Kevin Duffus Presentation – February 18th

Into the Burning Sea - The Greatest Coast Guard Rescue in American History

Presented by Kevin Duffus
February 18, 2024 at 2:00pm
at Orringer Auditorium

The British tanker, Mirlo, loaded with nearly 300,000 gallons of aviation fuel was 5 miles east of the Outer Banks village of Rodanthe on August 16, 1918, when it was torpedoed. Duffus describes the unimaginable ordeal endured by six courageous Coast Guardsmen in a small motor lifeboat as they imperiled their own lives by entering a hellish and deadly inferno of explosions and toxic fumes and navigating a confusing maze of swirling black smoke to rescue strangers in distress. It was a day when American lifesaving history was made. In an emotional “coda” to the Mirlo story, three years after his book was published Duffus received an amazing letter from a woman in England named Mirlo, the granddaughter of the third officer of the tanker whose personal eyewitness account in a series of letters revealed a previously unknown and astonishing perspective of the catastrophe. When Duffus reads the heart-wrenching letters of the British sailor and his granddaughter, the lessons of history and the true essence of the lifesavers’ legacy becomes evident.