Cape Cod Highlighted in Finest Hours Movie
Showcasing Cape Cod’s vast and sometimes dangerous coastline, the Disney movie “The Finest Hours” highlights the region while retelling one of the most perilous rescue attempts in our nation’s history. The film recounts the daring attempt more than a half-century ago to save the lives of countless crew members stranded off the coast of Cape Cod during a ferocious nor’easter. While the film showcases the region, it also delves into the real life heroics of four men in a small wooden lifeboat.
The movie, which opened to the public earlier this year, shows the events leading up to and resulting in the real-life rescue in February 1952. When a pair of oil tankers broke apart during a storm off the coast of Cape Cod, one of them, the SS Pendleton, began to drift close to the shore off Chatham, trapping the 33 remaining crew members on board. While others worked to reach the other tanker, four crewmen boarded a 36-foot lifeboat called CG36500, eventually making history.
Not only did their lifeboat remarkably reach the stranded crew amidst extremely poor visibility and massive waves, but also it managed to make it safely back to shore with more than three times the number of crew members aboard than the lifeboat was originally designed to hold.
Filmed on Cape Cod in 2014, the film stars actors Chris Pine and Casey Affleck. The movie seeks to capture the dramatic rescue from all angles, by sea and by land as residents on shore helped to light the path back to safety with their car headlights when those in Chatham lost power during the storm.
While a quality story for the big screen, The Finest Hours also tells an important, real-life story of Cape Cod, a region that has overcome great odds and the wrath of Mother Nature, yet remained strong and destined to persevere.
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