Sunday marked the 44th anniversary of the collision between the Coast Guard Cutter Blackthorn and the tanker vessel Capricorn.
"I'll never forget the morning I was getting ready for work, and I heard on the radio there had been an accident on Blackthorn. Seconds later, the phone rang, and it was my parents to tell me they had found Jerry's body," Devlynn Tanner shared.
Tanner said her brother loved the Coast Guard, and she loved him.
"We were very, very close. It was hard on my dad and mom to lose him," Tanner explained.
Sunday, dozens gathered for a solemn ceremony as they remembered what the Coast Guard considers its worst peacetime disaster.
The Captain of Blackthorn reminisced 44 years later alongside his grandchildren and fellow crewmen.
"It's such a beautiful thing to remember the best ship I was ever on," Commander Jim Sepel said.
He said it took more than a year to figure out what happened that night as he recalled the moments leading up to the collision.
"I said, sound the collision alarm, and I came right full rudder, and we turned right, full rudder... It was the loudest... noise, and I backed the ship down," Sepel explained.
Sepel said Capricorn's anchor lodged directly into his ship as it Blackthorn and killed 23 of the 50 crew members on board.
Both Tanner and Sepel said Sunday's ceremony, which honored not just the victims but their family and crew members, means everything.
"We're family... It was the best ship I ever had. I was honored to be the commanding officer, and no one is taking that away from me. Period," Sepel said.
