Please take a look – Kurt Carlsen at e-book
IN JANUARY IT’S POSSIBLE TO TAKE A LOOK inside the book. You can zoomm and read, but not download. The book is protected by the law of international...
Read More
The Maritime Museum of the Islands – with Captain Carlsen and Flying Enterprise
In a small Danish island at the South Funen Archipelago a museum about Kurt Carlsen and Flying Enterprise will open in the summer of 2013 an opportunity to relive the drama of the Atlantic in 1951-52. It happens when Øhavets Maritime Museum opens department “Flying Enterprise & Kurt Carlsen”. Maritime Museum is housed in a farmhouse from 1921 – and some other places at Funen and the small Islands. The 240 sqm is totally rebuilt and has a hand-built, 15-meter-long copy between rafters of Newfoundland schooner ‘Fulton’ of Marstal It was on board ‘Claudia’ from Marstal Kurt Carlsen in 1932 for the first time crossed the Atlantic…. (updated)...
Read More
The ship broke in two on a giant wave
The winter storms had raged more violently than usual in the northern Atlantic. When Kurt Carlsen sailed into the Channel the problems had already begun. Tugboats from France, Holland and England had already dealt with the first disabled vessels, but there were more yet to come, and the weather was getting wilder and more vicious. The Day before Christmas Eve, Carlsen received new orders from Isbrandtsen. ”For the sake of America” was one of the the things it said. The orders were clear. Kurt Carlsen was to leave Hamburg immediately and head for Baltimore with his cargo. Even though there was space for another 1200 tons in the middle hold which mostly contained mail, Carlsen ordered the ship to sail at once. ”I was very sorry to have to cancel Christmas with my parents and siblings. They had been...
Read More
Kurt Carlsen tells the truth about the drama
Kurt Carlsen sat, subdued, with his pipe in his mouth. It had long gone out, but he didn’t seem to realize that. Deeply concentrated on both the projector and the shipwreck from his past, he chewed on the stem of the pipe and adjusted the focus. The monotonous sound and flashes of light on the white screen in the living room reinforced the mood. Once in a while Carlsen pressed the pause button and carefully wound the big film reel back and forth when important details needed substantiating. For example, the story of the graphic descriptions circulated by the world’s press of ”chief officer Kenneth Roger Dancy, who, in the hurricane, leapt from ship to ship in the foaming Atlantic Ocean!” – ”Well”, said Carlsen and focused on the stern railing. ”Dancy stumbled over on ”Turmoil”, and suddenly he...
Read More
The voice from the past. The voice from the Atlantic
It is one of those gorgeous October days in Silkeborg in 2011. Erling Horslykke Andersen has just been in the attic to get his father’s steel tape recorder. The metal thread, less than a millimeter thick is wound from reel to reel through a magnet head. The transformer that adjusts the power to 110 volts is just as aged as the rest of the equipment, none of which has been used for decades. “We’ll give it a try,” says Erling who is a ham operator just like his father, the legendary radio dealer, Knud P. from Silkeborg. Seconds later, Captain Kurt Carlsen’s voice can be heard in the room. The voice from the past. The voice from the Atlantic. When Kurt Carlsen and Kenneth Dancy went ashore in Falmouth, Knud P. Andersen was there with his Webstar Chicago. It...
Read More
For the sake of America, said the telegram
He had been the leader of convoys for the US navy more than 100 times during the Second World War. He knew, to put it mildly, all the surprises the weather gods could come up with in the area between Iceland, Murmansk and Europe. So Captain Carlsen’s thoughts were elsewhere as he sailed towards Hamburg via Rotterdam. In his warm captain’s cabin which contained several powerful radio transmitters and receivers, he maintained contact with his ham radio friends all over the world. There were beach mariners, landlubbers, other captains, a cratfsman from Munkebo on the island of Funen, King Hussein of Jordan and his best friend, Knud P. Andersen in the town of Silkeborg. They had been very close friends since before the war and there was good chemistry between them. They could talk about anything on the radio...
Read More