed the mast stunned, injured, or killed the men in the midship house, including Captain Fitzgerald.

Gendron could be right, but the only person who might have seen what happened to Captain Fitzgerald and the rest of the men was Herman Gatlin, whose lifeless body now lay in the Chatham Station.

 

PART III

 

17

BEING LABELED A HERO CAN BE A BURDEN

In the months following the rescue, Bernie Webber and his crewmen found themselves riding a different wave, one of public adulation. This proved to be an equally difficult task for the young coasties, none of whom had ever sought the spotlight. Their ascension from brave men who merely did their jobs to media darlings was dictated somewhat by the news of the day. The Korean War continued to drag on as armistice talks between the United States and North Korea remained at a stalemate. In fact, on February 18, the day of the
Pendleton
rescue, 17 American soldiers were killed in action, including seven servicemen from the 224th Regiment, 40th Infantry Division. War-weary American citizens needed something to feel good about, something to rally around. The men of
CG 36500
provided them with a diversion from the harsh realities of war.

Bernie Webber reunited briefly with Andy Fitzgerald, Ervin Maske, and Richard Livesey in Washington, DC, on May 14, 1952. They had traveled to the nation's capital to receive the U.S. Coast Guard's highest honor, the Gold Lifesaving Medal. The crewmembers were happy to see one another and knew how fortunate they were to be awarded such a prestigious medal. The ceremony would never have taken place had it not been for the great persistence on Bernie Webber's part. A few days after the rescue, he had been called into commander Cluff's office and handed the telephone.

On the other line was an official from coast guard headquarters who first congratulated Bernie on the rescue and then informed him that he would be awarded the Gold Lifesaving Medal.

“What about my crew?” Webber asked.

“They will all receive the Silver Lifesaving Medal,” the official replied.

Bernie's anger and exhaustion erupted over the phone line. “I think it stinks,” he shouted into the receiver. “They were there, the same as me, and did all the heavy rescuing. If they can't get the gold, then I don't want it.” Cluff was visibly upset hearing one of his men talk that way to an official.

“You can't be serious?” the startled official asked.

Webber said he was and drew a line in the sand. He repeated that if his men couldn't get the medal, he wouldn't accept it.

Coast guard officials gave in to Webber's ultimatum, knowing the public relations nightmare they would have on their hands if they turned their backs on the new hero. Bernie and his men cherished the medal, which can be granted to any member of the U.S. military who conducts a rescue within U.S. waters or those waters subject to U.S. jurisdiction and who carries out the rescue at “extreme peril and risk of life.”

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The wreck of the
Pendleton
sat off the coast of Chatham, Massachusetts, in two pieces for nearly 26 years, providing boaters a disturbing reminder of the worst the sea had to offer. For thousands of years, the ocean had offered its bounty and collected its debts. That toll would be paid by the men swallowed by the sea and by those they left behind.

Like the relatives of the other doomed crewmen, the family of
Pendleton
captain John J. Fitzgerald was left wondering why the ocean that had given them so much had taken even more. Yet instead of being repelled by the sight of the wreck, the captain's family was drawn to it. Countless times over the next several years, John J. Fitzgerald's widow, Margaret, bundled her four children into the family car for the 87-mile trip from Roslindale to Chatham. It was Margaret's way of keeping her husband's memory alive for the children. Their son John became so enamored with the area that he decided to call it home. He would later raise a family in Chatham, and his own son eventually answered the call to the sea, fishing in the same waters that had claimed his grandfather's life so many years before.

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There had been attempts to salvage the remains of the
Pendleton
, which had a scrap metal value of about $60,000. During the 1950s, the remains were also a concern for environmentalists, who feared additional release of oil from the fractured tanker would ruin local beaches and destroy wildlife. John F. Kennedy, then a United States Senator, insisted that salvage operations would have to be approved and supervised by both the United States Coast Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers. As it happened, the oil leaked out slowly over the next 30 years.

The Army Corps of Engineers would later play the lead role in sinking the structures once and for all. The infamous Blizzard of 1978 shredded what was left of the
Pendleton
's superstructure abovewater. The wreck became a menace to navigation, since the stern was now submerged and hidden from the view of those piloting small craft in the busy area off Chatham. Contractors were called in to cut away much of the steel before it was blown up by the Army Corps of Engineers and buried where it sat, just three miles off Monomoy.

 

18

THE INQUIRY

For the surviving members of the
Pendleton
crew, the feelings of relief and joy for having lived through the tragedy were now replaced by anger. They allowed their bitterness to flow during a coast guard inquiry hearing that began on February 20, 1952, at Constitution Base in Charlestown, Massachusetts. A three-man fact-finding panel listened as one survivor after another stood up and told how they had been doomed to fail during 12 torturous hours on the open sea. A major concern was that a fracture in the ship had been discovered one month prior, in January 1952, but had gone unrepaired.

The most scathing testimony came from crewmembers who told the panel that much of the ship's equipment was in poor working order. For instance, survivors testified that no distress signals could be found on the ship. Witnesses also reported that smoke signals and many of the ship's flares did not work. Even getting off the ship had proved to be an arduous task for crewmembers, because the single Jacob's ladder available had only three rungs. The ship's construction was still the most glaring flaw. After hearing much of the testimony, panel member Captain William Storey surmised that extreme cold and violent motion in heavy sea, combined with locked-up stresses in the welded metal, may have caused the disasters on both ships. The testimony of men such as
Fort Mercer
crewmember John Braknis supported Storey's deduction. He told investigators he had heard strange rumblings, like the sound of welds splitting, a full four hours before the tanker broke up.

With regard to the SS
Pendleton
, the Marine Board of Investigation concluded that “the tank steamer incurred a major structural failure resulting in a complete failure of the hull girder and causing the vessel to break in two in the way of the number seven and number eight cargo tanks and resulting in the loss of nine lives.”