April 1850

April 1850 marks the passage from imagined departure to bodily ordeal. As the Charlotta carries emigrants from Karlshamn toward New York, the month gathers together the movement’s practical arrangements, the leave-taking from familiar home, and the sea’s power to delay and endanger those who have set out for a new life.

Departure and the Decision to Emigrate

News of fertile land overseas unsettles rural communities where plots are shrinking as families grow and food is scarce. At first, America is known through pictures and rumor, while the ocean and the destination remain untested; arguments divide the cautious from the daring, and generations and spouses may disagree. The movement begins privately, as information passes from neighbor to neighbor and the idea of leaving takes root before it becomes visible to others.

The crossing is planned around the agricultural calendar. Spring offers milder conditions after the winter storms and gives emigrants time to reach their new homes, till the soil, and sow before a fall harvest. Karl Oskar and Robert arrange passage with a firm in Karlshamn, paying a hundred daler in advance for six people. Their intended vessel is the Charlotta, a merchant ship carrying both cargo and emigrants, bound directly for New York without stopping at another harbor. Robert offers to obtain a contract for Danjel as well if the ship has room; Danjel estimates that nine people, including children and household members, will come from Kärragärde.

The Road to Karlshamn

The emigrants set out on a Thursday under a new moon, regarded as a favorable omen. For Robert, the road itself becomes a countable sign of departure: whenever a gate stands across the way, he jumps down to open it, carefully tallying five before Åkerby Junction. He counts even openings in winter pasture fences that have been removed for the season, imagining that they too would have been gates had the journey begun a month later.

At the junction, the separate households gather into a party. Danjel travels with his wife, four children, and Ulrika of Västergöhl; Jonas Petter brings his hired man, while Arvid and Elin ride with him because Danjel’s wagon has no room. Robert joins the same wagon, sitting between Jonas Petter and Elin, and reunites with Arvid. Their earlier plan to slip away secretly from Nybacken has given way to a shared, public journey among family and fellow emigrants.

Nineteen people meet at Åkerby Junction, but three are drivers who will return from Karlshamn. The emigrants themselves number sixteen: nine adults and seven children. Jonas Petter calls them a suitably large family and asks who should lead it. The others look to Karl Oskar, who demurs because he is the youngest of the three farmers; he in turn points to Jonas Petter as the oldest. The journey’s collective character is thus established before the party reaches the port.

The departure also carries the weight of a last look. As the wagons pass familiar places, Karl Oskar and Kristina sit silently, attending to the brook where they once swam and the meadow where lilies of the valley bloom. The known landscape is not simply left behind; it is deliberately committed to memory. Robert, by contrast, whistles as the wagon passes Nybacken and the parsonage, while imagining that the dean’s records may continue to list him as a farmhand whose whereabouts are unknown.

The Charlotta and Shipboard Conditions

The brig Charlotta sails from Karlshamn on April 14, 1850, with New York as its destination. The vessel is 124 feet long and 20 feet wide, with a crew of fifteen. It carries pig iron and assorted goods as well as 78 emigrants, bringing the total number aboard to 94. This is the ship’s seventh voyage as an emigrant vessel.

The hold’s canvas partitions divide passengers into spaces for married couples and children, unmarried men, and unmarried women. Family berths are enclosed by rough-board bulkheads; the small cells resemble stalls, while unmarried passengers sleep in bunks strung between the ship’s supports. As passengers unpack mattresses, blankets, skins, baskets, food, and bundles, dust rises in air already thick and choking. There is scarcely space left to walk. With no room in the family compartment, Karl Oskar shares a two-man bunk with Robert among the unmarried men; Jonas Petter sleeps above them and Arvid nearby.

The ship’s rules turn provisions and sanitation into shared obligations. The mate assigns unprepared food in fixed weekly portions, directs one person from each family to collect it, and requires passengers to take turns cooking in the galley. Refuse and dishwater must be thrown overboard on the leeward side, never windward. Each person receives half a gallon of fresh water a day for drinking and washing, and passengers must clean the hold before the water is issued. Fire is tightly regulated: smoking below deck and unprotected lights are forbidden, and the captain may punish disobedience. Shipboard order is presented not as a formality but as a condition of safety in a confined vessel.

The Sea in April

The Charlotta moves through the April mist and drizzle with little wind. Its sails hang limp, and the heavily laden vessel presses slowly through the waves. The eagle figurehead searches the open water as foam washes over its beak and eyes. The last sight of land is Denmark’s outermost point, distant on the horizon; other ships appear from time to time, but the Charlotta soon finds itself alone again.

Cold drives passengers onto the deck in all the clothes and coverings they own, even as those most troubled by the sea find the air there preferable to the fetid hold. At night, seasickness worsens in the bunks. Darkness compounds the discomfort: lights are forbidden after ten, and a passenger may be unable to find a bucket in time. Each morning the emigrants carry water and scrub their quarters before the thirsty may drink or the dirty may wash. When rain provides water for washing, Danjel interprets it as a gift from heaven, even as the daily ration remains a source of complaint.

The April crossing also brings a North Sea tempest. The Charlotta’s hold becomes a single ship’s stomach containing many individual bodies—young and old, sick and healthy, converted and unconverted—all shaken by nausea and pain. Danjel, suffering severely, prays for forgiveness in a moment of spiritual abasement. The storm makes the sea more than a route between two shores: it subjects the emigrants to a shared vulnerability that neither their plans nor their differing beliefs can prevent.

Distance and Delay

Contrary winds prolong the voyage, and the emigrants begin to doubt what they were told about the distance to North America. They measure the passage not in miles but in the days spent at sea. Since leaving in the second week of April, home has receded beyond calculation, while the hoped-for new home remains just as remote. Winds, currents, and fog hinder the ship, and the waves seem to bar its way. The delay sours the passengers against the sea; some imagine that, if they could regain firm land, they would never entrust themselves to the water again.

The crossing therefore unsettles the promise that departure alone guarantees arrival. April begins with a planned direct passage, a paid contract, a counted road, and a vessel believed suitable for the journey. At sea, however, progress depends on wind and weather, while cramped accommodation, rationed water, and sickness make each day an immediate test of endurance. The month’s decisive significance lies in that contrast: the emigrants have left the old shore, but the new one is still beyond reach.