One of the US Coast Guard’s most daring rescues took place in 1952 during a massive nor’easter off Massachusetts’s Cape Cod, as dramatized in the recent Disney film The Finest Hours, based on the book of the same name. Fifty-foot waves from the powerful winter storm broke an oil tanker in half. A young crew of four from Chatham Lifeboat Station raced out to search for any stranded survivors. In a TV segment in which coauthor Michael Tougias was interviewed, it was reported that the captain of the lifeboat, Bernie Webber, told Tougias that a higher power aided them. Webber deeply turned to God that night. “As the lifeboat pitched along a canyon of waves, Webber and his crew spontaneously began to sing.… Their four voices formed a harmony that rose over the howling winds. Webber could think of no more poignant hymn to fit the situation they found themselves in.
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee; …”
(Tougias and Casey Sherman,
The Finest Hours, p. 50)
Even with his boat’s compass knocked out by the force of a powerful wave, Webber located the broken tanker, rescuing 32 of the 33 men marooned on the stern section just before it sank. On the way back, Webber wound up turning off the radio that was receiving advice, and he followed his intuition to get back to shore. “In his heart, he knew that God was bringing them home” (The Finest Hours, p. 95).
