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Read MoreThe 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....
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Read MoreKurt 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...
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Read MoreThe 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...
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Read MoreFor 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...
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Read More“What do you fear most,” captain Carlsen? – “Going ashore!
Dancy and Carlsen slept soundly despite the raging storm. They went to bunk with the knowledge that now almost nothing could go wrong. Almost nothing! At a speed of 3 knots – the same as a pedestrian – “Turmoil” pulled the two men and their ‘dead’ ship towards land. Dan Parker was authorized to choose the nearest port – it didn’t matter if it was Ireland, France or England.As a result of the traversing...
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Read MoreThe world wanted to know more about the indomitable Danish sailor
The notice in a Danish newspaper about ”Flying Enterprise’s” problems in the Atlantic was, for the time being, the only thing the world knew about the drama. Headlines talked of the war in Korea and meetings in high politics. But then came the picture of the solitary Danish captain sitting on his listing ship in the Atlantic, waving at a photographer from an English news-paper. They had received a tip...
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Read MoreJust as he’d wished, Kurt Carlsen died in his home
He became ill, seriously ill, shortly before his 75th birthday, and the fatalist Kurt Carlsen resigned himself to the inevitable, as he had always done. It was not the first time he was face to face with death. This time, however, he lost the fight, the “hero from the Atlantic”. When I was told his life story 35 years ago, we talked about the wall with all the medals, diplomas and not least the large...
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Read MoreCarlsen’s wish is that his ashes be spread in the sea close to where “Flying Enterprise” went down
Jens Rytter was captain of “Jutlandia”. One day while he was on holiday at home on the island of Funen, the phone rang. It was from the East Asiatic Shipping Company’s office in Copenhagen. They asked if Jens would drop by to discuss a special job to be carried out on his next trip to the Orient. That was all they could say for the time being. Jens Rytter would receive more information about the manner of...
TV-REPORT FROM HOLLAND 1952
THE HERO FROM THE ATLANTIC
Coffee and cigarettes from gun
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