Disney Finest Hours Honors Coast Guard

“The Finest Hours” celebrates a heroic, near impossible Coast Guard rescue — one of many in Coast Guard history
SALON.com
DAVID HELVARG
FRIDAY, JAN 29, 2016

From New Orleans after Katrina to a daring San Francisco Bay rescue, up-from-below leadership took center stage

In the book turned Disney action movie ‘The Finest Hours,” due out Jan. 29, Chris Pine plays real-life Coast Guard hero Bernie Webber. In February 1952 Webber and his crew of three saved 32 of 33 sailors trapped on the stern end of the Pendleton, a ship that split in two during a historic storm off New England. The Pendleton was one of two war-surplus tankers that were torn asunder by the monster storm’s 40-60-foot waves. Webber’s seamanship running his 36-foot motor lifeboat through snow-blown surf and making a near impossible rescue quickly earned him a place in the annals of gold-medal lifesaving.

Still, his rescue is just one of many in Coast Guard history. Its ranks of heroes who’ve pulled off similar amazing feats range from Alaska’s “Hell Roaring” Mike Healy to North Carolina’s Rasmus Midgett and Richard Etheridge to Rhode Island Lighthouse keeper Ida Lewis to the aviators and small boat crews who surged into New Orleans and the Gulf Coast following 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, saving 33,000 lives.
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