Word: saws
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...pulled on their jackets and fought toward the rails, the stricken craft rolled over. First Mate Fleming and Deck Watchman Frank Mays pulled themselves onto a 4-by-8-ft. raft, began shouting to the others. "The sea was so great that men were hidden," said Fleming later. "We saw someone near and shouted him over to us." It was Deck Watchman Gary Strzelecki...
...struggling sailors grew fainter; the buoy flares were snuffed out. The three men on the raft spotted Deck Hand Dennis Meredith and pulled him aboard. They found five flares and a sea anchor inside the hatch of the raft. It was more than an hour later that they saw a rescue ship, the German motor vessel Christian Sartori. Fleming shot four flares, but the Sartori did not see them. Still the rescue ship, rolling as much as 50°, plunged toward the raft...
...indeed mere minutes. It was about 11:30 p.m. when the biggest wave crested. Straight up into the air went the raft, and into the sea once more the men were flung. Mays got back first, then Strzelecki, and then Fleming. They called for Meredith, but they heard nothing, saw nothing...
Thanksgiving. The first light broke into the dirty black sky hours later. Mays thought he saw a sea gull. He looked again, saw the flashing lights of a Coast Guard twin-engined amphibian Albatross. The men tried to get up, to signal the plane, but in a moment it was gone. The raft drifted on. As the clouds broke before the sun. Fleming and Mays looked at their watches: 8:40. Then they looked at each other: their eyes were puffed, their faces red, their lips swollen, their hands cut and bruised. Yet, somehow, now that daylight had come, they...
Ahead, just then, they saw land: High Island, a small square bump in the lake. Slowly, the raft drifted toward it. Fleming turned around: behind, bearing down on them, was a ship. They were spotted. It was the Coast Guard tender Sundew. They cried: "It's coming! It's coming!" It was about 15 hours after the Bradley had gone down when they sank to their knees in thanksgiving for their own survival-and in mourning for the 33 men of the Bradley who had died on Lake Michigan in November's seas...