Ten Hours Until Dawn

'...there's a type of person - and there's very few of them around - that when everybody else is backing away, they're going forward...'

Perhaps one of the saddest sea stories I have read in recent times is the story of the Can Do, a steel hulled, 49ft pilot boat captained by Frank Quirk.

Frank and the Can Do worked the waters of Gloucester and Salem Harbours in Massachusetts, transferring pilots to ships waiting outside the harbour breakwaters and then guiding them across the dangerous bars. Frank also worked closely with the Coast Guard at Gloucester, supporting local patrols and providing assistance with rescues. The former navy Seabee (construction unit) was known for keeping a clear head in a crisis. A twenty year veteran of the sea, Frank and the Can Do were regular fixtures in the waters off Gloucester, where they saved more than one life.

Frank was awarded three Mariner's Medals, Gloucester's highest honour: the third was awarded posthumously after the 1978 blizzard that claimed 99 lives, including that of Frank and his crew.

The same kind of meteorological event described in Sebastian Junger's Perfect Storm and experienced by sailors in the 1998 Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, the blizzard that hit Massachusetts on 6 February 1978 brought winds of 92 miles per hour and dumped 3 foot of snow in a few short hours. Just as the storm was kicking off, the Gloucester Coast Guard received a distress call from the captain of the Global Hope, an oil tanker that had run aground near Salem with 32 men onboard and was believed to be in danger of breaking up.

The Coast Guard dispatched its available vessels, the largest of which was just 44ft. Frank overheard the radio transmissions and called in his willingness to assist. The smaller Coast Guard vessel is forced to turn back almost immediately. When the larger vessel loses its electronics and can no longer navigate the fierce waves, Frank tells Coast Guard control he and his crew 'will give it their best shot' to find them and bring them home.

Reading Ten Hours Until Dawn is a lot like reading about the maiden voyage of the Titanic, or the last trip of the Andrea Gail. You know how it's going to end, but as you spend time with the characters, you begin to hope against hope that they will survive. The transcripts of the heartbreaking radio transmissions during the final hours of the Can Do only heighten the sense of loss.

A memoriam notice in the Gloucester Times on the 25th anniversary of the blizzard ends with the words 'we gave it our best shot'. And they did.