Fatal Forecast - An Incredible True Tale of Disaster and Survival at Sea

In the winter of 1952, New England was battered by the most brutal nor'easter in years. As the weather wreaked havoc on land, the freezing Atlantic became a wind-whipped zone of peril.

In the early hours of Monday, February 18, while the storm raged, two oil tankers, the Pendleton and the Fort Mercer, found themselves in the same horrifying predicament. Built with "dirty steel," and not prepared to withstand such ferocious seas, both tankers split in two, leaving the dozens of men on board utterly at the Atlantic's mercy.

The Finest Hours is the gripping, true story of the valiant attempt to rescue the souls huddling inside the broken halves of the two ships. Coast Guard cutters raced to the aid of those on the Fort Mercer, and when it became apparent that the halves of the Pendleton were in danger of capsizing, the Guard sent out two thirty-six-foot lifeboats as well. These wooden boats, manned by only four seamen, were dwarfed by the enormous seventy-foot seas. As the tiny rescue vessels set out from the coast of Cape Cod, the men aboard were all fully aware that they were embarking on what could easily become a suicide mission.

The spellbinding tale is overflowing with breathtaking scenes that sear themselves into the mind's eye, as boats capsize, bows and sterns crash into one another, and men hurl themselves into the raging sea in their terrifying battle for survival.

Not all of the eighty-four men caught at sea in the midst of that brutal storm survived, but considering the odds, it's a miracle -- and a testament to their bravery -- that any came home to tell their tales at all.

Michael J. Tougias and Casey Sherman have seamlessly woven together their extensive research and firsthand interviews to create an unforgettable tale of heroism, triumph, and tragedy, one that truly tells of the Coast Guard's finest hours.

In May 2005, Tom Tighe, captain of a forty-five-foot-long sailboat named the Almeisan, and his first mate, Loch Reidy, welcomed three new crewmembers for a five-day voyage from Connecticut across the blue waters of the Gulf Stream to sun-drenched Bermuda. The new crew included forty-six-year-old Kathy Gilchrist, seventy-year-old Ron Burd, and thirty-four-year-old Chris Ferrer. Although Tighe had made the trip forty-eight times, with Reidy accompanying him on twenty of those voyages, the rest of the crew had joined to learn more about offshore sailing.

Four days into the voyage, an enormous storm struck, sweeping two of the crew into the towering sea. The remaining crewmembers managed to stay aboard the vessel as it was slowly torn apart by the rampaging ocean. Overboard! follows the simultaneous desperate struggles of both those still on the boat and those fighting for their lives in the sea.

The Coast Guard, alerted to the Almeisan’s distress, rushed to the storm-tossed scene. Their ensuing search and rescue mission proved so spectacularly difficult and dangerous that it was later selected—from among thousands of incidents—as the Guard’s search and rescue case of the year. Highly trained helicopter pilots and rescue swimmers alike found themselves in almost as much trouble as those trapped by the ferocious ocean.

Soon after 2:00 A.M. on Easter morning, March 23, 2008, the fishing trawler Alaska Ranger began taking on water in the middle of the frigid Bering Sea. While the first mate broadcast Mayday calls to a remote Coast Guard station more than eight hundred miles away, the men on the ship's icy deck scrambled to inflate life rafts and activate the beacon lights, which would guide rescuers to them in the water. By 4:30 A.M., the wheelhouse of the Ranger was just barely visible above the sea's surface, and most of the forty-seven crew members were in the water, wearing the red survival suits-a number of them torn or inadequately sized-that were supposed to keep them from freezing to death. Every minute in the twenty-foot swells was a fight for survival. Many knew that if they weren't rescued soon, they would drown or freeze to death.

Two Coast Guard helicopter rescue teams were woken up in the middle of the night to save the crew of the Alaska Ranger. Many of the men thought the mission would be routine. They were wrong. The helicopter teams battled snow squalls, enormous swells, and gale-force winds as they tried to fulfill one guiding principle: save as many as they could. Again and again, the helicopters lowered a rescue swimmer to the ocean's surface to bring the shipwrecked men, some delirious with hypothermia, some almost frozen to death, back to the helicopter and to safety. Before the break of dawn, the Coast Guard had lifted more than twenty men from the freezing waves-more than any other cold-water Coast Guard rescue in history.

Deadliest Sea is a daring and mesmerizing adventure tale that chronicles the power of nature against man, and explores the essence of the fear each man and woman must face when confronted with catastrophe. It also investigates the shocking negligence that leads to the sinking of dozens of ships each year, which could be prevented and makes commercial fishing one of the most dangerous occupations in the world.

With deft writing and technical knowledge, veteran journalist Kalee Thompson recounts the harrowing stories of both the rescuers and the rescued who survived the deadly ordeal in the Bering Sea. Along the way, she pays tribute to the courage, tenacity, and skill of dedicated service people who risk their own lives for the lives of others.

“The tale of Carl Wake and the hurricane that was waiting for him goes straight to the heart of the greatest sea stories: they are not about man against the sea, but man against himself. John Kretschmer’s book is as perfectly shaped and flawlessly written as such a story can be. In addition to being the best depiction I have ever read of what it is like to be inside a hurricane at sea, At the Mercy of the Sea is as moving a story of a man’s failure and redemption as can be found anywhere in the literature of the sea. This book is surely destined to become a classic.”—Peter Nichols, author of Sea Change and A Voyage for Madmen

“John Kretschmer has transformed this story of three men on a collision course with a hurricane into a modern seafaring classic.”—Peter Nielsen, editor of SAIL magazine

“With expert analysis and taut writing, he draws readers into that mad storm. You can’t turn away. You keep reading until it breaks your heart.”—Fred Grimm, columnist for the Miami Herald

“Once begun, his vivid and powerful narrative is impossible to put down.”—Derek Lundy, author of Godforsaken Sea and The Way of a Ship

“I felt I knew Carl Wake, because John Kretschmer found in him an archetype—an aging sailor with an age-old dream.”—Jim Carrier, transatlantic sailor and author of The Ship and the Storm: Hurricane Mitch and the Loss of the Fantome