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Indlæser... Simple Courage: A True Story of Peril on the Sea (2006)af Frank Delaney
  
Ingen Der er ingen diskussionstråde på Snak om denne bog.   ) addunn3 | Sep 21, 2020 |  JohnLavik | Mar 29, 2020 |  )1  Stbalbach | Apr 23, 2014 | Captain Kurt Carlsen declined to join his rescued crew and passengers and elected to fulfill what he saw as his simple duty to stand-by his wrecked vessel until he could bring it safely to port … or she sunk. He was of that “Great Generation” mold and the vicious storms, in 1952, occurred while we were still on rationing for basic foodstuffs after WWII. His examples of sheer seamanship and professional ethics offered a hero and an honorable courage to respect, without the bloodshed of our wartime heroes, and a ‘role model’ that could more easily be adopted as it was in an area of skills and an environment to which many of us could directly relate. Delaney’s book is well crafted, tells the tale in a straightforward chronological structure and does not avoid the various technicalities and terminology of the sea, the accident, the rescues attempts and the sad, frustrating but nearly inevitable end. It is in fact the ending, of his book, that creates a problem. He seems unable to let the story conclude and having identified a genuine hero then explores the nowadays almost equally inevitable need to pull him down. The introduction of the author’s own troubled relationships with his father, the usual muck-racking and questioning of the motivation for Captain Carlsen’s simple courage do not add to the book’s worth and detract from the value the author crafts in recounting this hero’s story. 1 John_Vaughan | Oct 4, 2011 |  ) dickcraig | Aug 20, 2008 |
 In Simple Courage, Frank Delaney departs from the gifted storytelling that made his 2005 novel Ireland a best seller to recount in documentary style the true tale of the rescue operation in late December 1951 to save the brutally damaged freighter S.S. Flying Enterprise. Cracked apart by an ocean storm, slammed on its side by rogue waves 60 feet high, the ship floundered helplessly off the coast of England. While other vessels raced to its aid, the world watched news reports of a stoic captain who refused to abandon ship. Capt. Kurt Carlsen defined heroism by defying bleak odds to save his passengers and his crew before stubbornly trying to bring his crippled ship to port. During the two-week ordeal, he endured hammering high seas, hurricane-force winds and winter temperatures so cold they turned sea foam into ice missiles. On its surface, this is an engaging story of bygone days when character counted more than celebrity or money. But for readers less maritime-mesmerized than the author, the book's ballast brims with technical flotsam — seafaring minutiae and merchant-marine legalities that never let the suspense get up to full speed. More difficult to navigate, however, is an undertow throughout the book that tugs at the reader to believe that this harrowing rescue attempt was one of the most meaningful stories of its time — one that "marks a generation," as Delaney puts it, in the same way the Kennedy assassination did. For the author, maybe so. Then a boy in a coastal town of Ireland, young Delaney stayed glued to radio bulletins of the perils Carlsen faced. With World War II a recent memory, the man-vs.-sea theme had wind in its sails back then. Humphrey Bogart captained The African Queen to an Oscar that year, and Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny won a Pulitzer. But the Flying Enterprise was no Titanic. It was no Andrea Doria, no Lusitania, not even an Edmund Fitzgerald. And Courage is not The Perfect Storm. By the book's end, Delaney tries to tie together an underwhelming finale with personal dunnage — his troubled relationship with a strict and unloving Irish father and how the two of them found, if only for a short time that winter 55 years ago, an escape from the perils of their own home life in the uncommon courage of a heroic skipper and ship lost to the seas. Distinctions
In December 1951, laden with passengers and nearly forty metric tons of cargo, the merchant marine freighter S.S. Flying Enterprise steamed westward from Europe toward America. A few days into the voyage, she hit a ferocious storm. Within 28 hours, the ship was slammed by two rogue waves--solid walls of water more than sixty feet high--cracking the decks and hull almost down to the waterline. The captain, Kurt Carlsen, mustered all hands to patch the cracks and try to right the ship. Then he helped transfer, across 40-foot waves, the passengers and crew to lifeboats from nearby ships. Then, to the amazement of the world, Carlsen defied all entreaties to abandon ship. Instead, for the next two weeks, he fought to bring Flying Enterprise and her cargo to port. His heroic endeavor became the world's biggest news.--From publisher description. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Indlæser...GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)910.9163History and Geography Geography and Travel Geography and Travel History, geographic treatment, biography - Discovery. exploration Geography of and travel in areas, regions, places in general Air And Water Atlantic OceanLC-klassificeringVurderingGennemsnit: (3.44)
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