The Finest Hours (5 page)

 

6

BLOWOUT AT CHATHAM BAR

With great trepidation, Webber, Livesey, Fitzgerald, and Maske departed the Chatham Lifeboat Station and drove back down to the Chatham Fish Pier. Webber parked the Dodge truck and stepped out into the snow. Through the thick snowflakes, the crew could barely see the small wooden lifeboat they would be taking on their journey, rocking violently back and forth in the distance. The coast guardsmen walked to the side of the pier and climbed down a ladder and into a small dory. They were getting it ready to row out when Webber heard a voice call from the pier above them. “You guys better get lost before you get too far out,” cried local fisherman John Stello. It was his way of saying “turn back while you still can.”

Stello and Webber had become close friends over the past couple of years. The two lived across from each other on Sea View Street. “Call Miriam and tell her what's going on!” Webber shouted back.

Bernie had not spoken to his wife in two days. He thought of her home sick in bed, and his heart ached. Webber looked into the faces of the three other men in the dory, wondering how they'd hold up in the hours to come. He thought back to his wife again and hoped she would be able to cope if he didn't make it home. Bernie could handle risking his own life on what looked to be a suicide mission, but a wave of emotion swept over him when he thought of the life he had begun to build with Miriam.

*   *   *

Bernie and Miriam's relationship had been one of great persistence, especially on her part. It had begun over the phone two years earlier. Webber and a couple of his mates had taken his 1939 Plymouth two-door sedan up to Provincetown for a date with three local girls. They had made it as far as Orleans when the car suddenly broke down. Webber walked until he found a pay phone and called his date to explain the mishap. His night on the town was ruined.

Webber had the old Plymouth towed back to Chatham. A few nights later, a young woman called the Chatham Lifeboat Station looking for a gentleman named Webb. As it turned out, the woman had the wrong name but the right man. Bernie grabbed the phone and began talking to this mystery woman, who wouldn't offer her name or anything else about herself. She playfully told him that she had seen him before and that she knew who he was.

The game played on over several more telephone conversations as Webber's curiosity continued to grow. During their long talks on the phone, he found it strange that she would constantly interrupt him. “Wait a sec,” she would tell him before leaving the line for a few moments. The mystery was solved when the woman finally told Webber that she was a telephone operator in nearby Wellfleet. In fact, she was the operator who had patched Webber's phone call through to his date on the night his car had broken down on the way to Provincetown.

Bernie and Miriam eventually married and made a life together in Chatham. But their marriage was coupled with a dangerous job, and a price had to be paid for such happiness.

*   *   *

As the crew rowed out into the harbor, Webber sized up the
CG 36500
, which appeared to be staring back at him in the distance. Much would be expected of this wooden lifeboat. The lives of his three crewmembers, whoever was still alive aboard the stern section of the
Pendleton
, and the children he planned to have with Miriam all depended on it.
Are you up to the challenge, old girl?
he wondered.

Like all lifeboats of its shape and size, the
CG 36500
had been built at the U.S. Coast Guard Yard in Curtis Bay, Maryland. She was 36 feet, eight inches long with a ten-foot beam and a three-foot draft. The boat weighed a solid 20,000 pounds and was self-righting and self-bailing, thanks to its 2,000-pound bronze keel. The double-ended vessel had been designed to withstand just about anything Mother Nature could put in its way, although Bernie wondered whether its builders had contemplated a winter hurricane like the one that was now pounding the coast of New England.

*   *   *

Webber and his crew finally reached the
CG 36500
and climbed aboard. They secured the dory to the buoy and settled in for the arduous journey ahead. Webber, Fitzgerald, and Livesey were all familiar with the lifeboat. Webber took his position in the wheelman's shelter, and they departed; it was 5:55
P.M.
The sky had gone from charcoal gray to pitch-black. The lights onshore grew smaller as the four men made their way across Chatham Harbor.

The crew could now see the waves breaking on North Beach. Each man was weighing the possibilities for getting over Chatham Bar. Webber tied a long leather belt around his waist and fastened himself to the wheelman's shelter. The
CG 36500
made a turn in the channel, where the men were met by the sweeping beam of Chatham Lighthouse. In the distance, Webber could see dim lights glowing in the main building.
What's going on in there?
he wondered. For a moment, he prayed that he would get a call on the radio ordering him to turn back. Webber grabbed the radio and called the station, giving Cluff an update, hoping for a change in orders.

“Proceed as directed,” Cluff responded with his Virginia twang.

Webber and crew pushed on. They were already fighting the severe cold; their tired feet felt like blocks of ice inside their buckled rubber overshoes. Reaching the end of Chatham Harbor, the men heard the roaring at the bar, where the crashing waves created acres of yellowish white foam.

This is not going to be a good trip,
Richard Livesey thought. As the tumultuous sound at the bar became louder, Livesey had the distinct feeling he was experiencing his last minutes on earth. Andy Fitzgerald, who manned the searchlight mounted on the forward turtlebacked compartment, also felt trepidation as the torturous roaring of the breakers became louder. He was putting his faith in Bernie's experience and in the construction of the
CG 36500.
Andy had always thought of the lifeboat as a floating tank—slow but seaworthy, no matter what the weather. Now this little tank was the only thing that stood between him and the frigid ocean.

As they motored ever closer, the searchlight partially illuminated the shoals of the bar, and all four men caught a glimpse of what was ahead. Webber could not believe the height of the seas and thought his boat seemed smaller than ever. Scared and nearly freezing to death, Webber was forced to make a decision that could very well cost the lives of his crewmen.
Do I turn back? Do I go ahead? What do I do now?

Webber knew that he would not be criticized for turning back. Why add to the tragedy by sending four more men to their deaths on Chatham Bar? He cleared his head and turned his thoughts to the men he was attempting to save. In his mind's eye, Bernie could picture the
Pendleton
crew trapped inside that giant steel casket. He and his crew were their only hope.

*   *   *

Webber's thoughts drifted back two years to another rescue attempt he had made in equally hazardous conditions. So haunted was he by the tragedy that he could almost see the faces of those lost men on the crest of each rising wave. Like the
Pendleton
, the New Bedford–based scalloper
William J. Landry
had also found itself trapped by a fearsome nor'easter.

That storm had hit in the early spring of 1950. Heavy snow fell in a curtain off Cape Cod, and the angry storm was aggravated by 70-mile-per-hour winds and rough seas. The
William J. Landry
was taking on water while attempting to circle Monomoy toward Nantucket Sound. During this crisis, Captain Arne Hansen managed to send out a distress call that was received by the Pollock Rip Lightship and relayed back to the Chatham Lifeboat Station.

Bernie Webber had been part of a four-man crew led by veteran seaman Frank Masachi. They were ordered to take out the motor lifeboat
36383
, which was moored in Stage Harbor, but just getting to the lifeboat would prove to be a life-and-death struggle. The normally tranquil Stage Harbor was topped by a blanket of menacing whitecaps that offered a visible warning for sane men to stay ashore.

The crew fitted the small dory with thole pins to hold the oars in place and then dragged it to water's edge. They pushed the vessel out and helped one another get aboard. Webber and Mel Gouthro grabbed the oars and began their battle against the turbulent seas while Masachi and Antonio Ballerini sat low in the boat. The small dory began taking on water almost immediately as it struggled toward the lifeboat.

Suddenly the dory capsized, throwing Webber and the others into the bone-chilling water. The coast guardsmen kicked off their heavy boots, grabbed the bottom of the overturned boat, and held on. Gradually, the waves pushed the boat to shore, where it beached itself on Morris Island, across from Stage Harbor.

Webber and the other crewmen had hoped to seek refuge in an old boathouse but, fighting back the frigid cold crawling up his legs, Masachi refused to give up the mission. He ordered his men to right the 19-foot dory, find the oars, and resume the journey toward the
CG 36383.
Their valiant effort came up short once more; this time the thole pins snapped, capsizing the boat and sending the men back into the icy water. Again, they managed to make it back to Morris Island, where they finally opted to get warm inside the boathouse.

The crew rubbed their aching arms and legs and started the old Kohler gasoline-powered generator. Frank Masachi cranked the antiquated magneto telephone connecting him to the Chatham Station and was told that the
William J. Landry
was still afloat, but taking on massive amounts of water. Knowing that the fishing crew were alive seemed to reenergize him. He decided they would make a third attempt to reach the lifeboat.

Webber and the rest of the crew found some broom handles and whittled them down to replace the broken thole pins. Again, the tired, frozen men walked on sore legs down the beach to the frigid water. Again, they were turned back—this time the oars broke before the vessel plunged them into the sea. They struggled to Morris Island, utterly exhausted and freezing cold, then waded back to Chatham Station.

At this time, the crew aboard the Pollock Rip Lightship finally had the
Landry
in their sights. That was the good news. The bad news was that the storm was intensifying and the seas were at top heights. As the
Landry
crew was attempting to retrieve the towing rope from the lightship, a mighty wave slammed the vessels together, further damaging the fishing dragger. After 24 hours of fighting for their lives, the
Landry
's crew were now physically and emotionally beaten.

Lightship skipper Guy Emro had been speaking to Captain Hansen over the radio and heard the captain say, “Oh my God,” and then nothing else.

When Hansen came back on the radio, he said they were giving up the fight. The last wave had been a dagger in the heart of the crew. “We're going down below to pray and have something to eat,” the exhausted captain reported. “If we die out here, it will be with full stomachs. So long, thank you. God bless you all.”

Guy Emro reported the news to Chatham Station and then watched as the seas swallowed the
William J. Landry
whole. The remains of the crew were never found.

The tragedy left a bitter taste in Bernie Webber's mouth. He had tried but failed to save the lives of those doomed fishermen. Now, less than two years later, he was faced with a similar, desperate challenge.

As he peered out at the ominous Chatham Bar, the only obstacle between them and the open sea, Bernie Webber had an epiphany. He believed that God had placed him in this time and in this place. He thought about the iron will of Frank Masachi, and he also thought back to the thousands of sermons he had heard his father give while he was growing up. They had all been preparing him for this. He pictured the disappointment in his father's eyes when he had turned his back on the ministry as an aimless youth. On this stormy night, Bernie believed that he was serving God. Webber later recalled the feeling. “You receive the strength and the courage, and you know what your duty is. You realize that you have to attempt a rescue. It's born in you; it is part of your job.”

As the lifeboat pitched along a canyon of waves, Webber and his crew spontaneously began to sing. They sang out of a combination of determination and fear through the snow and freezing sea spray. Their four voices formed a harmony that rose over the howling winds. Webber could think of no more poignant hymn to fit the situation they found themselves in.

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,

Let me hide myself in Thee;

Let the water and the blood,

From Thy wounded side which flowed,

Be of Sin the double cure;

Save from wrath and make me pure.

The men grew silent as Webber motored the
CG 36500
into the bar. The searchlight cut through the snow and darkness, and Andy could see—and feel—that the waves were growing and swirling from every direction. He braced himself for the collision he knew was coming.

When they hit the bar, the tiny wooden lifeboat cut into a mammoth 60-foot wave. The mountain of bone-chilling water lifted the vessel, tossing it into the air like a small toy. All the men were temporarily airborne.

The boat and the men came crashing back down on the hard surface of the sea, and another huge wave struck. This time, a torrent of water washed over the crew, knocking them to the deck. The violent wave shattered the boat's windshield, sending shards of glass into Webber's face and hair as he fell backward.

The wave had spun the
CG 36500
completely around, and its bow was now facing the shore. It was the most dangerous position for the boat and the crew. Webber pulled himself up off the deck and attempted to steer the boat back into the seas before it broached and killed them all. He brushed bits of glass off his face with one hand, the other gripped firmly on the steering wheel. With the windshield now broken, the sea spray came into the wheelman's shelter, pelting Webber's flesh with ice and picking at his open wounds. The snow was hitting his face so hard he could barely open his eyes. As he tried to get his bearings, he glanced down to where the boat's compass should have been. The compass—his sole means of navigation—was gone, torn from its mount. He had to rely on instinct alone.