“With a thousand and one precautions, we passed through the difficult passages between the herds of ice. As we descended, we threw off a piece of clothing from ourselves. The thermometer as well as the hygrometer kept rising. The agony began for the engine crew as well as for the blanket. The metal started to burn like the sand of the desert. During coffee time, the engine crew gathered with sweat running mixed with soot, while the blanket crew was covered with rust from the mat and splashes of paint stuck to their sweat.”

Repeated embarkations. Calms and hurricanes. A profession that is fading away along with a Greece that is disappearing. The literary depiction of a seafaring life, cut through by all the circumstances of the Post-War era—social, economic, political—reaching up to the present day. The vivid reassembling of places, times, peoples, personal adventures, and shared passions is permeated by a sober and restless spirit, patient and combative at the same time, like the one that has driven the entire Greek population for centuries in the construction of its great maritime tradition.

A swan song, perhaps, of the seafaring of the Greeks in a narrative of authentic beauty...