Beskrivelse

IN 2012, THE WORLD will celebrate the 60th anniversary of Captain Kurt Carlsen’s heroic exploits aboard ”Flying Enterprise”. A drama, that for 13 hectic days, kept the world in breathless suspense, until on January 10th 1952, ”Flying Enterprise” met her fate at the bottom of the English Channel, a mere 35 sea miles from Falmouth. The spectacular shipwreck was the start of Kurt Carlsen’s world fame, but at the same time started an avalanche of speculation: What cargo could be so important that the captain held out through a hurricane for 13 days and had the US Navy as a watchdog?

IN A PERSONAL ACCOUNT from his meetings with Kurt Carlsen, the author tells, for the first time, the complete life story of the famous seaman: About his childhood in Elsinore, where his father was a gaffer in the peat bogs, and about his love for beautiful, petite Agnes from the fishing community in Blåvand. And not least, about the drama that assembled the world around the radio, 60 years ago.

THE BOOK “FLYING ENTERPRISE” contains a wealth of new information spiced with hundreds of authentic pictures from private collections, from the 16 mm films of friends and from personal interviews. But first and foremost, the dramatic pictures and minute-by-minute accounts give a hitherto unknown insight into the shipwreck. Lastly, the book relates the story of Kurt Carlsen’s final, singular voyage, when the captain’s ashes were to be spread in the English Channel in 1990 – but because of another hurricane, sailed there via Japan.

“Men die. Fools die. But never does a man’s reputation die…”