A captain who stayed with his ship, Captain Kurt Carlsen, FLYING ENTERPRISE
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Pier 9B
Posted by Carolina Salguero
The story of the Italian cruise ship COSTA CONCORDIA has had me chirping away on Twitter and posting on Facebook. Maybe I'll consolidate those posts here at some point ...
In the meantime, on the subject of stricken vessels, we got word that PBS was looking to interview a captain who stayed with his stricken vessel. I asked PortSide's admiralty lawyer, the wonderfully named Charlie Brown of SNR Denton, if he knew any cases. He said the best was an old one, the captain of the FLYING ENTERPRISE.
His heroism netted him a ticker tape parade in NYC in the 1950's.
His heroism netted him a ticker tape parade in NYC in the 1950's.
Can you imagine a ship captain getting any kind of attention like that in NYC now?!
Meet Captain Kurt Carlsen of the FLYING ENTERPRISE.
"He was offered $250,000 for his story by the British Daily Express newspaper, a half million dollars by Hollywood. Endorsement offers also came in. With riches his for the asking, Carlsen declined all offers. He said "I don't want a seaman's honest attempt to save his ship used for any commercial purpose." After honours from his king and a ticker tape parade in New York, Carlsen returned to the sea where he spent the rest of his career. He died, unnoticed, in 1989."
When he died years later in 1989, he was buried at sea over the wreck of the vessel at his request.
The book about it all "Simple Courage" is on Amazon. The review has more details of the story:
"Carlson stayed aboard, used a makeshift radio and his skills as a ham
radio operator to communicate with the armada of ships that had
gathered, and continued to run his disabled ship single-handedly for
over a week. He risked his life moving about the listing boat,
scavenged what little food and drink there was, wrote it all down in the
store log, and maintained the ship's log and kept her 'legal.' As long
as he was captain and on board, nobody could claim salvage. He
arranged for a contract to be negotiated to get Flying Enterprise towed
to port, all of this over a period of days in which she could have gone
down at any minute. When the tug Turmoil arrived, after a day of trying
to get a line to the lone captain in a large swell, Kenneth Dancy
sprinted across the tug's deck and jumped across to Flying Enterprise to
help Carlson secure the tow line. Dancy became First Mate and he saw
the horrendous and terrifying conditions that Carlson had been living
in, where some walls had become sloping floors, some walls had become
sloping roofs, and sea water and diesel and oil was everywhere. Carlson
had been working, eating, and sleeping in the middle of all this and
remained calm and professional throughout."
85 pages of the book visible on line here
History compiled by a shipwreck blogger here
Report from a diver of the wreck here