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On a fog shrouded night in September 1944, an oceangoing rescue tug and the Coast Guard Cutters Bedloe and Jackson set out to sea from Morehead City, North Carolina with a full complement of men. World War II was coming to a close in the Atlantic, yet trouble could still be found just a few miles offshore. A liberty ship on her maiden voyage, a German U-boat in the wrong place at the right time, and the second worst hurricane of the century culminated in a desperate struggle for survival, as the rescuers unwittingly became the victims. The Bedloe, the Jackson, and forty-eight crewmen were never seen again. It was one of the worst maritime disasters to befall the Coast Guard during World War II. This epic tale takes the reader full circle from the rum running days of Prohibition through the final moments and beyond, detailing the separate discoveries of the Bedloe and the Jackson shipwrecks half a century later. Firsthand accounts by survivors unveil the heart wrenching and sometimes brutal aspects of their ordeal, while in-depth analysis of obscure technical details reveal that there was more to this catastrophe than meets the eye.