The Finest Hours (3 page)

 

3

THE
FORT MERCER

About the same time the
Pendleton
split, the
Fort Mercer
was locked in its own battle with the seas off Cape Cod. Captain Frederick Paetzel was not taking any chances with the storm that had overtaken his 503-foot oil tanker. Paetzel kept the
Mercer
's bow pointed into the rising seas, holding position, prepared to ride out the storm. The captain had guided the ship safely since leaving Norco, Louisiana. Now, just 30 miles southeast of Chatham, he wasn't too far from his final destination of Portland, Maine. He might be delayed by the storm, but rough seas in the North Atlantic during the month of February were not unexpected, and he would bide his time until the storm blew itself out.

The nor'easter, however, showed no signs of weakening, and instead intensified with each passing hour. By the time a pale hint of light indicated dawn's arrival, mountainous waves had grown to 50 and 60 feet, and the wind approached hurricane strength, hurling a freezing mix of sleet and snow at the vessel. The
Mercer
took a terrible pounding, yet rode the seas as well as could be expected, without any excess pitching or rolling.

At eight
A.M.
, Captain Paetzel heard a sharp crack echo from the innards of his ship. He wasn't immediately sure what had happened. Then oil began spewing over the ocean from the starboard side of the
Mercer
, and he knew the hull had cracked.

Captain Paetzel immediately slowed the vessel's speed. After alerting the rest of his crew about the emergency, he radioed the coast guard for assistance, reporting that his ship's seams had opened up.

Once the coast guard was notified, Paetzel and his crew of 42 men could only pray that the ship would stay together until coast guard cutters arrived. The German-born captain had been at sea since he was 14, but he'd never seen a storm like the one he was caught in, nor had he ever heard the sickening crack of metal giving way to the sea.

*   *   *

Approximately 150 miles away, aboard the coast guard cutter
Eastwind
, radio operator Len Whitmore was broadcasting on the radio. A fishing vessel, the
Paolina
, out of New Bedford, Massachusetts, was overdue, and the cutter was involved in the search. The
Eastwind
was in the last known vicinity of the fishing boat, and Len repeatedly broadcast over the radio, hoping to make contact. Voice communication at the time was rudimentary and could span just 40 or 50 miles. Beyond that range, the only method of communication was Morse code.

Len had learned Morse code when he attended the U.S. Coast Guard radio school in Groton, Connecticut. His entry into the coast guard had been a circuitous one, starting when he was 17. On the spur of the moment, Len, his brother Bob, and a friend named Frank Gendreau Jr. had decided it was time to see the world beyond their hometown of Lynn, Massachusetts. The three young men initially set their eyes on the navy and went to the local recruiting office to enlist. Although Len passed the physical, neither of the other two boys did, and the three of them left the office still civilians. They discussed their next option, and Len's brother decided if the navy wouldn't have them, then maybe the coast guard would. Again, however, Bob and Frank failed the physical while Len passed. Thinking the third time would be a charm, Bob and Frank went to the air force recruiting office and were accepted. Len, however, had his sights on the sea, not the skies. He decided to go it alone and joined the coast guard.

After boot camp, Len attended radio school, and upon graduation, his first long-term assignment was on the
Eastwind
, a 280-foot icebreaker. The morning of February 18 was one Len would never forget. “I had just come on duty in the radio room at eight
A.M.
and was calling for the
Paolina
, when suddenly I heard a strong SOS in my earphone. It was the
Fort Mercer.
” Len sat bolt upright, taken aback by the distress call that came out of the blue. He quickly acknowledged the
Mercer
's message while motioning to another coastie to run and get chief radioman John Harnett. Then he alerted the Coast Guard regional communications station, which at the time was located in Marshfield, Massachusetts.

Len continued communicating with the
Fort Mercer
, trying to get the ship's position and determine the nature of the emergency. The tanker's radio operator, John O'Reilly, reported that it had a crack in the hull, and he gave their approximate position. By this time, Len had notified other coast guard vessels in the vicinity about the emergency.

Unfortunately, Len learned the
Eastwind
was quite a distance away from the tanker and knew it would take several hours to reach them. “The weather was blowing a whole gale, and the seas were enormous.… A lot of our crew was seasick, but still working. With those seas, I thought it might take us a whole day to get to the
Mercer
, and by then it might be too late.”

Despite the cutter's 150-mile distance from the
Mercer
, the
Eastwind
immediately started steaming for the crippled tanker, abandoning the search for the
Paolina.
(Only bits of wreckage from the
Paolina
were ever found.) Oliver Petersen, from Winchester, Massachusetts, captain of the
Eastwind
, was put in charge of the rescue operation. In Provincetown, Massachusetts, the cutter
Yakutat
was also dispatched to the scene.

*   *   *

Aboard the
Fort Mercer
, Captain Paetzel tensed each time a particularly large wind-whipped wave hit the vessel. Paetzel had the crew don life vests, but beyond that safety measure, they could do little besides wait for the coast guard to arrive.

Remarkably, at ten
A.M.
, the
Boston Globe
newspaper was able to make a shore-to-ship telephone connection with the captain. Paetzel said the conditions were very rough and that waves had reached 68 feet, rising up into the rigging. He added that he could not be sure of the situation because surveying the damage more closely from the deck would be suicidal. “We're just standing still,” he said. As a final thought, he considered loved ones onshore and expressed a hope that “none of our wives hear about this.”

Suddenly, at 10:30
A.M.
, another terrifying crack rang out, and the ship lurched. Paetzel instantly sent a message to the coast guard explaining that the situation was worsening. A cold sensation of dread coursed through the captain; he knew his ship might become the ninth T2 tanker to be taken by the sea.

The stress on the ship was enormous, especially as one wave lifted the bow and another the stern, leaving no support in the middle. The storm had breached the tanker's welded hull, and the seas seemed intent on lengthening the crack. Captain Paetzel and his crew were helpless.

Another long hour went by without incident. Then at 11:40
A.M.
, a third loud report was heard as more metal cracked. Captain Paetzel could now see the fissure, with oil spurting into the rampaging seas. At 11:58
A.M.
, Paetzel had another SOS sent, this one accompanied by the message “Our hull is splitting.”

A couple minutes later, a wave smashed the tanker so hard crewmen were thrown to the floor. When they got to their feet, they could not believe what they saw; the vessel had split in two!

Crewmember Alanson Winn said that when the final crack and split occurred, it was so loud and violent he thought the ship had been rammed. “Then she lifted up out of the water like an elevator. She gave two jumps. And when she'd done that, she tore away.”

Captain Paetzel was trapped on the bow with eight other men, while the stern held 34 crewmembers, and each end was drifting away from the other. The forward end of the bow rode high in the air, but the aft, or back, section sloped down to the sea, washing away the lifeboats. Equally devastating, the accident had knocked out the radio, and Captain Paetzel could no longer work with the coast guard for rescue. Paetzel and his men were helplessly trapped in the bridge, the compartment where the captain operated the large vessel—to leave might mean instant death. The bow wallowed in the monstrous seas, and without engine power, it was broadside to the waves, taking direct hits.

The stern section, where the engine was located, was in much better shape, and all of it was above the seas. Right after the split, engineers immediately shut the engine down, but now the crew on the stern could see waves pushing the bow back toward them like a battering ram. Frantically, the engineers restarted the engine and put the propeller in reverse. They were able to back the stern away before the bow ran them down. Their troubles, however, were just beginning.

 

4

“IT CAN'T BE TRUE…”

On board the
Eastwind
, radio operator Len Whitmore was in regular communication with radioman John O'Reilly of the
Mercer.
Len tried to keep the
Mercer
crew encouraged, letting them know that the
Eastwind
and
Yakutat
were en route. The
Eastwind
's progress into the teeth of the howling gale, however, was incredibly slow, and Len felt frustrated that hours would go by before they could reach the tanker.

With 43 crewmembers of the
Mercer
in danger of losing their lives, coast guard commanders knew they needed boats on the scene as quickly as possible. They reacted by dispatching motor lifeboats from Chatham and Nantucket. Sending 36-foot motor lifeboats into seas twice their size had to be a difficult decision—the lifeboats and their crews might be the next victims of the storm.

The first motor lifeboat sent into the maelstrom left from Brant Point Station, Nantucket. In command was chief boatswain's mate Ralph Ormsby with a crew of three: Alfred Roy, Donald Pitts, and John Dunn. The four men had 55 dangerous miles to navigate to reach the
Mercer
's halves, and their boat motored into waves so large that they often washed over the crew.

Almost immediately, the boat was in trouble. “Roy, who was at the wheel,” said Ormsby, “was thrown off of it. I seized it. The boat stood almost on end with the waves breaking over her bow. We spotted the waves before they hit to guide the course of the boat.”

A second 36-foot motor lifeboat was ordered out of Chatham. Station commander Daniel W. Cluff received orders to send the boat out, and he in turn told Chief Donald Bangs of Scituate, Massachusetts, to select a crew and head to the
Mercer.
Bangs quickly chose a crew consisting of engineer Emory Haynes, boatswain's mate Antonio Ballerini, and seaman Richard Ciccone.

When Bernie Webber heard the orders, he thought,
My God, do they really think a lifeboat and its crew can make it that far out to sea in this storm with only a compass to guide them?
Webber figured that even if the crew didn't freeze to death, they would never be able to get men off the storm-tossed sections of the
Mercer.
Bernie was friends with these men and wondered if he'd ever see them alive again.

Webber's concern that the men might freeze to death was an all-too-realistic prospect. One of the body's first responses to fight the onset of hypothermia is to decrease the blood flow to the limbs and thereby reduce heat loss from the body's extremities, especially the feet and hands. Reduced blood flow to the limbs aids the body's efforts to maintain core heat, which is essential for the main organs, especially the heart. But the decreased blood flow to the hands, arms, and feet comes at a cost—the ability to perform tasks. Should the lifeboat's motor die, the men on board would not have the dexterity in their fingers to solve the problem. Hands and feet would also suffer frostbite. And in 1952, before the days of neoprene gloves and polypropylene inner wear, the crews had nothing to protect their skin other than rubberized foul-weather gear.

Both Ormsby's and Bang's crews would be tested by the frigid sea and air—if their boats did not capsize first and end their lives.

*   *   *

Airplanes took to the stormy skies from the coast guard air station at Salem, Massachusetts, and from the naval air base at Quonset Point, Rhode Island. One of the planes arrived before the cutters at approximately two
P.M.
Pilot George Wagner radioed, “The tanker has definitely hove to. Her stern is into the wind and almost awash.” He also reported that the
Mercer
's lifeboats were gone. The pilot flew his plane downwind, searching for the lifeboats, but found none.

About the same time the airplanes arrived on the scene, station commander Cluff and boatswain's mate “Chick” Chase were in Chatham's watchtower at the radar screen. Earlier in the day, the radar had malfunctioned, but now it was fixed, and the first thing they saw on the screen were two strange objects. “The objects,” recalled Chase, “were just five miles offshore, nowhere near where the
Mercer
was supposed to be. I wondered how the
Mercer
could have drifted so far, and we realized something wasn't right.” Cluff immediately called headquarters, and they in turn alerted George Wagner, who was still flying above the stern of the
Mercer.

Wagner, struggling to control his plane in the storm, wondered what in the world this perplexing message was all about. He was staring down at the
Mercer
's stern and thought it impossible that its bow could have drifted over 25 miles toward Chatham. And what did it mean that Chatham radar picked up two targets? All Wagner could do was bank his plane and head west to take a look. Fortunately, the snow had turned mostly to rain and sleet, and visibility had improved a bit.