Simple Courage

May 15, 2006
Crippled by two monstrous waves during a 1951 North Atlantic hurricane, the freighter Flying Enterprise
was left wallowing on its side and looking as if it would sink at any minute. The subsequent rescue, in mountainous seas, of 10 passengers and 40 crew by lifeboats from responding ships was indeed harrowing—and it's over by page 92 of this overblown maritime-distress yarn. The rest of the book is about the Enterprise
's captain, Kurt Carlsen, who insisted on staying aboard to await a tugboat to tow the floundering ship to harbor. Carlsen certainly went beyond the call of duty, but heroism is measured by the stakes involved, which in this case were neither lives nor justice but merely the ship owner's investment. Delaney embellishes the tale with glances at Carlsen's family's anxiety, soggy reminiscences of his own family following the story on the radio and fulsome tributes to the Danish skipper's flinty Nordic resolve (which are rather undercut by the knowledge that Carlsen could have transferred at any time to one of the ships babysitting the hulk). Carlsen's story generated a lot of breathless press hoopla at the time, and it still has the feel of a trumped-up media sensation. Photos not seen by PW
.

Starred review from June 1, 2006
Best-selling popular historian Delaney (" Ireland," 2005) turns his attention to one of the great sea stories of the twentieth century, that of Captain Kurt Carlsen and the " Flying Enterprise." On Christmas Day 1951, the World War II Liberty ship" Flying Enterprise" began splitting apart in a North Atlantic gale, and her cargo of pig iron shifted. Captain Carlsen saw to the safe abandonment of passengers and crew, then remained aboard to help with salvage efforts. He remained aboard, accompanied only by a young radioman who leaped aboard from a rescue ship, until the " Flying Enterprise" was about to sink under him. Although he may not have displayed the most flawless seamanship in the loading of the pig iron, a worldwide media blitz made him an international hero. It is possible that he was guarding some secret, valuable cargo, and recent dives have revealed that some portion of the wreck had been removed in the interim. Any secret remains unproven, and Delaney's digression to compare Carlsen with his father seems rather unnecessary; yet this remains a tale certain to enthrall anyone interested in those who go down to the sea in ships. Indeed, it may be the most surefire nautical crowd-pleaser since Gary Kinder's " Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea" (1998). (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)