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In December 1951, laden with passengers and nearly forty metric tons of cargo, the merchant marine freighter S.S. Flying Enterprise steamed westward from Europe toward America. A few days into the voyage, she hit a ferocious storm. Within 28 hours, the ship was slammed by two rogue waves--solid walls of water more than sixty feet high--cracking the decks and hull almost down to the waterline. The captain, Kurt Carlsen, mustered all hands to patch the cracks and try to right the ship. Then he helped transfer, across 40-foot waves, the passengers and crew to lifeboats from nearby ships. Then, to the amazement of the world, Carlsen defied all entreaties to abandon ship. Instead, for the next two weeks, he fought to bring Flying Enterprise and her cargo to port. His heroic endeavor became the world's biggest news.--From publisher description.… (more)
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Captain Kurt Carlsen declined to join his rescued crew and passengers and elected to fulfill what he saw as his simple duty to stand-by his wrecked vessel until he could bring it safely to port … or she sunk. He was of that “Great Generation” mold and the vicious storms, in 1952, occurred while we were still on rationing for basic foodstuffs after WWII. His examples of sheer seamanship and professional ethics offered a hero and an honorable courage to respect, without the bloodshed of our wartime heroes, and a ‘role model’ that could more easily be adopted as it was in an area of skills and an environment to which many of us could directly relate.
Delaney’s book is well crafted, tells the tale in a straightforward chronological structure and does not avoid the various technicalities and terminology of the sea, the accident, the rescues attempts and the sad, frustrating but nearly inevitable end. It is in fact the ending, of his book, that creates a problem. He seems unable to let the story conclude and having identified a genuine hero then explores the nowadays almost equally inevitable need to pull him down. The introduction of the author’s own troubled relationships with his father, the usual muck-racking and questioning of the motivation for Captain Carlsen’s simple courage do not add to the book’s worth and detract from the value the author crafts in recounting this hero’s story.