ORLEANS — The future of the 36500, the 36-foot Coast Guard motor lifeboat used to save 32 people who were on board the stricken tanker Pendleton during a massive nor’easter off Chatham in 1952, has been on the mind of Orleans Historical Society officials for years.
“It’s a wooden boat, one of the last wooden boats of Coast Guard construction,” said Jay Stradal, vice chairman of the society's board. “When they come out of the water and dry out, you potentially have problems.”
The historical society, which owns the 72-year-old boat, has no immediate plans to do anything with it, but over the years has made inquiries about possible plans for when it can no longer be kept in its berth at Rock Harbor.
The iconic boat is in great shape, but when an old boat starts to break down, it becomes increasingly harder to fix, with new parts having to be fabricated or old parts rebuilt.
Stradal has been on the society board for four years, and there has always been talk about the future of the 36500, he said.
“This was always something that was going to be addressed at some point,” he said.
On Wednesday, society board members, in a conference call with Casey Sherman, the co-author of “The Finest Hours,” a book about the exploits of the 36500, talked about the possibility of gifting the boat back to the Coast Guard to be displayed in Washington, D.C., Sherman said.
The idea that the boat would be taken off-Cape horrified Sherman, who quickly notified both the press and some volunteers who worked on the boat about the idea that the board had floated.
Sherman said they contacted him to see if he knew of anyone with the Coast Guard in the nation’s capital to help make the gift, and possible sponsorship of it, happen.
Sherman said he'd rather see the society better monetize and market the boat that they have rather than give it away.
“It should be appreciated by generations of Cape Codders and people around the world,” Sherman said. “It’s a symbol of courage.”
“I want to kill this idea in the cradle,” he said about the idea of the boat moving to D.C.
But Stradal said the society is always looking for ways to preserve the history of the CG36500. The conversation with Sherman, which Stradal confirmed, is just another avenue they are exploring. There are no immediate plans to send the boat to Washington, he said, and the boat is actually still quite seaworthy; it made a trip to Cuttyhunk just a couple weeks ago.
“We’ve not had any conversations with the Coast Guard,” Stradal said.
At some point, the boat will have to come out of the water, although it’s not clear when that would be, Stradal said. Everyone at the society loves the boat and isn’t anxious to ship it off, he said.
Around the time Sherman's book about it was being released, a civilian Coast Guard procurement officer approached the society about acquiring the boat but that never led anywhere.
“Would we ever give it to (the Coast Guard)?” Stradal asked. “I don’t know.”
Don St. Pierre, a historian and one of the people who has spent more than three decades maintaining and restoring the boat after it was acquired by the historical society from the Cape Cod National Seashore, said he wants the boat to stay in Orleans.
But he doesn’t know how much longer he can help with the boat’s maintenance.
“Two years maybe,” he said about how long he can keep at it. “The time is coming and I realize that.”
The aging of the people who have cared for the boat has also been part of the reason the society has looked to the 36500’s future.
Over the years, the boat has been fully restored, the engine and transmission have been rebuilt, rotting rails were stripped away, and it was given annual paint jobs.
Orleans was the best place for it to go, St. Pierre said. Even though it was a Chatham lifeboat, the Chatham Historical Society turned down the opportunity to own it.
“It going to Orleans was the best thing for the boat,” St. Pierre said.
Chatham doesn’t have any place like Rock Harbor where it wouldn’t get hammered in the wind or waves, he said. “There was no safe place to put it.”
St. Pierre said it would be a “kick in the face” if it went back to Chatham, a rumor he said he has heard.
Stradal said the society will continue to explore options going forward for the Cape’s most famous vessel so it will be prepared for whatever the future brings.
“If we had to do something, what would we do?” he said about the society's thought process.
— Follow Ethan Genter on Twitter: @EthanGenterCCT