Author Michael Tougias will appear at Marstons Mills Public Library on Thursday, December 1 at 7 pm to give a slide presentation on his book The Finest Hours: The True Story of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Most Daring Sea Rescue. The program is free and open to the public. The presentation will be followed by a book-signing.
On February 18th, 1952 an astonishing maritime event began when a ferocious nor’easter split in half a 500-foot long oil tanker, the Pendleton, approximately one mile off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Incredibly, just twenty miles away, a second oil tanker, the Fort Mercer, also split in half. On both fractured tankers, men were trapped on the severed bows and sterns, and all four sections were sinking in 60-foot seas. Thus began a life and death drama of survival, heroism, and a series of tragic mistakes. Of the 84 seamen aboard the tankers, 70 would be rescued and 14 would lose their lives.
Michael Tougias, co-author of The Finest Hours, will use slides of the storm, the sinking tankers, the rescues, the victims, the survivors and the heroes to tell the story of this historic event.
