Remembering a captain's harrowing battle to save his ship

Frank Delaney, an Irish writer who was 9 at the time, remembers his father bursting from his parlor sanctum where he was listening to the radio -- alone, as was his wont -- to summon the family: ``There is an incident happening at sea."

For the next 10 days, Delaney writes in ``Simple Courage," his vivid and forceful account of Carlsen's lonely battle with the sea, ``the sea poured in across our threshold and washed words up at our feet," and every night his mother added a prayer for ``the safety of Captain Carlsen and the Flying Enterprise" to the family's evening prayers.

Delaney has done a grand service for those who, like himself (and this reviewer) , remember being affixed by the story of the defiant captain and has presented an enduring story for those who encounter it for the first time.

The first ``extreme storm wave" thundered down on the Flying Enterprise, cracking the deck and topsides, just before dawn on Dec. 27, as the ship was some 350 miles off the Irish coast, heading out into the North Atlantic on a voyage from Hamburg to New York.

Fighting against hurricane-force winds, the crew patched the crack with concrete and lumber. Then, 28 hours later, a second wave, some 60 feet high and propelled by the storm winds, barreled into the Flying Enterprise, knocking it almost on its side. As the cargo shifted, the ship never righted itself.

Responding to distress signals, other ships, including a US Navy transport, headed for the stricken ship.

Over some seven hours, all but one of the 10 passengers and dozens of crewmen were rescued -- the passengers leaped into the fearsome waves, each person accompanied by a crew member, and swam to lifeboats (though five of the boats capsized in the effort).

Finally, as night fell on Dec. 29, the Navy transport's radioman called the Flying Enterprise: ``When do you come off?"

``I'm the captain," replied Kurt Carlsen, ``and I am not leaving."

``He was the last man standing in a wintry, violent, and inundated prison," Delaney comments, ``and he was master of nothing that he surveyed."

A powerful salvage tug arrived, but when numerous attempts to secure a towline were unsuccessful, tug crewman Kenneth Dancy leaped on board. Together, they made fast the line, and a long slow tow back toward the English port of Falmouth began.

On Jan. 10, off the southern Irish coast, a new storm struck, and the ship did not survive. Carlsen and Dancy had leapt into the sea several hours before ``the sea had her," as Delaney puts it, and were rescued.

Carlsen received a hero's honors and, more important, was cleared of any blame for the loss of his ship. He went back to sea and for years afterward, Delaney reports, reporters in foreign ports ``scanned shipping lists for his impending arrival" and the chance to interview him. He died, on shore, in 1989.