June 17, 1850

June 17, 1850 is the recorded date of Inga-Lena’s death aboard the brig Charlotta, bound for New York. It fixes the loss within the emigrants’ ocean passage and gives documentary form to a death that the narrative first presents through uncertainty: Captain Lorentz expected one woman to die, then realized that the information he had for the funeral did not match the person he had seen. The date’s precision contrasts with the sea burial’s lack of a marked grave and with Inga-Lena’s failure to reach her destination.

Voyage and Illness

The Charlotta sailed from Karlshamn on April 14, 1850, carrying 78 emigrants among 94 people aboard. Its hold was divided into cramped passenger compartments, with berths and belongings leaving little room to move. Weekly food allotments and a daily half-gallon of fresh water per person were governed by shipboard rules; passengers had to clean their quarters before receiving water. These conditions form the material setting for the illnesses that unfolded during the crossing.

Inga-Lena had doubted, during a storm, whether adherence to Åke Svensson’s teachings would spare believers from seasickness. Later, after the seasickness passed, she suffered recurring dizziness and headaches, fainting during work, prolonged bowel trouble, weakness, and eventually blood in her stool. She disliked complaining and continued tending to her husband and children, but confided her fear to Kristina. The narrative identifies scurvy, also called ship-sickness, as the illness affecting Kristina and several others; Captain Lorentz recognized that Inga-Lena had suffered from it for a long time.

The Date and the Funeral Record

As he prepared for the funeral, Captain Lorentz consulted the information written on a slip of paper: Inga-Lena Andersdotter, wife of Danjel Andreasson, born October 4, 1809, and married June 23, 1833. The details failed to agree with what he remembered. The dead woman seemed younger than the age implied by the record, and the paper said that she had left four children, while he remembered seeing three beside the dying woman. He realized that another death had occurred than the one he had expected. The discrepancy makes the date more than a bare entry: it belongs to a moment when the ship’s official record, the captain’s recollection, and the human losses aboard do not neatly coincide.

The funeral was already the eighth of the voyage. Lorentz had to return to the deck, select prayers and hymns from the prayer book, and follow the prescribed procedure for burying a corpse aboard ship. On the small paper he wrote the decisive record: “Died June 17, 1850, on board the brig Charlotta of Karlshamn, on voyage to New York. Certified, Christian Lorentz, Master.” The date and ship’s name certify where and when Inga-Lena died, while the captain’s signature preserves the fact that she was still en route.

Loss and Emigration

Inga-Lena had spent her life on solid ground, working in fields and around the farm; at sea, she would be buried in an unmarked ocean grave. She was an emigrant who did not reach her destination, though she left four children who would become citizens of the North American republic. The contrast between her recorded passage toward New York and her burial at sea gives the date its particular force: the voyage carried a family toward a new life, but it also made the ocean a place of death, without a settled grave or a return home. June 17 thus marks both a specific loss and the point at which the emigrant record preserves a life that the crossing could not deliver to its promised destination.