April 14, 1850

April 14, 1850, marks the Charlotta’s departure from Karlshamn with emigrants bound for New York. The date turns the group’s separate pressures and hopes into a shared, physically constraining voyage: the crossing begins with crowded quarters, rationed supplies, and rules enforced under the captain’s authority.

The Decision Becomes a Departure

The voyage had been arranged for spring, when the winter storms were past and passengers might reach their destination in time to till and sow for a fall harvest. Karl Oskar Nilsson and Robert Nilsson had written to a firm in Karlshamn and paid one hundred daler for passage for six people. The Charlotta, a merchant vessel carrying cargo as well as emigrants, was expected to sail directly to New York. Karl Oskar described it as a sound ship under an honest captain, but Kristina Johansdotter remained wary: there was no deed promising land, no written guarantee from American authorities, and no firsthand report from anyone they knew who had visited North America.

The group’s motives were not uniform. Crop failure, religious dissent and persecution, personal troubles, social exclusion, and unfair employment practices all contributed to the wider movement from Ljuder Parish. For Karl Oskar, four years of labor at Korpamoen had left the household several hundred riksdaler poorer, with no prospect beyond continued toil and the meager security of a reserved room in old age. The departure date therefore marks not a simple response to an alluring destination but a decision made under pressure, against Kristina’s fear that the promised opportunity might prove a wild-goose chase.

From Parish Roads to the Port

Before embarking, the emigrants gathered at Åkerby Junction. Nineteen people were there, though three drivers were to return from Karlshamn; the sixteen emigrants comprised nine adults and seven children. Danjel Andreasson had hired a team from Kråkesjö and traveled with his wife, four children, and Ulrika of Västergöhl. Jonas Petter of Hästebäck drove his own single-horse wagon, accompanied by his hired man, while Arvid and Elin rode with him because Danjel’s wagon had no room.

The journey gathered people whose plans had once been more solitary. Robert and Arvid, both farmhands from Nybacken, had imagined slipping away in secret, but now traveled together among families and fellow emigrants. At the junction, the passengers counted themselves as a family-sized company and looked to Jonas Petter, the oldest of the three farmers, to head it. As Karl Oskar and Kristina rode past familiar streams and meadows, they tried to fix those places in memory; the road toward the port was also a passage away from the scenes of their youth.

The Charlotta and Its Passengers

The brig Charlotta sailed from Karlshamn on April 14, 1850, under Captain Lorentz, with New York as its destination. It was 124 feet long and 20 feet wide, with a capacity of 160 lasts. Its crew numbered fifteen, and its cargo included pig iron and sundries. The seventy-eight emigrants brought the total number aboard to ninety-four; this was the vessel’s seventh voyage as an emigrant ship.

The ship’s scale did not translate into spacious passenger quarters. Canvas divided the hold into separate compartments for married couples and children, unmarried men, and unmarried women. Family berths were enclosed by rough-board partitions resembling stalls; bedding was spread on the deck, while unmarried passengers slept in bunks between the stanchions. Dust rose from mattresses and blankets as people arranged their belongings in the low, choking space, where baskets, tubs, bundles, and crude eating boards left scarcely room to move. Light entered mainly through the hatch, and after dark came from weak, smoking kerosene lanterns.

There was no place for Karl Oskar in the family compartment, so he shared a two-man bunk with Robert in the men’s section. Jonas Petter slept above them and Arvid nearby. The men had barely a foot of width apiece, their bodies arranged in the hold like kindling in a woodpile. The date thus begins a journey toward imagined land and opportunity inside an immediate reality of confinement.

Rules, Rations, and the Crossing’s Conditions

The ship’s command set out a strict system for distributing provisions and maintaining order. Each family’s head was to collect a weekly allotment of unprepared food, which passengers had to make last; they could take turns preparing meals in the galley and use ship’s utensils if needed. Refuse and dishwater had to be thrown overboard on the leeward side, never windward. Each person could draw half a gallon of fresh water a day for drinking and washing, and passengers themselves had to clean the hold each morning before water was issued. The ship also carried a medicine chest, while the captain’s slop chest offered basic goods for sale.

The rules governed bodies as well as supplies. Smoking and unprotected lights were forbidden below deck, and the captain could punish disobedience under the law of the sea. By day, passengers went on deck for air, wrapped in all their clothing against the cold; at night, seasickness and darkness made the fetid hold harder to endure. The morning cleaning routine made the ration system tangible: men hauled water, women scrubbed and washed, and only after the quarters were cleaned could the thirsty drink or the dirty wash themselves. Complaints that half a gallon was insufficient met the second mate’s warning that a voyage delayed by bad weather might last three months and demand even greater economy.

The crossing also exposed the limits of the ship’s provisions in small, concrete ways. Soap made no suds in seawater, but after heavy rain the sailors stretched a sail to collect fresh water. Passengers watched and some followed their example; Danjel interpreted the rainwater as a gift from heaven. Later, when Kristina suffered dangerous bleeding, Captain Lorentz consulted his Medical Adviser for Seafarers and found instructions for treating severe bleeding with fresh, cool air and packs made from seawater. The departure date therefore anchors a voyage shaped not only by destination but by a shared dependence on shipboard systems, weather, practical care, and command.