The death and burial at sea of the girl with a throat abscess

The death and burial at sea of the girl with a throat abscess is the first death aboard the Charlotta and an early reminder that the emigrants’ passage from Karlshamn to New York carries mortal risks as well as hopes of a new life. The girl had been ill before the brig sailed; her death, followed by a funeral on deck and the loss of three shovelfuls from the ship’s Swedish earth, brings the hazards of the crossing into the passengers’ cramped daily world. It also becomes the occasion for Kristina to voice her fear that she will not reach American soil, while Karl Oskar confronts his responsibility for persuading her to leave home.

Illness and the first death

The brig Charlotta left Karlshamn for New York on April 14, 1850, with seventy-eight emigrants among its ninety-four people. In the hold, canvas partitions divided the sleeping areas, but bedding, provisions, and passengers crowded the available space. The first death aboard the ship was that of a young girl with a throat abscess. She was said to be seventeen, though her small stature made her appear much younger.

The girl’s parents had tried warm porridge and applications of salves from the ship’s medicine chest. Captain Lorentz examined her and said the abscess ought to be lanced, but neither he nor anyone else dared use a knife. The boil eventually broke; a few minutes later, the girl died. Her death followed an illness she had already had when she came aboard, and she had been confined to her bunk since joining the ship. The narrative thus distinguishes her pre-existing condition from seasickness and from illnesses that developed during the voyage.

The mate brought canvas to wrap the body, but the piece was too large: it could be wound twice around her. She was carried out through the main hatch, leaving the living passengers to resume their place in the hold. The practical action of removing the body briefly restores the shipboard compartment to order, but it cannot make the death ordinary. This is the passengers’ first loss at sea, and the canvas bundle gives that loss a form they will encounter again during the crossing.

Burial and the voyage’s material conditions

The burial took place on the afterdeck. Kristina, ill below, heard the funeral hymn faintly and first wondered whether she was dreaming or whether the passengers had reached land. Karl Oskar told her that the girl had died that morning, adding that she had not died of seasickness: she had been ill before sailing and had lain abed since coming aboard. The explanation locates the death within the particular circumstances of the child’s illness, even as its timing makes it a warning about the passage ahead.

The service was conducted by the captain, whose duties included acting as clergyman. When the hymn ended, the funeral was over, one person was gone from the brig, and three shovelfuls had been taken from the bushel of Swedish earth carried aboard for burials at sea. The small subtraction links a particular body to the emigrants’ homeland: the ship carries Swedish soil across the ocean, then uses it in a ritual that marks the dead as still connected to the country left behind.

The funeral also takes place against the physical realities of the crossing. The passengers share crowded quarters, receive weekly allotments of unprepared provisions, and must clean the hold before receiving their daily water. Those arrangements do not establish the cause of the girl’s abscess, which the account does not identify, but they make clear that illness and death unfold within a tightly managed and confined shipboard community. The ship’s rules and routines continue around the loss; they cannot reverse it.

Kristina’s response and Karl Oskar’s responsibility

The girl’s funeral reaches Kristina through sound. Hearing the hymn from below, she recognizes that a burial is taking place, and the words of the song turn her attention from the dead girl to her own uncertain future. She tells Karl Oskar, “I’ll never reach the harbor,” and then makes the fear more concrete: “I’ll never put foot on American soil.” Her prediction is not an account of the girl’s fate but a personal dread stirred by the service and by her own illness.

The episode reopens the question of Kristina’s earlier reluctance to emigrate. She reminds Karl Oskar that she had been afraid before they left; he remembers that he persuaded her to come and recognizes his responsibility. After the hymn ends, he tells her, “We will reach land, you and I—we will reach the harbor in America.” She gives no answer, lying still and looking upward. The exchange offers reassurance, but not proof: the girl’s death has made the danger of the passage present, and Kristina’s silence leaves the outcome unresolved.

For Karl Oskar, the burial is therefore more than a communal observance. It sharpens the cost of his decision to bring his wife across the ocean and makes his assurance to her an act of commitment in the face of uncertainty. The narrative does not say that the girl’s death causes Kristina’s later illness; instead, it places the funeral beside her fear and makes the two scenes resonate without conflating their circumstances.

Significance within the passage

The death marks an early change in the emigrants’ understanding of the voyage. They have left Sweden for a future they imagine across the Atlantic, but the first funeral makes the ship itself a place where people can die before reaching that destination. The body goes through the main hatch, the hymn fades, and the routine of life aboard resumes; the account’s attention to each stage refuses to treat the burial as an incidental interruption.

The episode also establishes a recurring contrast between religious interpretation and the limits of human action. Captain Lorentz has the authority and practical knowledge to examine the girl and recommend treatment, but the necessary procedure is not carried out. Her parents’ efforts and the ship’s available medicines do not save her. The narrative supplies these concrete circumstances without claiming that the death is divine punishment or assigning blame beyond the stated fear of using a knife.

Finally, the three shovelfuls of Swedish earth make the funeral part of the emigrants’ continuing relation to home. The passengers have crossed a threshold by leaving, yet the soil aboard the Charlotta allows the dead to be committed to the sea with a material remnant of the country they have left. The girl’s burial thus joins migration’s forward movement to the losses it carries: the ship keeps going toward America, while a passenger who began the voyage already ill does not survive to arrive.