Harrowing Night of Heroism Remembered

Cape Cod Times Pendleton hero Bernie Webber dies in Florida Bernie Webber, the coxswain aboard Coast Guard Rescue 36500 boat that rescued 32 people off the Pendleton tanker in 1952, died Saturday in Florida. File photo By ROBERT GOLD [email protected] January 26, 2009 6:00 AM Bernie Webber, who helped rescue 32 people off the coast of Chatham in 1952, died this weekend at his Florida home. Webber, 80, was one of four Coast Guard crew members who braved storm-ravaged Cape waters on Feb. 18, 1952, after the 503-foot tanker Pendleton broke in two. Webber and the other Coast Guard members were able to save 32 of 33 people on the tanker, huddling them onto their 36-foot motorized lifeboat. The men had to climb down a ladder rope and jump onto the boat. One man missed and drowned. The four Coast Guard crew members were hailed as heroes and their boat, the CG36500, has been turned into a floating museum by the Orleans Historical Society. "They considered it at the time one of the most dangerous (Coast Guard ) rescues in the 20th century," said Bonnie Snow, the Orleans society's historian. Chatham resident Bob Ledoux, a friend of Webber, said he died unexpectedly Saturday. He lived in Melbourne, Fla., but would come to North Eastham every fall. Ledoux met Webber in 2000 on the Cape. Ledoux was struck by how modest Webber was, never talking about the rescue. "He was a very mild mannered guy, very quiet, very unassuming. There was no bragging. He was just one heck of a person to be with," he said. Ledoux said Webber's wife, Miriam, plans to hold a service on the Cape this spring. Theresa Barbo, a Yarmouthport resident who co-authored a book about the Pendleton rescue, met Webber in 2002 after a 50th anniversary event. They quickly became good friends. Barbo said Webber, who held several maritime jobs over his lifetime, including captain of a tug boat, accomplished far more than just the rescue. Barbo said Webber would often speak with Coast Guard cadets. "He was just a wise person. He saw a lot," she said. Cape Cod Times My view Webber made of 'right material' By WILLIAM COLLETTE January 28, 2009 6:20 AM When Coast Guard vessels age and outlive their usefulness, they are modified, sold to private industry or foreign countries, scrapped or scuttled. Replacements with the same name are built and put back into service. When great men, legendary heroes like Senior Chief Petty Officer Bernard E. Webber pass over the bar, they are succeeded by new, younger Coasties, but they are never truly replaced. They live on forever as men who have earned legend status for their heroic service. Webber died Saturday at his home in Florida. He was 80. I first met Bernie at Chatham. He was more than the chief petty officer in charge. He was my hero and became one of my closest friends. Bernie was indeed one of the greatest of the "Chatham Legends" — a group of Coast Guard men and women who have banded together over the years to keep our tradition of "service to others" more than a slogan. Chief Webber was a good friend and supporter of the Coast Guard Heritage Museum in Barnstable Village. He has donated invaluable historic artifacts to us. His heroism during the dramatic Pendleton rescue in 1952 earned him and his valiant crew of three volunteers the Coast Guard's highest honor: Gold Medals. His experience with the Breeches Buoy apparatus brought seven shipwrecked fishermen safely ashore in Provincetown in 1962 in another dramatic rescue, which earned one of our museum's founding directors, Dan Davidson, a silver medal from the Humane Society of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The Coast Guard didn't give out medals for individual service since everything was "a team effort." Dan Davidson understands that and says "I was nothing without the team." Bernie saw it differently. He put Dan in for a medal because he went beyond what duty required when he risked his own life, plunging into the icy water (no wet suits back then), swam out and saved the fisherman who had fallen into frigid sea. Bernie was a hard taskmaster but a great champion for his men. He was a born leader. But his entire life was one of service. He saved dozens of stranded boaters and fishermen during his many tours of duty here on Cape Cod. He taught those sailors who came under his command everything they needed to survive and help others survive. He was tough but compassionate and humble. He never forgot what the commanding officer of a Coast Guard training station wrote to a recruit in February 1946: "I welcome you into the U.S. Coast Guard. It is a tough outfit, proud of its long history of efficient service. It wants only men who are willing and eager to do their best at all times and who have the guts to see a hard job through to the very end. "Hard jobs are 'routine' in this service. In a way, the Coast Guard is always at war: in wartime, against armed enemies of the nation; and in peacetime, against all enemies of mankind at sea: fire, collision, lawlessness, gales, ice, derelicts and many more. "The Coast Guard, therefore, is no place for a quitter, or for a cry baby, or for a four-flusher, or for anyone who cannot 'keep his eye on the ball.' Your period of recruit training is a time"¦to determine whether or not you are made of the right material. It is up to you, as an individual to prove your worth." Bernie Webber was made of the "right material" and he proved his worth time and again. He never quit. He never indulged in self pity. He led his men by example. He was a leader. Some "legends" are made of myths. Bernie Webber was, and always will be, an authentic legend whose cherished memory lives on at the Coast Guard Heritage Museum and in the annals of Coast Guard history. William Collette is president of the Coast Guard Heritage Museum. Francis Broadhurst, museum historian, and Bob Ledoux of Chatham, a Webber family friend, contributed to this article. Harrowing night of heroism remembered Coast Guardsman Bernie Webber helped rescue the crew of an oil tanker that sank off Chatham in 1952. Webber died at age 80 Saturday in in Florida home. (US Coast Guard) By Bryan Marquard, Globe Staff | January 29, 2009 Strapping himself to the wheel of a 36-foot motorized lifeboat, wind and snow whipping his face, Bernie Webber steered through Chatham Harbor's rough waves early on the evening of Feb. 18, 1952. Ahead in the swirling storm floated part of the Pendleton, an oil tanker that had split apart in a northeaster. No one knew if there were any survivors when Mr. Webber and three fellow Coast Guardsmen motored out into waves that would tower 60 feet. As they crossed the Chatham Bar, the shifting shoals that make getting in and out of the harbor perilous even in good weather, a wave tossed their wooden boat sideways into the air. The windshield smashed, the compass washed overboard, and the crew's confidence ebbed. "It was half a miracle, if you think about it," said Mr. Webber's wife, Miriam. "He told me, 'I never thought I'd be back.' " But more than two hours later, Mr. Webber guided the CG-36500 back to Chatham's piers, laden with 32 crewmen from the Pendleton. Mr. Webber, who along with his crew was awarded the US Treasury Department's Gold Lifesaving Medal for heroism, died of a heart attack Saturday in his Melbourne, Fla., home. He was 80. "I really wanted to go on that trip; I think all of us did," Andrew Fitzgerald of Centennial, Colo., last surviving member of the 36500's crew, said yesterday. "I knew there was a chance we might not make it, but I thought we would. I did know that we would end up being awfully wet and cold." The Pendleton was one of two tankers that broke apart off Cape Cod earlier that day. A search plane spotted the Pendleton while flying near the Fort Mercer. Two daring rescue operations saved 70 lives, generating banner headlines, but 14 men died in the wrecks, nine of 41 on the Pendleton, five of 43 on the Fort Mercer. A boatswain's mate, first class, Mr. Webber was assigned to the Chatham Lifeboat Station. Before heading out on the rescue mission, he looked out at Chatham Harbor with foreboding. "The seas coming in there were mountains," he told a radio station 15 years later. Audio clips of the interview are on the website www.cg36500.org/rescue_audio.html. "The boat seemed smaller than ever to me at that moment," he said in the interview. Once he had navigated past the Chatham Bar, Mr. Webber headed in what he hoped was the right direction. Suddenly sensing a presence in the darkness, he told Fitzgerald to shine the spotlight ahead, and from the dark night the Pendleton appeared. Then they saw a crowd of men, 33 in all, on board, clad in lifejackets and waving their arms. "I says, 'My God, what are we going to do?' I said, 'Where am I going to put these men? How am I going to get them off?' All of these different things passed through my mind," he told the radio station. "I said, 'If I fail, what a tragic thing.

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