10 Incredible Coast Guard Rescues That Defied Odds and Expectations

Rasmus Midgett was patrolling the North Carolina coast during a hurricane when he heard voices somewhere beyond the dark surf. The barkentine Priscilla, a type of sailing ship with three or more masts, had run aground and begun breaking apart; its wooden hull splintering and collapsing under the pounding surf.

Ten survivors remained aboard. Midgett was alone, and returning to the Gull Shoal Life-Saving Station for help would cost several hours they might not have. Instead, he went into the water.

Midgett directed seven men to jump from the wreck one at a time, catching them as the waves carried them toward shore. The final three were too injured or exhausted to follow his instructions, so he carried them from the ship himself. All 10 survived. Midgett later received the Gold Lifesaving Medal.

The rescue occurred in 1899, before the modern Coast Guard existed. The service traces its history to Aug. 4, 1790, when Congress authorized 10 revenue cutters to enforce the young nation’s trade laws. The Revenue Cutter Service merged with the U.S. Life-Saving Service in 1915, placing generations of surfmen such as Midgett inside the Coast Guard’s family tree.

As the service marks its 236th birthday Aug. 4, here are 10 rescues from that history that sound less like official reports and more like scenes rejected from an action movie for being remarkably difficult to believe.

1. Rasmus Midgett Saved 10 People Alone During a Hurricane

Priscilla, 1899

The hurricane that drove Priscilla onto the Outer Banks had turned the narrow beach into a strip of sand surrounded by rushing water. Midgett had already spent roughly 90 minutes on patrol when he reached the wreck.

Going back for help could have taken another three hours. He decided the ship might not last that long.

Midgett waited for each wave to recede, then shouted for an able-bodied sailor to jump. He dragged seven men beyond the reach of the returning surf. He then entered the water three more times to remove the survivors who could no longer move under their own power.

After giving his coat to the ship’s captain, Midgett rode back to fetch his station crew. His decision had saved every survivor still aboard the wreck.

2. A Coast Guard Crew Took a Surfboat Into a Burning Ocean

Mirlo, 1918

On Aug. 16, 1918, a German U-boat attacked the British tanker Mirlo off North Carolina. The blast sent the ship’s cargo of gasoline and refined oil across the water, where it caught fire.

Keeper John Allen Midgett and five men from the Chicamacomico Coast Guard Station dragged their motor surfboat to the beach and needed four attempts to break through the heavy surf. Once beyond the breakers, they encountered lifeboats scattered around the burning tanker.

Six sailors were clinging to a capsized boat inside the fire. No existing procedure explained how to drive a rescue boat through burning fuel, so the crew improvised. The men covered their faces with cloth, used an oar to beat down the flames ahead and pushed through floating wreckage to reach the survivors.

They rescued those six men, found two more overloaded lifeboats and ferried the survivors to shore after dark. The final count was 42 lives saved without the loss of a Coast Guardsman.

3. Rescuers Pulled 33 People From a Submarine 240 Feet Below Water

USS Squalus, 1939

The Navy submarine USS Squalus was conducting a test dive off New Hampshire on May 23, 1939, when a faulty valve allowed seawater to flood its rear compartments.

The submarine settled on the seafloor 240 feet below the surface. Twenty-six people died in the flooded sections, but 33 remained alive in the forward compartments.

The Navy led the underwater rescue using the newly developed McCann Submarine Rescue Chamber, which had never before been used during an actual emergency. Coast Guard boats and cutters rushed divers, equipment and personnel to the scene.

They helped establish a safety cordon and supported the complicated anchoring operation required to position the rescue ship USS Falcon directly over Squalus.

The rescue chamber made four trips to the submarine over roughly 14 hours and returned with all 33 survivors. The operation remains one of a handful of successful rescues of sailors trapped inside a sunken submarine.

Pendleton, 1952

The 502-foot tanker Pendleton broke in half during a brutal February storm off Cape Cod. Its radio room had been destroyed, leaving the crew unable to send a distress call.

Boatswain’s Mate 1st Class Bernie Webber took the 36-foot motor lifeboat CG-36500 across the dangerous Chatham Bar with Richard Livesey, Andy Fitzgerald and Ervin Maske. The first major wave smashed the windshield and tore away the boat’s compass.

They continued into seas that nearby ships reported as reaching 60 feet.

When the crew found Pendleton’s stern, 33 merchant mariners were waiting aboard. Webber repeatedly brought the lifeboat beneath a rope ladder as the tanker rolled above it. Thirty-two men reached CG-36500. One was lost during the transfer.

The rescue boat now carried 36 people and had no working compass. Webber steered through darkness and snow until the crew spotted the small red light of a buoy inside Chatham Bar. All four Coast Guardsmen later received the Gold Lifesaving Medal.

5. Everyone Escaped a Burning Cruise Ship in the Gulf of Alaska

Prinsendam, 1980

An engine-room fire aboard the Dutch cruise liner Prinsendam grew beyond the crew’s control on Oct. 4, 1980. The ship lost power, and 519 passengers and crew members began abandoning it hundreds of miles from the nearest major port.

Many of the passengers were elderly. Weather conditions were deteriorating, and the fire continued moving through the ship.

The rescue became an international operation involving Coast Guard cutters and aircraft, the Air Force, Canadian forces, merchant ships and the 1,000-foot tanker Williamsburgh. Helicopters lifted survivors from lifeboats and carried them to the tanker as waves grew to 20 to 35 feet.

The Coast Guard cutters Boutwell and Woodrush later returned to search for a missing lifeboat carrying survivors and two Canadian pararescuemen. They found it within 45 minutes.

All 519 people aboard Prinsendam escaped alive. The ruined liner sank six days later in water approximately 9,000 feet deep.

Canisvliet, 1985

The Coast Guard cutter Point Highland was only 82 feet long. That did not stop its crew from traveling hundreds of miles into the Atlantic during a winter storm to reach the distressed sailboat Canisvliet.

The cutter battled 25-foot seas and winds reaching 50 knots during the operation. The sailboat was 336 miles off Oregon Inlet, North Carolina, far beyond the kind of nearshore rescue many people associate with a small patrol boat.

The mission took 77 hours. Point Highland saved all four people aboard Canisvliet and completed what was then the longest offshore rescue by a patrol boat in the Coast Guard’s 5th District.

The cutter received the Meritorious Unit Commendation. Its crew presumably had a strong desire to remain on dry land for a while.

7. The Coast Guard Saved More Than 33,500 People After Katrina

Hurricane Katrina, 2005

Hurricane Katrina left thousands of people stranded on rooftops, inside flooded homes and in hospitals across the Gulf Coast.

The Coast Guard moved aircraft, cutters, small boats and personnel into the disaster area as soon as conditions allowed. Crews accustomed to open-water rescues suddenly were forced to navigate power lines, submerged vehicles, buildings and debris-filled streets.

The result became one of the largest rescue operations in U.S. history.

Coast Guard crews saved more than 33,500 people, according to the Government Accountability Office. Aircraft arrived from every Coast Guard air station, while boat crews moved through neighborhoods that had become temporary waterways. Some of the Coast Guardsmen carrying out those missions had also lost their own homes.

At the height of the operation, crews were rescuing hundreds of people every hour.

8. Two Helicopters and a Fishing Boat Saved 42 People in the Bering Sea

Alaska Ranger, 2008

The 189-foot fishing vessel Alaska Ranger began flooding 120 miles west of Dutch Harbor, Alaska, on Easter Sunday in 2008.

All 47 people aboard abandoned ship into the Bering Sea during a blizzard. Waves reached approximately 20 feet, and darkness made finding survivors scattered across the water even harder.

Two Coast Guard helicopters working from the cutter Munro rescued 20 people. The nearby fishing vessel Alaska Warrior recovered another 22.

Five members of Alaska Ranger’s crew died, but the rescue prevented the sinking from becoming a much larger disaster. A personal locator beacon activated by a federal fisheries observer provided rescuers with critical position information as the vessel went down.

9. Helicopter Crews Flew Into Hurricane Sandy to Reach the Bounty

Bounty, 2012

The 180-foot replica sailing ship Bounty lost power and capsized approximately 90 miles southeast of Cape Hatteras while attempting to sail through Hurricane Sandy. Its 16 crew members entered life rafts or were thrown into the Atlantic. Coast Guard aircraft from Air Station Elizabeth City flew into hurricane conditions to find them.

Two MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crews arrived over seas reaching roughly 30 feet. The crews hoisted 14 survivors from life rafts and the open ocean.

Another crew member was later recovered unresponsive, and the captain was never found. The Coast Guard’s aerial image of Bounty almost completely submerged remains one of the most unsettling photographs from the storm. The ship looks less like a vessel in distress than a ghost already halfway gone.

10. A Rescue Swimmer Helped Evacuate 165 People on His First Mission

Texas Hill Country floods, 2025

A Coast Guard helicopter crew based in Corpus Christi received an unusual assignment during the catastrophic July 2025 flooding near Kerrville, Texas. The mission was approximately 150 miles inland.

Lt. Ian Hopper, Lt. Blair Ogujiofor, Petty Officer 3rd Class Seth Reeves and rescue swimmer Petty Officer 3rd Class Scott Ruskan spent hours trying to navigate weather that pushed their MH-65E Dolphin helicopter toward its operating limits.

After three aborted attempts, the crew used its weather radar to find a route through the storm. Army helicopters followed behind.

At Camp Mystic, the crew left Ruskan on the ground while aircraft began evacuating campers and counselors. For three hours, he organized survivors, conducted triage and counted people as they boarded helicopters.

Ruskan helped load 165 people for evacuation during what was reported as his first official rescue mission. Coast Guard crews assisted or rescued 230 people across the broader flood response.

More than a century separates Ruskan’s mission from Midgett carrying sailors through the hurricane surf. The aircraft, communications gear and rescue equipment would have been unrecognizable to the surfmen of 1899, but the mission remains the same.