Tug Turmoil

by David Carroll

“IT BEGAN ON A CHRISTMAS DAY – and for the next 14 days the sea saga off the south-west coast of Ireland was to grip the whole western world.

It was the Chilean Mine Rescue of its time – the dying days of 1951 and the first ten of 1952.

Every day, the radio and newspaper reports became longer, more detailed, and more excited as everyone — from small boys to grandparents — kept watch to learn what might be the fate of the stricken freighter Flying Enterprise and its heroic skipper, Captain Kurt Carlsen.”

The Journal, (Online), January 15th, 2015- Article by Eanna Brophy.

Christmas 1951 was the setting for one of my earliest and fondest memories of my father. I can still recall him, sitting in his favourite seat beside the warm fire, turning knobs to tune our radio and then listening with undivided attention to news bulletins on the BBC Home Service and our own Irish radio service, which we always called ‘Athlone.’

Athlone, being in the centre of Ireland, was where the radio transmitter was located and the name ‘Athlone’ appeared on the dial of all radios, along with many other strange names. I am always reminded of this era when listening to Paul Durcan, who provides the spoken word parts of Van Morrison’s classic, In the Days Before Rock ‘n’ Roll:

In the days before rock 'n' roll

And I’m searching for

Luxembourg, Luxembourg

Athlone, Budapest, AFN

Hilversum, Helvetia

In the days before rock ‘n’ roll

So, what was it that captured my father’s continual interest for almost two weeks? I was too young to fully understand the finer details of a dramatic event that was taking place out, way out in the Atlantic but even then, I realised, even at that early age, that it must be something significant. I could hear the names Turmoil and Flying Enterprise being mentioned and I soon realised that a ship was sinking, and a tugboat was trying to tow it to safety. Newspapers were also packed daily with reports on this dramatic saga. I was too young to read these but listening to my father as he related how the story was unfolding was my source of information.

A few years later, our family visited Cobh in Co Cork for a short break. My father had been stationed at Haulbowline, near Cobh, in the Irish Naval Service during the years of the Second World War, and he and my mother were going back there to meet some of the families of naval personnel that they had got to know during that time. We took a drive around Cork Harbour and to my amazement we saw the tug Turmoil at anchor. To say that I was flabbergasted would be an exaggeration. This was the very same tug that we had been listening about on the radio several years before. I had never seen a tugboat previously – it so large and powerful looking. From that day, the name Turmoil has been indelibly etched in my memory.

Tug Turmoil Photo: Courtesy of Cormac Lowth.

On October 20th, 1954, the Cork Examiner reported the arrival of Turmoil, to be stationed at Cobh. Previously the vessel had been on station at Berehaven Harbour in Co Cork. The report read as follows:

ACHIEVED FAME WITH “FLYING ENTERPRISE”

Tug Turmoil Arrives In Cork

The British tug Turmoil from Falmouth arrived in Cork Harbour yesterday morning to take up her winter station at Cobh. She is commanded by Capt. FD Parker, who with his ship, achieved fame for the part they played in the famous Flying Enterprise drama of three winters ago.

"The fact that the owners of the world’s most powerful salvage tug have seen fit to station the vessel in Cobh shows the importance attached to the port as a base to render speedy assistance to vessels disabled on the North Atlantic sea route".

The Turmoil, built at Leith, Scotland, in 1945, is a vessel of 1,135 tons gross and is fitted with all the latest appliances for salvage and sea rescue work. She is owned by the Admiralty and managed by the Oversea Towage and Salvage Co., London, for whom Messrs James Scott and Co., Ships Agents, are the local representatives.

The latest sea rescue affected by the Turmoil was the towing to Falmouth this week of the Norwegian vessel “William,” which lost her propeller off the Wexford Coast.

Capt. Parker hopes he will soon have the task of speeding to the rescue of another lame duck and towing her into Cobh to provide work for the local dockyard and its employees.

While I was still too young to understand the significance of the dramatic events that had taken place after Christmas 1951, I was smitten by this vessel. I talked about it incessantly to my father at the time.

Shortly after our visit to Cork Harbour, my father repaired an old yacht’s dinghy. He was very skilled at building small boats. Every winter, when I was a small boy, he built a new rowing dinghy in a workshop located on the pier. This old dinghy had been lying in an unloved and neglected condition in the old boathouse beside the Dunmore East lifeboat station for a long time, certainly since before the war. It was a clinker-built dinghy and I believe that it had served as a tender to a yacht, many years before.

Dunmore East 1930 with yachts being rigged for racing. Was the dinghy, later to become ‘Turmoil,’ involved in getting the crew members aboard?

Photo: Courtesy of Waterford County Museum.

A number of the planks on either side of the bow stem had pulled away and were also damaged, with parts of their ends missing. To overcome this problem, my father constructed an entire new bow stem and reduced the overall length of the dinghy by about six inches. By doing this, he could get all the planks to reach the new stem and fasten them with copper nails. This gave the bow of the dinghy a more rounded appearance. It was a very stable dinghy, easy to row, and it became my first rowing boat. Without any hesitation, the dinghy was going to be called Turmoil. The word ‘dinghy’ was never used – Turmoil was always referred to as a punt.

My Turmoil gave me many years of summer pleasure. I spent endless hours rowing into all the small coves around Dunmore East, particularly at high water. A favourite trip of mine was to row under the arch leading to the ‘Island.’ This could only be achieved close to high water.

I was always on hand to ferry yachtsmen out to their boats, and many were very generous. The annual Regatta was the highlight of the summer in Dunmore East during the 1950s. For several years, Turmoil was dressed in some theme to enter the Fancy Dress Parade, one of the highlights of the Regatta Day.

Low water was the time to catch shrimps in the seaweed along the quay walls. If you were lucky enough, a visiting yacht in the harbour might buy your catch, which was a nice bonus. I also tried to sail Turmoil but with no centre board, sailing to windward was not successful.

I had one lobster pot, which I used to set at the back of the pier, but my lobster fishing met with little success. Even when the harbour development works were in progress during the late 1960s and small boat activity in the harbour was very restricted, we moved Turmoil to Ballymacaw Cove, where it spent it last days. One night, it broke its moorings and drifted out to sea to a watery grave. I was delighted that this happened as I would have been terribly upset to see the Turmoil being broken up.

(An extra fitting was attached to the bow seat so that a mast could be stepped to take sails. For the 1961 Dunmore East Regatta, Turmoil was dressed as the Asgard, the famous gunrunning yacht that had recently returned to Howth from Southampton.)

David Carroll in "Turmoil"

The incredible sea story of that other Turmoil started on December 21st , 1951, as The SS Flying Enterprise departed from Hamburg, in Germany bound for New York with a cargo that was said to include 1,300 tons of pig iron, 900 tons of coffee and ten passengers.

The sea saga that would enfold off the south-west coast of Ireland was the one that had gripped my father’s undivided attention for two weeks. He was not alone as this story held the whole western world spellbound. With each passing day, radio and newspaper reports became longer, more detailed, and more excited as everyone — from small boys to grandparents — kept watch to learn what might be the fate of the stricken Flying Enterprise and its heroic skipper.

The ship was under the command of Captain Kurt Carlsen, a Danish-born seaman that began his sea career at the age of fourteen and had become master of his first ship at the age of twenty-two.

The SS Flying Enterprise was 6,711 ton and had been built in 1944 as SS Cape Kumukaki for the United States Maritime Commission for use in World War II. The ship was sold in 1947 and then operated in scheduled service under the name Flying Enterprise. The Flying Enterprise was one of 2,710 Liberty ships, built, to a single design, in eighteen American shipyards between 1941 and 1945 to meet British orders to replace ships that were lost in wartime.

From the departure out of Hamburg through the English Channel the vessel encountered heavy fog. On Christmas Eve, the Flying Enterprise first encountered heavy weather due to a strong low-pressure area that was moving well northward of Ireland and Scotland. The heavy weather continued through Christmas Day and the following day and as the vessel passed out of the Channel and into the North Atlantic gale force winds increased to storm force 10 and got worse to become the most powerful Atlantic storm in forty years.

During the night of December 26th, Capt. Carlsen decided to heave the vessel to as winds continued to increase and approach hurricane- force 12. At this stage, The Flying Enterprise was three hundred miles off the southwest coast of Ireland. On December 27th, the pounding of the seas took its toll: the vessel suffered structural damage with a crack right across the deckhouse and down one side. One of its holds filled with water and it began to list. The cargo then shifted. The force 12 winds had been driven the Flying Enterprise far north of the traffic lanes. Captain Carlsen tried to steer it back to where other ships might be able to come to its assistance.

An SOS was issued on December 28th, by which time she was listing 45 degrees. On December 29th, a British ship, M V Sherborne came in sight of the Flying Enterprise early in the morning. But for some odd reason, Captain Carlsen did not want a British ship to rescue his passengers and crew. He knew an American ship was on its way, and he decided to delay the rescue until it arrived. But he asked Sherborne to stay close by.

The "Flying Enterprise", listing heavily in the Atlantic.

The American ship was the troopship USS General AW Greely, which arrived mid-afternoon. Captain Carlsen gave the order to abandon ship, but the Flying Enterprise was listing so badly that her lifeboats could not be launched. The only way off the crippled vessel was to jump into the cold Atlantic Ocean. Each passenger was assigned a crew member and they jumped in pairs. They swam to the General AW Greely's lifeboats and were hauled aboard to safety, although one passenger drowned in the hazardous abandonment. After the passengers and crew had been evacuated, MV Sherborne was released and continued her voyage to Manchester.

Captain Carlsen courageously remained aboard. This decision was to capture the imagination of people all over the world for the next two weeks. His decision was based on the premise that if there was no representative of the owners on the ship, she was fair game for anyone who could salvage her, and the owners would suffer a large monetary loss. There was another important reason, which we will revert to later.

The second chapter of the Flying Enterprise saga started on January 2nd, 1952, when the 1,136-ton tug Turmoil, based at Falmouth in Cornwall, was tasked to try to rendezvous with Captain Carlsen and tow his ship to safety. A new storm began to blow up as the Turmoil set out under the command of Captain FD Parker, better known as Dan. Born in 1891, Captain Parker had seen naval service during both World Wars and later he joined the Overseas Towage & Salvage Company as First Officer of the Turmoil. However, it was the Turmoil’s current First Officer, Kenneth Dancy, aged twenty-seven years, who was to gain his own slice of fame in the next few days.

The United States destroyer John W Weeks was at the scene of the listing vessel, having relieved the other merchant ships on January 2nd. When the Turmoil arrived on January 4th, she was guided by the searchlight from the John W Weeks, but it proved impossible to get a tow line onto the Flying Enterprise, with just Captain Carlson alone on the vessel, now listing at 60 degrees. After several unsuccessful attempts to secure a tow line, Kenneth Dancy, braving huge waves, dramatically leaped from the deck of the tug onto the railing of the Flying Enterprise on one of the remarkably close approaches made by Captain Dan Parker of the Turmoil during one of these failed attempts. With the help of Kenneth Dancy, a tow line was secured and the long three-hundred nautical miles voyage back to Falmouth began on January 5th.

The "Flying Enterprise" and the tug "Turmoil".

Accessed from Ships Nostalgia – an artistic impression of Turmoil close to the listing Flying Enterprise as Kenneth Dancy prepares to make his famous leap.

For five days, the entire world eagerly watched with bated breath as the two vessels got closer and closer to Falmouth. The story captured everybody’s attention with radio reports being listened to attentively and newspapers devoting many columns to the saga at sea of the two courageous sailors.

However, the weather worsened, putting extra strain on the tow cable. In the early hours of January 10th, the cable parted, and it was clear that the end was close – the ship being nearly on her beam-ends. Just before Flying Enterprise sank, Captain Carlson and Kenneth Dancy, abandoned ship at 15.22 hrs and walked along the funnel and jumped into the angry seas of the Atlantic to be pulled aboard the Turmoil. The Flying Enterprise was only thirty-one nautical miles south of the Lizard peninsula in Cornwall. The ship sank, stern first, at 16.10hrs to whistle, siren and foghorn salutes from the various vessels that had come to the escort the stricken vessel to safety. The ship had been lost, but the sheer bravery exhibited by Captain Carlsen and Kenneth Dancy filled up the newspaper columns for days afterwards. The two men stepped ashore in Falmouth and were showered with all manner of gifts.

The salvage efforts were criticised at the time as the Flying Enterprise might have been saved by heading for the nearer safe harbour of Cork. It is ironic that two years later, Turmoil took up station at Cobh in Cork Harbour. In a few brief years, while stationed in Cork Harbour, she made an indelible mark on Cobh and is still remembered fondly with pride and affection.

What was the other reason that Captain Carlson was so determined to stay aboard his ship, at significant risk to his own life, and not abandon it? The reason may lie in the speculation that the Flying Enterprise contained a shipment of zirconium, intended for use in the first nuclear submarine, USS Nautilus, but listed in the manifest as pig iron. This information was revealed in a Danish TV documentary that was made in 2002. USS Nautilus was the world’s first operational nuclear-powered submarine, sharing a name with the fictional submarine in Jules Verne’s classic 1870 science fiction Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. The keel of the USS Nautilus was laid in June 1952.

Captain Kurt Carlsen became a world hero. He was feted in Falmouth and London and later returned to his home to New York, passing through Shannon Airport, to be greeted with a ticker tape parade on Fifth Avenue on January 17th, and was awarded several medals for valour. Hollywood approached him with a big money offer for his story, but he turned them down as well as declining all other offers, saying “I don’t want a seaman’s honest attempt to save his ship used for any commercial purpose.” He and went back to sea as master of the Flying Enterprise II. He died in 1989, at the age of seventy-five. Kenneth Dancy also received due recognition. At his hometown of Tunbridge Wells in Kent, a crowd of twenty-thousand people turned out to welcome their hero home. Born in 1924, he had obtained his Master’s Certificate in 1950 and for some time was captain of a tanker. He was on leave from his ship when the First Officer of the Turmoil was taken ill, and he was asked to take his place. It was his first time on a tug. He died in August 2013, aged eighty-eight years. Captain Dan Parker was awarded an MBE in 1952 but sadly died, aged sixty-three, on August 8th, 1955, when he was fatally injured by a fall from Turmoil’s bridge. Captain Henrik Kurt Carlsen died at Woodbridge, New Jersey, USA, on October 7th, 1989, aged seventy-five years. Captain Carlsen, and his ordeal aboard the Flying Enterprise, is the subject of the book Simple Courage: a True Story of Peril on the Sea by the late Irish author, Frank Delaney.

In November 1954, Turmoil was again in the headlines as she towed to safety the stern section of the giant Liberian tanker World Concord, which broke in two in heavy gales in the Irish Sea. In 1965, Turmoil was sold to Tsavliris Salvage and Towing, Piraeus in Greece and renamed Nisos Kerkyra. In 1971, it was again sold to Loucas Matsas and Sons, also of Piraeus and renamed Matsas. The vessel was scrapped in 1986.