The Original 2000 Sketch for Two Tankers Down

(Here is my original take on the story, written in 2002.  Eight years and lots of research later, the book Two Tankers Down emerged with a far more robust and interesting tale.)
 

The Sinkings of the Pendleton and the Fort Mercer

February, 1952

Off Chatham, Cape Cod, Massachusetts

 

 

So crazed was the day for rescuers on Cape Cod that lifeboats launched from Chatham to aid the sinking Fort Mercer -- which had split cleanly across its middle--discovered the Pendleton – or rather the two halves of the Pendleton -- sinking not far away.

 

The sinking of the two ships resulted in one of the great Coast Guard rescue efforts of all time.  And they illustrated all too well the dangers of operating ships built quickly during the war with brittle steel.

 

The two tankers were nearly identical.   As were the four halves bobbing about in a fearsome gale, tossed by 40-foot waves and 60 mph winds.   The Pendleton was built in 1944 by the Kaiser Company.  The Fort Mercer was built in 1945 by Sun Shipbuilding.  They were seven to eight years old – in their prime as ships go, well short of the 20-year expected lifespan.

 

 

  The Pendleton had loaded kerosene and heating oil in Baton Rouge, bound for Boston on February 12.   The Fort Mercer left Norco, La., the same day, bound for Portland, Maine, filled with kerosene and fuel oil for the winter heating needs of New England.

 

  A fierce winter storm was blowing at gale strength when the Pendleton arrived off Boston, but Captain John J. Fitzgerald decided it would be best to wait for better visibility and calmer seas before trying to dock the ship.  He turned back to sea.  Around 4 AM on the 18th, the ship “began shipping seas over her stern but the vessel was riding well and no fears for her safety were expressed by crew members.”

 

The Fort Mercer meanwhile was also riding out the storm.  She did not seem to pitching or rolling excessively and as these things go, all went well.  She was maintaining course and position nicely.

 

Near identical ships in near identical conditions with near identical cargoes behaved nearly identically.

 

First, it was the Pendleton.

 

At around 5:50AM, the Pendleton “took a heavy lurch accompanied by a loud explosive sound and then a more violent lurch accompanied by a still louder sound.”

 

And then the Pendleton, with no other warning, simply broke in two between it’s Number 7 and Number 8 cargo tanks.

 

Things happened rapidly then.  The T-2’s of that time had a forward bridge house.  That is to say, the captain and most officers were located toward the front of the ship in a structure that rose from the deck and gave them a clear view ahead.

 

The engineers and engine room were located aft.

 

The fracture was such that the officers were stranded on the front part of the ship – the bow section.  The engineers and most of the crew were in the stern section.

 

Circuit breakers kicked out all electricity to the forward part of the vessel, while the machinery in the rear continued as if normal.  Chief Engineer Raymond L. Sybert immediately stopped the engine.  The after section was still floating and still steerable with power.   But there was no sign of the bow section.  The stern section resembled a hotel that had had one wall blown away.  The cross section of the ship was exposed to the elements – but functioning and to an extent seaworthy, even in a gale.  Sybert looked forward toward where the bow was with no means of communicating to his captain.  He took command of the after section, prepared the men for lifeboats, and posted lookouts.  For the time-being, with power and steering, Sybert was safe.

 

The officers on the bow on the other hand were in a different word.  Without time for an SOS, without time  for anything, the men were stranded on the bridge of the ship with no way to life rafts or life boats.  The bow was unstable and swept by heavy seas.  It drifted quickly away.

 

No one was aware this was happening.  The bow had the radio but no power.  The stern section had the power but no radio. Only eight hours later at nearly 3 PM did the radar at Chatham Lifeboat Station pick up two blips where only one should have existed.  The blips were the two halves of the Pendleton – one was 5.7 miles away at 62 degrees true , the other at 5.6 miles away at 20 degrees true.  The bow and stern had drifted rapidly away from each other.  And at 2 PM, the survivors of the stern section already had seen the beach, and they were rapidly drifting toward Chatham Bar.  This meant almost certain catastrophe.  The 33 men on the after portion of the ship watched as Sybert attempted to use the engines to maneuver away from the bar and the shore.  The maneuvers made the ship list dangerously.

 

Scrambling now, the Coast Guard station at Chatam – about where the elbow of Cape Cod sticks out into the sea – scrambled boats and planes.  The bow had been spotted from shore, but its situation was unknown.  The stern on the other hand would almost certainly capsize in these seas if it hit Chatham shoal, with the loss of all on board.

 

But hours had passed.  And as we will see, the Coast Guard had been busy elsewhere. Motor lifeboat CG 36500With Bernhard C. Webber in charge sped out from Chatham Lifeboat Station around 6 PM.  In darkness, it approached the stern section of the Pendleton about 7 PM.  The chief engineer was still trying to use his engine to steer – but the half-ship listed dangerously.

 

The Coastguard lifeboat pulled alongside the starboard side of the half-vessel.  Already, the hull of the stern section was touching bottom.  It was rolling deeply now, and increasing its list to port as the men ran to the starboard side.  The crew lowered a“Jacobs ladder” – essentially netlike rope ladders down the right of the ship as the gale still tore at the grounding ship.   Individually, each of the men descended the ladder to its bottom rung – and then jumped.

 

Nine men made it.  Then George D. Myers, an ordinary seaman, jumped and missed. He was a large man. Several men from the boat grabbed him while he was in the water.  But because of his weight, they could not heft him in.  They struggled, but the waves tore and twisted the boat and tore Myers from their grasp.  He was gone.

 

The twenty-three remaining men made it down, one by one.  And jumped safely to the lifeboat.

 

The lifeboat left the scene at 8 PM.  The survivors were chilled and exhausted – but none were seriously injured.

 

The officers and seamen in the bow were still unaccounted for.  If they had not had bad luck, they would have had none.  Trapped on the bridge in gale force winds, they were hammered by the wind and waves, without heat or protection.  They had no radio and no means to leave the bridge, which was swept over by the waves.

 

Coast Guard motorboat life boat CG 36383 had been dispatched for another at-sea rescue in the gale around noon, but was diverted to the Pendleton bow section at 4 PM.  AT Pollock Rip Lightship, near Chatham, the motorboat circled the bow section passing by it closely twice, blasting its horn, waiting for any sign of life.   There  was none.

 

But a few moments later the crew members of the Pollack Rip Lightship – a sort of manned, floating light tower – sighted a light on the bow section of the Pendleton.  There was hope!  The lightship radioed the Coast Guard Cutter McCulloch and by 5:45 PM, the cutter confirmed there was life on board.  The motorboat returned for a rescue.

 

By 7 PM, the CG 36383 was there.  And its crew could sight a lone man on the starboard wing of the bridge.  The wind was fifty to six miles an hour.  The sea was breaking over the bridge of the Pendleton, and covering the area between the bow and the bridge.

 

The McCulloch pumped out oil – a common maneuver at the time to calm the waves.  The motorboat cut in sharpled to the bow section.

 

As the boat approached, a heavy sea swept over the bridge from the opposite side. They were not sure if he had jumped or had been swept away.  They could see him.  They wer e heading for him.  But the waves picked up the lifeboat and tossed it away.  As it maneuvered to reach him, they lost him.  The man was gone.

 

A few hours later, the bow section grounded.  Havy waves, wind and surf kept the Coat Guard away.  They could see no one.  They stood by until morning of the 19th of February.  But it was clear.  The officers and men  – Fitzgerald, Chief Mate Martin Moe, Second Mate Joseph W. Colgan, Third Mate Harol Bancus, Radio Operation James G. Greer, Seamn Joseph L. Landry, Seam Herman G. Gatlin and Seaman Billy Roy Morgan – were all lost.

 

The Fort Mercer lead a parallel life. About 25 miles off Chatam, roughly three hours after the Pendleton cracked in two, the crew of the Fort Mercer heard a sharp crack. around 8 AM on February 18.  It was odd, because the vessel, while certainly in a gale-force storm, was handling well, without pitching or rolling much.

 

Looking down, they could see oil seeping up from below the surface on the starboard side near the No. 5 cargo tank.

 

Whatever it was, it was not good.  Captain Frederick Paetzel slowed the speed of the tanker, immediately alerted the crew and called for help from the Coast Guard.  The Coast Guard Cutters Eastwind and the Unimak, 120 miles away near Natucket.  The Fort Mercer was still in one piece.  No one knew at the time that the Pendleton, without radio communication, already lay in two pieces, closer in to shore.

 

The around 1030 AM on the 18th,  the Fort Mercer crew heard a second sharp report.  Twenty minutes later, the Fort Mercer sent an urgent message requesting vessels in the vicinity to standby.

 

At  11:40 AM, the Fort Mercer crew heard a third loud report  and they saw a crack run up the starboard side of the No. 5 tank several feet above the waterline.   Oil was spurting from the rupture like blood from an artery.

 

Finally, nearly seven hours after the Pendleton had broken in two, at 12:05 PM, the Fort Mercer broke in two.  The bow section swung sharply to the right. The rear of the bow section submerged to the boat deck – a midlevel deck where lifeboats are carried. The boats were carried away by the rush of water. The radio transmitter in the bow was gone.

 

In a replay of the Pendleton disaster, the stern section broke cleanly away and stayed afloat, leaving the bow section without power.  The engines were stopped.  Then it seemed as if the stern section would collide with the bow.  They tried the engines.  They worked.  The stern section was backed away.

 

Nine officers and crew members were trapped on the bow section – very similar to the Pendleton.  In the rear section, 34 men remained.  The scene was set for the same sort of rescue and tragedy set by the Pendleton. The men in the stern stood a good chance of rescue.  The men in the bow? Slim to none.  Force 8 to 9 Gale Force winds and waves pummeled the bow section as it wallowed in the water.  A non-rescue vessel, the Short Splice, hovered nearby, but it was not fitted to attempt a rescue with 30 to 40 foot waves and 50 to 60 mph winds in a blizzard.

 

The one saving grace, the one ray of hope, is that the Fort Mercer was in deeper water, farther offshore than the Pendleton.  The stern section was actually maneuvering in a limited way.  Around 11 AM on February 19, the Cutter Eastwind reached the stern section and sent over a walkie talkie by means of a line.  The Eastwind rigged up a life raft on a line and removed three men.  The cutter was not suited to simple drawing alongside and transferring the men. 

 

The cutter Acushnet, arrived a short time later.  Essentially a large salvage tug, it  pulled alongside the stern section in a daring maneuver.  It made two passes.  First  five men, then 13 jumped from the Fort Mercer stern to the Acushnet.  Seven men, including the chief engineer, volunteered to remain in the stern section to steer her with an eye toward salvage.  Six other men “due to age, infirmities and other reasons” declined to jump on the Acushnet and took their chances on the Fort Mercer.

 

On the bow section, the chances of survival for the officers and men were slim, but not so slim as those on the Pendleton’s bow.  For one thing, everyone knew they were there and hours of exposure to the elements had not passed as they had for the bow section prisoners on the Pendleton.

 

For another, the Fort Mercer bridge, while swept by waves, was not as battered as the Pendleton.

 

And for another, the men devised a daring plan.  They knew they could not be rescued from the bridge area.

 

The Cutter Yakutat had tried.  It arrived around 630PM on Feb. 18.  Planes dropped flares overhead and the Yakutat tried to put a line on board.  Snow squalls and Force 9 seas thwarted the effort.

 

So the nine men on the Fort Mercer Bow resolved to make their way to a lower deck where there were more options for rescue.  They were Captain Paetzel, the master; Jack Brewer, the chief mate, Willard Fahrner, the second mate, Vincent Guldin, the third mate, Jack O’Reilly, the radio operator, Edward Turner Jr., the purser, and three seamn Hurley Newman, Luis Culver and Jerome Higgins.  They had huddled in the chart room, but when no rescue came during daylight, they embarked on a desperate and daring plan.   Around 1130PM, as the gale continued, they took out all their signal flags and – much like tying sheets together to escape from a burning hotel – devised a makeshift line from the flags.

 

They dangled the flags from a porthole in the forward side of the wheelhouse.  It reached the forecastle, which would give them better shelter???? and a better shot at rescue.

 

The first man down the line, radio operator John O’Reilly, lowered himself down the line.  But he failed to land on a catwalk.  His feet could not catch it. A wave took him, and O’Reilly was gone.

 

The remaining eight men, one by one, took a deep breath.  They had been twelve hours in the unheated bridge, exposed to the elements, without hope of rescue.  One by one, they went down the line.  One by one, they made it.

 

But they were far from safe.

 

At around 2 AM on the 19th of February, the Yakutat took another tack.  If it could not shoot a line to the bow section, it would drop a line of rafts.  The Cutter pulled upwind of the Fort Mercer bow.  It tied a string of well lighted rafts and floated them down from windward.

 

On the forecastle, the men had a chance now to make the rafts.  Three of them gave it a shot.  Brewer the chief mate was the first to try.  Then two seamen took a shot at it.  Newman  tried. Then Culver tried.  One by one, they jumped.  And were lost.  Brewer, Culver and Newman were just gone, swept away by the gale in the dark.

 

Four of the original nine men were now lost.  Only five remained.  The Yakutat switched tactics. It rounded to in close proximity to the bow section.  This time it was Higgins, a seamn, who jumped for the Cutter.

 

And Higgins was gone. He missed.  The waves and the gale just took him. There were no second chances.

 

And now only four of the nine remained.  Paetzel, Fahrner, the second mate, Guldin, the third mate, and Turner, the purser.

 

At daybreak, the Yakutat tried a fourth tactic.  The weather had moderated slightly.  So into the waves, it launched a Monomoy surfboat – a life saving boat designed for the high waves of surf near Monomoy and Chatham.  The four exhausted survivors were told via loud speaker that the boat would be sent over and the boatsmen would tell them when to jump and they would be picked up from the water.

 

At 830AM, more than 20 hours after they were severed from the stern section of the Fort Mercer, the lifeboat “launched under extremely adverse and dangerous conditions.”

 

Captain Paetzel, now exhausted and in poor physical condition, was the first to jump.  He foundered in the water.  Seconds counted.  Fifteen. Thirty. Forty-five.  In about one minute, as the world stood still for the Cutter and the crew, the Coast Guardsmen hoisted him into the lifeboat.  And Paetzel was saved.

 

Then the purser Turner jumped.  And he was saved.

 

But the lifeboat had of need bumped the Fort Mercer constantly in the rescue, and now it was leaking.  The wind picked up.  The waves increased in height.  Its motor roaring defiantly, the Monomoy headed back to the Yakutat , battered but unbowed.  Two men were saved.  Two more remained in peril.  Fahrner and Guldin were still huddled on the bow section – and it seemed to be foundering now, as the seas picked up yet again.

 

Now the Yakutat reached into its bag of tricks for a sixth tactic.  It shot a line across the bow of the Fort Mercer.  In daylight, it could do that more easily.  And it drifted a raft down to the vessel.  The raft capsized on the way down.  But the two men entered it from the Fort Mercer and were hauled over to the Yakutat.

 

Twenty minutes later, the bow section capsized.   One day later, the Cutter Unimak open fired on the bow section, which was still floating, sending it to a final resting place and removing it as an official “menace to navigation.”

 

What lessons were learned from this?  Did the merchant mariners, the Coast Guard, the ship owners, change the acceptable level where risk and reward balanced out?

 

Not appreciably.

 

There were commendations for the brave crew and officers of the Coast Guard and of the merchant vessels.  The Coast Guard Marine Board of Inquiry blamed the sinkings on structural failure, complicated by load distribution and the storm.

 

But at the heart of it was the structural inadequacy of all ships built prior to 1948, when new steel standards were used.  The board noted that one tanker, the Schenectady, actually broke in two at the dock in 1943.

 

The crack arrestors thought to stop this sort of damage, the board conceded, really didn’t and now the board was saying the crack arrestors really weren’t intended to actually stop structural failure.  They were just designed to keep the ships afloat long enough to reach harbor or aid.

 

As the report on the Fort Mercer said, “It was felt at the time that the measure proposed would provide the means of preventing complete failure of the hull, and, that while fractures could steel be expected to occur under some circumstances, the ships would be able to get into port.

 

But, the Coast Guard said, additional measures would now be taken .  T-2 tankers would be fitted with four more crack arrestors and the bilge keep attachment would be riveted, not welded.  New loading manuals would be issued.  And   the longitudinial strength  of the ship would be fortified.

 

“This, together with research programs to determine the fundamental cuases of fractures of ships, should enable us to achieve the standards of safety desired on American ships.”

 

 They were nice words.   They kept the T-2’s at sea.  If one were skeptical, one might say they were saying that four crack arrestors did not stop the structural failures.  And four crack arrestors did not allow dozens of men to make it back to safe harbor and their loved ones.  So they were betting that eight crack arrestors would. . Later they would find that 12 crack arrestors did not stop the structural failures.

 

 

 

 

Another victim of the old steel, preceding the Pendleton and Fort Mercer, may have been the SS Pennsylvania.  The next to last voyage of the SS Pennsylvania found her  departing  Long Beach in November of 1951, bound for Yokohama.  Fifteen hundred miles out, she was swept by a severe storm.  On November 6, the main deck plating of the converted liberty ship cracked to the right of the main house on the ship.  She turned 180 degrees and headed home to Portland.  The fracture ought to have been a warning.  It was not. Repairs were made.  Risks would be taken.  The ship was re-certified.  Then it was drydocked and everything found up to snuff.  If the crew, officers, Coast Guard or shipyard managers were forewarned by the fracture of the main deck, they did not express it.

 

 

So on paper, the seven year old ship was fit and trim.  On Jan. 2, 1952, no doubt with the optimism brought by a new year, the Pennsylvania put her fractured main deck behind her and loaded wheat and barley in Vancouver.  Eighteen “Army type” trailers were stowed on her deck, and two Army dump trucks – about 68 tons of deck cargo in all – lashed to with No 9 wire.  She rounded Port Angeles, Washington, and discharged her pilot on Jan. 5.

 

But four days later, the ship ran into gale force winds.  Waves of 35 to 40 feet pounded the vessel.  At around 7 AM, George Plover, the master, radioed that the Pennsylvania had sustained yet another fracture.  The deck was fine.  This time, the fracture was in the hull. It ran from the sheer strake (the top of the hull) to the engine room.   The ship was turning and would try to make Seattle, Plover said.

 

Frantic dispatches followed as the ship struggled for its life.  The vessel could not be steered – a profound problem in 40-foot-seas. The vessel was taking on water in the engine room and the number one hold.  She would need assistance.

 

The crew and officers struggled to repair the steering.  Then the deck load came adrift,  more than 60 tons of skittering trucks.  This ripped the tarps from the forward hatches.  The crew could not go forward because of the pandemonium caused by the waves and loose 18-ton trailers.  This meant, in all probability, that the ship was taking in more water in the holds through the less secure hatches.

 

Then, Plover radioed that the steering gear was fixed.  That was the good news.  The bad news was that the vessel was so down by the head – listing so far forward -- that the rudder was tilted out of the water too much to allow steering.

 

Now number two hatch was filled with water as well, as the gale continued to pound the ship.  Plover said his only hope was for the weather to moderate.  It did not and the last dispatch at 11 minutes before midnight on Jan. 9, 1952, said the crew and officers were abandoning ship.

 

One lifeboat was found in the area later.  Nothing else.  Ever. No debris. No life rings. No logs or journals.  The Pennsylvania was simply gone.

 

A greater mystery followed.  The US Coast Guard conducted a Marine Board of Investigation on the disappearance of the SS Pennsylvania.  Not surprisingly, the board concluded “this casualty was the result of a structural failure due, at least in part, to unusual stresses created by gale force winds and heavy seas.”

 

Then the board added, “Since so little is known of the origin and extent of this structural failure the Board is unable to submit recommendations for prevention of future casualties of this nature.  The Board recommends that no further action be taken and that this case be closed.”

 

While the statement was literally true – the board did not know exactly what caused the fracture and what sort of fracture it was – it was disingenuous at best in the context of World War II welded vessels.  The history of brittle fractures among pre-1948 ships was well-established and, lacking other evidence to the contrary, it would be logical to conclude that this was another instance.  Or at least that there was a high probability requiring a lot of action.

 

Perhaps even more bizarre was the commandant’s review by Vice Admiral Merlin O’Neill.  He disagreed that the 14-foot hull fracture letting water into the holds and engine room was the primary cause of the sinking.  “It would appear that the heavy weather encountered with consequent coming adrift of the deck cargo, flooding of numbers 1 and 2 holds, steering gear failure, and inability to manage the vessel in the heavy sea contributed to a greater extent to the foundering of the Pennsylvania than did the structural failure.”

 

Which struck some observers strangely.  If the Pennsylvania had been a swimmer, would the vice admiral had concluded that it was not the bullet through the heart that caused the victim’s death but the failure of his arms and legs to function properly that kept him from swimming?

 

The vice admiral did correct the board on one matter:

 

“In connection with the structural failures, the susceptibility of welded ships to extensive factures has been known and a serous problem since early in World War II, when our shipyards turned to welding as the only means of fulfilling the task set before them of rapidly building enough ships to support the war effort…A great deal has been learned since 1943 when the Schenectady broke in two….”

 

These lessons resulted, among other things, in the fitting of  “crack arrestors,” belts of steel riveted into the old Liberty ships and the T-2 tankers and the C-4 troopships, he noted.  Ships built since 1948, with higher standards of steel, are not experiencing these brittle fracture problems, he noted.  And the Coast Guard must continue to keep a close eye on the old vessels, but continued research, crack arrestors, and inspections “should enable us to achieve the standards of safety desired on American ships.”

 

Those words of optimism might have been more comforting had they not been written on July 16 1952 – nearly six months after two war time T-2 tankers, the Pendleton and the Fort Mercer, ran into trouble on the same day in the same storm in the same general location off Cape Cod.

 

By 1963, when the Marine Sulphur Queen disappeared, there were 18 cases of T-2 structural failures over the years.