The Beckoning Sea

Book excerpt: Looking back, author Bernhard J. Abrahamsson cannot say exactly why, at age fourteen, he chose a seafaring life. Perhaps, the choice was less the result of deliberate design and pursuit than of circumstances that led him in that direction. In The Beckoning Sea, Abrahamsson, a native of Sweden, shares the short stories and vignettes from a youth spent dreaming of seeing the world. This memoir narrates his experiences when he joined the Swedish Merchant Marine and sailed all over the world on Swedish and Israeli merchant ships through the 1950s. He passed the sea captain's exam in 1953 and was licensed as a captain in 1958, reaching the rank of commander in the Swedish Naval Reserve before becoming a US citizen. Funny and sad events mesh to form a picture of seafaring as it once was--of a lifestyle that no longer exists. The Beckoning Sea offers stories of friendship, loss and madness at sea, the forces of nature, and life in the rough ports of the Baltic coal trade immediately after World War II. A tale of a boy's journey to adulthood, The Beckoning Sea also contains a collection of memories and often comical stories from Abrahamsson's own second chapter--his life after leaving the sea and planting his feet on firm ground.