12-year old Eric is selling newspapers in the streets of Gothenburg l933, and yelling to the by-passers that a certain Reichkansler is coming into power in Berlin. Eric's family - six kids and the parents are living in Masthugget, a poor end of the town up above the rich down-town - on a mountain, where the stevedores, sailors and dock workers live. Those who are unemployed walks down to the harbour every morning hoping for some job. Eric's secret aspiration is to become a poet, he tries to sell his poems at the doors. Many of his poems is about his intensive hate to the very same Hitler. When Eric's mother dies, Eric steals away to a merchant vessel and becomes a sailor. As a young sailor he ends up in the middle of the U-boat-war ( World War II). He steals away from a Swedish boat and sails with the allied convoys, being torpedoed in the North Atlantic in February l942. We found the archive film depicting the lonely life-boat in the middle of the Atlantic in l942. Survives, comes home and begins to write, and becomes a well known author.