CG36500 Rescue Boat Memorial
by Sharon Williams Eng
Title
CG36500 Rescue Boat Memorial
Artist
Sharon Williams Eng
Medium
Photograph - Photography
Description
This monument is in honor of the brave crew of the US Coast Guard lifeboat CG-36500. The propeller from the rescue is mounted on the granite at Lighthouse Beach in Chatham, Massachusetts.
The CG-36500 is a standard 36-foot lifeboat, a vessel specifically designed to remain operational under extremely difficult conditions. It has a heavy 2,000-pound bronze keel and skeg, watertight compartments, and self-bailing features. Most of its wooden elements are white oak frames, with cypress planking and it has a total weight of nearly 20,000 pounds. It is sheathed with Monel plating, which allows for winter time ice breaking.
On 18 February 1952, the crew of CG-36500, which consisted of Boatswain's Mate First Class Bernard C. Webber (coxswain), Engineman Third Class Andrew Fitzgerald, Seaman Ervin Maske, and Seaman Richard P. Livesey, rescued 32 of 33 crewmen trapped on the stern section of the tanker SS Pendleton, which had broken in half in a storm off Chatham, Massachusetts. The rescue of the survivors of the shipwrecked Pendleton is considered one of the most daring rescues of the United States Coast Guard. The story is told in the 2016 motion picture The Finest Hours, based on the 2009 book by the same title.
The CG-36500 was taken out of service in 1968 and was given to the National Park Service for use as an exhibit at Cape Cod National Seashore. In November 1981, the Park Service, which had not effected any significant restoration work on the vessel, deeded it to the Orleans Historical Society, and a restoration started by a group of volunteers from Chatham, Orleans, and Harwich, Massachusetts. Restoration work was completed in six months and the boat was re-launched in a public ceremony. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005 and now serves as a museum boat.
I am an award-winning exhibiting artist in southwest Florida and my art has been exhibited in galleries in Florida, Georgia and North Carolina and is in collections nationwide
Uploaded
January 1st, 2021
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