The movie “The Finest Hours,” just released nationwide, is the tale of one of the Coast Guard’s most daring rescues. Two tankers, the SS Pendleton and the SS Fort Mercer, ran into an unimaginable storm, and both broke in two.
Now one of the rescue boats is in need of rescue itself. The former U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Acushnet, which rescued merchant seamen from the doomed Mercer, languishes in a boatyard in Washington state.
Like the Acushnet responding to the distress signals of the Mercer, we should rally up and bring the Acushnet home – home to Portland, where the Acushnet was home-ported after World War II.
Saving the Acushnet, at 213 feet, would be a modest endeavor. It would make a splendid attraction to Portland’s waterfront as a museum ship. And its great Coast Guard heritage aside, this would be Maine’s last chance to acquire a World War II ship.
Shall we act, as the Coasties did on that dark day of Feb. 18, 1952, when a gale broke the backs of the Pendleton and Mercer?
Steven W. Lindsey
Keene, N.H.
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