Disney's "The Finest Hours," which had its first public screenings Thursday night at theaters here and around the country, rightly celebrates one of the Coast Guard's most daring rescues, and a very successful one. 

The brave Coast Guardsmen who headed into the teeth of that roaring blizzard in the winter of 1952, from Chatham, Mass., improbably and heroically brought back the crew of a sinking tanker, working against all odds.

The rescue crew that set out from Chatham during a storm some 50 years earlier, though, on March 17, 1902, did not fare as well.

The crew from the old Monomoy Life Saving Station rescued all hands from a barge in distress off the coast of Cape Cod that night. But the rescue boat capsized on the return trip.

Eight lifesavers and four crew from the barge were lost.

That kind of tragedy is not necessarily the stuff of Disney movies.

But it is the reality of the dangerous business of extreme lifesaving.

Indeed, there are dozens of names on a memorial roster of Coast Guard lifesavers who have lost their own lives in the heroic service of savings others.

Two Coast Guardsmen assigned to the New London station, who lost their lives one bitter cold February night in 1953, offshore and in the line of the duty, have not only not been remembered in a movie, but their story has been generally lost over time.

I heard about it this week, when someone who grew up on the street in New London where one of the victims lived, sent an email asking if I could help him find out more about the story.

I came up short poking around Coast Guard history sites. I also could not find anything in The Day's archives.

An adroit newsroom Googler, though, found a UPI wire story from the Sarasota Herald Tribune of Feb. 17, 1953, with the headline: "Two Guardsmen Freeze To Death On Breakwater."

The relatively short story, with a dateline of Old Saybrook, briefly told how Amos Whittemore of New London and Guy Blucher of Jacksonville, Ark., died of exposure after spending five hours in freezing temperatures and heavy seas, stranded on the Old Saybrook breakwater some 200 feet from land.

A third enlisted man, Russell Waddell of West Creek, N.J., was rescued and hospitalized after a passing tanker heard cries, turned the ship's spotlight on the breakwater and spotted the men.

A veteran Connecticut River pilot, who lived in a shoreline cottage near the breakwater, was called to help.

According to the news story, the three men from the New London Coast Guard station had been called out that night to repair a launch which had broken down on the way to a lightship marking Cornfield Point, moored at the mouth of the Connecticut River.

They fixed the engine in the launch and were on their way back to Old Saybrook when it broke down again.

The high winds and seas carried them to the breakwater, and they scrambled on top, the story said.

It's part of the obligation and dedication of the great service of the Coast Guard that you go out, when asked, no matter what the conditions might be.

That's what they did in Chatham during that blizzard in 1952. That's what they did that bitter cold February night in New London a year later.

Sometimes, they don't come home.

That's what makes what they do, often raw bravery, the stuff of movies.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com

Twitter: @DavidCollinsct