4.4 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 11 October 2020
⏱️ 30 minutes
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0:00.0 | The Oh, Thanks for joining us everyone at 1001 Heroes, Legends, Histories and Podcast, and Part 2 of Miracle off Cape Cod. |
0:37.0 | This is your host, John Haggadorn, and it's great to be back with you today. |
0:40.9 | In Part 1, we covered the backstory of the 1952 New England and Nor'aster, and of the two T2 |
0:46.5 | tankers that both split in half within five hours of each other in that terrible storm |
0:51.7 | near the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, |
0:53.7 | leaving four separate tanker sections, each one with crew, |
0:57.6 | floundering helplessly in 60 to 70 foot waves and a blinding ice and snowstorm that would end up claiming 42 lives and many more |
1:06.1 | had it not been for the incredible efforts of the US Coast Guard. |
1:10.1 | We ended part one with Bernie Weber's arrival back at Chatham Coast Guard station with 32 survivors, a miracle rescue, as it was called by some of the press. |
1:19.0 | But the story would not be complete without telling that the heroism shown by other Coast Guard details as they fought |
1:24.5 | impossible seas trying to save the other three ship halves and crews, those being the bow of the Pendleton |
1:31.2 | and the stern and bow sections of the Fort Mercer. |
1:34.8 | While Bernie Weber was unloading the Pendleton survivors in Chatham Harbor, |
1:39.1 | the 32 crewmen still alive on the Fort Mercer's bow were huddled together trying to stay warm. |
1:46.0 | Several of their crewmates had fallen to their deaths in an earlier rescue attempt. |
1:50.0 | The first vessel to reach the Fort Mercer was the Short Splyse, which was a transport ship, but the seas were too large for any attempt to get close, so the Short's place had to stand by, ready to try to grab any men who jumped or fell into the water. |
2:05.0 | Two Coast Guard airplanes, despite the terrible weather and high winds, |
2:09.0 | were able to make a pass over the Fort Mercer Stern section and reported in on what they were seeing, which was that the lifeboats were gone and that the stern section was almost awash, meaning there didn't appear to be much time before it sank. |
2:23.7 | Earlier that day, the radar equipment newly installed at Chatham |
2:27.0 | Life Savings Station was picking up two strange large objects |
2:30.9 | just five miles offshore from Chatham, and they had radioed one of the two |
2:35.1 | planes both of which were fighting to stay aloft in the brutal storm to check it out and |
... |
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