The Finest Hours Read Online Free Page A

the bow, in large white lettering, was the name Pendleton ! When he radioed what he had seen, everyone in the coast guard was stunned. It was almost too much to believe that a second vessel, just 30 miles from the Mercer , had also split in two.
    Eastwind radioman Len Whitmore sat in astonishment, wondering if he had heard the pilot’s words correctly. Another tanker? Up to this point, no one had even mentioned the name Pendleton. Len thought, It can’t be true. There must be some mistake.

 
    5
    â€œYOU GOT TO TAKE THE 36500 OUT”
    Before the Pendleton was spotted, Bernie Webber had already put in a busy morning. Several fishing boats had broken their moorings and lay scattered on the shore at Old Harbor. Webber and crew used the motor lifeboat CG 36500 to help the fishermen pull the boats off the beach and reattach them to their moorings before the surf damaged them. It was a mariner’s version of herding cattle, but instead of working under the hot Texas sun, they had to perform their task in blinding snow and bone-chilling temperatures.
    Webber was assisted by seaman Richard Livesey and a longtime friend, engineman first class Mel Gouthro, who was battling the flu in addition to the elements. The nor’easter reminded Livesey of the 14 months he had spent on an icebreaker in the northern Atlantic. At age 22, he was a couple of years younger than Webber, but, like his boss, what Livesey lacked in age, he made up for in experience.
    Richard Livesey was born in South Boston, Massachusetts, in 1930 but was raised 58 miles south in Fairhaven, a fishing village on the shore of Buzzard’s Bay. Livesey was steered toward a life at sea early on, thanks to the countless stories told to him by his father, Oswald, who had spent 22 years as a chief water tender in the U.S. Navy.
    Livesey was one of those young men who seemed to have salt water coursing through his veins. He had wanted to join the navy for as long as he could remember, and when he was old enough, he asked his father to accompany him to the recruiting office. “Sure,” said the elder Livesey, beaming that his son was carrying on the seaman tradition.
    Their excitement flickered out briefly when the recruiter informed them that there was a ten-month wait for enlistment. It was 1947, and Richard Livesey was 17 years old. Ten months felt like a lifetime to an anxious teenager who was eager for action and adventure. As they walked out of the recruiting office, Richard told his father he would join the U.S. Air Force instead. At that moment, they noticed a sign for the coast guard recruiting office just a few doors down. The teenager’s hopes for an adventure at sea were not dashed after all.
    Livesey had only one question for the recruiter. “When can I get shipped out?” he asked. “Tomorrow,” barked the man. Livesey signed up on the spot but did not ship out the next day as promised. Instead, he had to wait a full week before heading off to boot camp.
    Grinding his way through boot camp, Richard counted the days until he could go to sea. He spent the next four years serving on coast guard cutters and icebreakers around the United States before finding his way onto a patrol boat at the New Bedford station. He left the coast guard briefly in 1951 after his enlistment period was over. He first tried his hand at road construction and then working in a few fish plants. The pay was better, but the jobs lacked the excitement he had experienced in the coast guard, so he reenlisted. Now here he was, retying fishing boats to their moorings on this brutal Monday morning in mid-February.
    When the work was completed, Webber, Livesey, and Gouthro secured the motor lifeboat to its mooring, then hopped in the dory, a small boat used for transportation to and from larger vessels, and headed to shore. The men were exhausted, hungry, and cold, and could not wait to get back to the Chatham Lifeboat Station for a hot meal and a change