Whipped Cream Difficulties

Andrew Fitzgerald passed away last week at the age of 87.

There’s a chance you may have heard of Mr. Fitzgerald. He was the last surviving member of the four man crew of the Coast Guard lifeboat CG-36500.

Lifeboats are functional, not usually beautiful, and the CG-36500 was typical: a wide-beamed, low-slung wooden craft with a small wheelhouse in the stern, an enclosed compartment for the 90-horsepower engine amidships and a covered bow to afford protection for the crew and any rescued passengers in heavy seas. It was built for stability and to hold about a dozen people, not three times that number.

At 5:50 AM on February 18, 1952, the oil tanker Pendleton broke in half off Cape Cod during a severe storm. The crew of the CG-36500 went out and rescued 32 out of 33 men off the stern half of the ship. (One man drowned during the rescue, and the eight men who were in the bow were also lost at sea.)

There are a lot of people who think this is one of the greatest rescues in the history of the Coast Guard. I can’t do it justice here. You should really go read the entire obituary. There’s also a 2016 Disney film (which I haven’t seen), “The Finest Hours”, based on the book by Michael J. Tougias and Casey Sherman.

In 2002, a 50th-anniversary reunion of the rescue crew was held at the historic Mariners House in Boston’s North End. The four also returned to Chatham for an outing on the CG-36500. Mr. Maske died in 2003, Mr. Livesey in 2007 and Mr. Webber in 2009.
The inscription on their Coast Guard medals read, “In testimony of heroic deeds in saving life from the perils of water.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 20th, 2018 at 7:05 am and is filed under Heroism, History, Obits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.