CG 36500

During a ferocious gale on February 18, 1952, the CG36500 and her four-man crew (coxswain Bernard C. “Bernie” Webber, Andrew Fitzgerald, Ervin Maske and Richard Livesey) set out from Chatham Harbor (Cape Cod) in response to a distress call from a tanker that had split in two. In a mission that seemed doomed to failure, the CG36500 and her crew rescued 32 sailors from the tanker 'Pendleton,' cramming them onto a boat designed to hold only 12 persons. With the navigation system not functioning, and sailing in the night in rough waters, the CG36500 miraculously make it back safely to Chatham Harbor. The CG36500 was decommissioned in 1968 and ended up abandoned and slowly decaying on Cape Cod National Seashore property in Welfleet. In 1981 she was acquired by the Orleans Historical Society ( http://orleanshistoricalsociety.org/ ), who painstakingly restored the vesssel and maintains her as a functioning boat and floating museum ( CG36500.org ). She has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places, an unusual honor for a vessel.