st Hours
Legend To Life
h, with Patrick Hickey
one, and he will not desist from his efforts until by
actual trial the impossibility of effecting a rescue is
demonstrated. The statement of the keeper that he
did not try to use the boat because the sea or surf
was too heavy will not be accepted unless attempts
to launch it were actually made and failed, or unless
the conformation of the coast--as bluffs, precipitous
banks, etc.--is such as to unquestionably preclude
the use of a boat.” This language was again found in
the Instructions for United
States Coast Guard Stations, 1934 edition, Paragraph
28, page 4.
These were not words of simple rhetoric, but words
to live by. CBM Clarence P. Brady, USCG (Ret.), in
the March 1954 issue (page 2) of the Coast Guard
Magazine, related the story of Keeper Patrick
Etheridge making the statement for the first time: “A
ship was stranded off Cape Hatteras on the Diamond
Shoals and one of the life saving crew reported the
fact that this ship had run ashore on the dangerous
shoals. The old skipper gave the command to man
the lifeboat and one of the men shouted out that we
might make it out to the wreck but we would never
make it back. The old skipper looked around and
said, ‘The Blue Book says we’ve got to go out and
it doesn’t say a damn thing about having to come
back.’”
Patrick Etheridge was not exaggerating, nor were
the Coast Guardsmen of the station in Chatham,
Massachusetts on 18 February, 1952. Four men, all
under age 25, took their creed to heart to respond in
time of need and rescue 32 survivors of the sinking
SS Pendleton in the midst of a hurricane force storm.
nd high seas, the T/V Pendleton split in half off Cape Cod. 32 of the 33
a, thanks to the heroic efforts of four brave coastguardsmen.
select either the boat, breeches buoy, or life car, as
in his judgment is best suited to effectively cope with
the existing conditions. If the device first selected
fails after such trial as satisfies him that no further
attempt with it is feasible, he will resort to one of
the others, and if that fails, then to the remaining
4
OR express
Of the four original crew members: Petty Officer
1st Class Bernard Webber, the boat’s commander,
Fitzgerald, a petty officer 2nd class and the boat’s
engineman, and two seamen, Richard Livesey and
Ervin Maske, only Fitzgerald survives.
While the old motto of “You have to go out, but you
don’t have to come back,” was still a part of the Coast
Guard ethic in 1952 there had to be other reasons
why those men were willing to brave 70-foot waves,
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8