August Johannes Abrahamson was a sailor born on July 15, 1892 in Taalintehdas or Dalsbruk, Dragsfjärd in the southwest part of Finland. The town was bilingual. The first name is in Finnish, the other in Swedish. He was the youngest child of Anton Abrahamsson and Klara Vilhelmina Vendenberg. He had two known siblings: Anton and Aina Aliina.
August Abrahamson sailed aboard the SS Polaris from Hankö via Copenhagen to Hull, England on April 3, 1912. His destination was Hoboken, New Jersey, where his brother Anton Abrahamson resided.
On April 10, he had stepped aboard Titanic in Southampton, having bought a ticket for Third Class which cost 269 Finnish marks. August traveled with Eino Lindqvist, also from Taalintehdas. They were accompanied by Eino’s sister Helga Hirvonen and her daughter Hildur. On the Titanic August shared his cabin with five other Finns.
On April 14, at late night, August was asleep in his cabin when the incident with the iceberg occurred. At first he was not going to get up, but changed his mind, because a cabin mate had gone up and didn't return for a good while, so now he was suspecting there was something wrong, and went to warn Eino Lindqvist in a cabin one deck above his own. Having done that, he moved back to his own cabin to find seawater pouring in.
Not being able to fetch a lifevest, he and Eino ascended to the Boat Deck and looked for Eino’s family members. August managed to board lifeboat 15. While the boat sailed away from the ever faster foundering ship, he described hearing stifled explosions as the ship went down and her lights burning bright untill then.
After August arrived in New York on the RMS Carpathia on April 18, he was stationed at St. Vincent’s Hospital for a while.
Upon release, August returned to England, via which he traveled back to Finland and in 1914 he met the love of his life, named Martta Johanna Nummelin. She was from Finland. They got married and eventually settled in Brooklyn, New York, where he worked as a ship carpenter as well as a supplier. The couple would have no children. Martta had been to the United States before in 1913. During World War 1 he worked at a shipyard, Cranes & Co.
August Abrahamson did an passport application in New York in February 1921, in which he states that he has resided in the United States continuously for 8 years and 9 months. His previous passport, issued in Turku, Finland in 1912, was lost when the Titanic sank. He visited Finland together with his wife Martha in the 1920s. Between 1930 and 1940 he would work as a building contractor.
August Abrahamson died in America on 16 August 1961 at the age of 69. His wife Martta would outlive him for at least another 16 years and she passed away on 15 Agusust 1978. They were both laid to rest in the same grave at the Brooklyn Evergreen Cemetery.