The Author
Captain Niels Thomsen was born in 1907 in Ribe, Denmark.
Through a gripping set of circumstances, he immigrated to the United States
in 1912 and attended grade school in Fresno, California until 1922. He
ran away to sea at the young age of 15 in search of one of novelist Joseph
Conrad's sailing ships.
Captain Thomsen is the last known survivor of the crew
of twelve of the five-masted Barkentine Forest Dream which
voyaged over two hundred days at sea enroute from Victoria, B.C. to Port
Louis, Mauritius in the Indian Ocean.
The Voyage of the Forest Dream chronicles
his amazing life at sea.
Niels at age
18
Chris and Adelheid Thomsen pictured
with Niels (at age 7) in California.