Port Captain Kereem Abraham
Kereem Abraham is a Port Captain for the New York Cruise Line and is one of the first graduates of the Urban Assembly New York Harbor School. He graduated from the New York harbor school in 2007. Born in Trinidad, Captain Kereem immigrated to America at a young age. Captain Kereem hadn’t thought much about sailing or driving boats, but he had heard about a school where you attend class in a non-traditional setting, NY Harbor and have fun being on boats. Although, this wasn’t entirely true, Captain Kereem would soon find out that harbor school wasn’t as easy as it sounded, he ended up enjoying his time there, and his life was forever changed by the opportunities provided.
In his sophomore year of high school, he got a valuable internship opportunity at the New York City water taxi company as a deckhand. He worked for over five years in that position, which helped bridge the gap between the end of high school and the beginning of joining the workforce. In 2010, he got his captain's license and was promoted and transferred to captain in New York waterways. Then, he moved to New York Water Tours for about three years. After all this, he returned to New York Water Taxi, a Circle Line Downtown division. Captain Kereem’s humble beginnings, from an internship at water taxi to becoming a captain and later the port captain, exemplify Kereem’s drive and passion for this industry and how he could do what it takes to accomplish his dreams. Now, after all that time, he recently moved to the sightseeing cruise division of Circle Line the iconic green, white and red vessels and that circle around Manhattan.
In the 16 years since graduating high school, he has risen above your average deckhand job to becoming a Port Captain. The future for Captain Kereem is looking bright, as Captain Kereem had previously stated in an interview that his interests include management and business end of the marine world. We so we wish him the best of luck in his continued career successes.
Captain Kereem Abraham was able to become a boat captain 2 years after he finished high school which is a difficult feat for most people but especially for a 20 year old. It is very impressive that captain Kereem was able to achieve this with the help of the New York harbor school as he was able to take the resources provided to him and turn it into a career for himself.
By going outside the norm and by achieving much more than your average worker, he truly deserves to be recognized as a prominent mariner due to his ability to persevere through all of the challenges in his career path by going to a brand new school with no prior history, to getting an internship in his second year, to later being the captain of that same port he once interned in. All of this hard work that he did really inspired us to treat the opportunity that we have in the vessel operations program, to take it more seriously and to be able to have the same ability to do all of that work that he did in those short 16 years. And if he can do it, we can definitely do the same.
We would like to personally thank Capitan Kereem Abraham for all the work he has done to help the maritime community, and to pave the way for current and future harbor students.
Gregory Callimanopulos & Thomas Jordan, Vessel Ops Sophmores 2024