The Finest Hours: The True Story of the U.S. Coast Guard's Most Daring Sea Rescue

The story behind the major motion picture from Disney—starring Chris Pine, Eric Bana, and Casey Affleck—written by a recognized master of the genre—“a blockbuster account of tragedy at sea” (The Providence Journal).

It’s the winter of 1952 and a ferocious Nor’easter is pounding New England with howling winds and seventy-foot seas. Two oil tankers get caught in the violent storm off Cape Cod, its fury splitting the massive ships in two. Back on shore, four young Coast Guardsmen are issued a suicide mission: save the lives of the stranded seamen. Sailing a tiny lifeboat into the teeth of the killer storm, the rescue crew soon loses all navigation. With no idea where the stranded seaman are nor how to get back home, the crew stumbles upon the SS Pendleton in the darkness. More than thirty hopeful men appear at the wounded ship’s railings. Can the tiny lifeboat save them all?

Dripping with suspense and high-stakes human drama, The Finest Hours has incredible and astonishing true-to-life heroism and action-packed rescue scenes. This “marvelous and terrifying yarn” (Los Angeles Times) “deserves a place as a classic of survival at sea” (The Boston Globe).