The Emigrants (34 page)

He pointed. “Look at the masts! Has anyone ever seen such tall masts?”

None had seen other masts on ships to make comparison. The small ship anchored landwards from the little island, in the entrance of the harbor, had two masts stretching toward the sky and seeming higher than the tallest tree in the forest. The masts were as tall as the ship was long. Robert thought that perhaps he himself had helped fell the trees which he now saw as naked, slender stems: perhaps he had cut the firs, helped remove them from their place of immobility in the forest to the sea, replanting them, as it were—those mast-trees which for the rest of their lives were to sail the seas, were to be supported by water instead of earth.

Karl Oskar wondered when they might be allowed to go on board. The fisherman said that the
Charlotta
was to take on freight, and as the vessel had barely arrived in harbor nothing had been loaded yet. It might be several days before passengers could board the America-sailer.

They could not remain here in the wind with their freezing, whimpering children. They must find quarters while waiting for embarkation. The kind fisherman showed them to the Maja’s Inn, located in an alley near the harbor. It was the house behind the Hope Tavern, right there, as they could see; they were sure to get accommodations.

The emigrant wagons pushed on to the indicated place. Only Robert remained standing at the harbor.

He stood there alone and looked out across the sea.

The others called him several times, but he did not answer.

Part Two

Peasants at Sea

XIII

THE
CHARLOTTA
OF KARLSHAMN

The Ship

The brig
Charlotta,
Captain Lorentz, sailed from Karlshamn April 14, 1850, with New York as her destination. The ship’s capacity was 160 lasts, her length 124 feet, and her width 20 feet. She had a crew of fifteen: 2 mates, 1 bosun, 1 carpenter, 1 sailmaker, 1 cook, 4 able-bodied seaman, 2 ordinary seamen, and 3 deckhands. She was loaded with pig iron and sundries.

She carried 78 passengers, all emigrants to North America, making the total number of people on board 94.

It was the brig
Charlotta
’s seventh voyage as an emigrant ship.

The Passengers

Through its very nature the globe offers two kinds of life to human beings: life on land and life at sea; life on one-quarter of the earth’s surface—the solid ground—and life on three-quarters, the water; life on the firm land, life on the ever-moving sea.

The emigrants were people of the soil; their whole lives had been lived on solid ground. On the day when they boarded the brig
Charlotta
they first encountered the sea. For an indefinite period they were to be settled on a ship, exchanging their accustomed existence for one new and alien to them.

Their feet stepped for the first time on a ship’s deck, having hitherto always tramped solid ground. With awkward, fumbling movements and clumsy, unsure steps they walked the deck. They found themselves on a plank floor, yet it was not the safe, solid floor of the peasant cottage; these planks were laid lower at the rail, higher toward the center of the deck. And the water under them moved constantly—a wave fell, a wave rose. No longer could they control their movements independently, they must obey the sea.

The emigrants had the earth’s heaviness in their bodies, clay from the field clung to their feet. And their heavy footgear—their shoes of rough leather, their impressive high boots—were only a hindrance to them on the surface of a slippery deck. They had stood broad-legged and sure on firm land; there they ordered their own motions. But here on the vessel they stood on insecure and treacherous footing.

They were accustomed to walk freely in the fields, unhampered. Now they were on a small crowded ship, fenced in like prisoners behind the rail. For months to come earth’s people must live at sea.

The emigrants came from a kingdom of stones and junipers, their muscles and sinews hardened and strengthened from breaking stones and twisting the juniper branches to wattles. But their strong arms and powerful backs were of little use on the sea. Here all of them stood equally helpless, the most capable farmers and the handiest farm wives. The earth was known to them, intimate, reliable, but they mistrusted the sea; it was unknown and dangerous, and their mistrust was ingrown and inherited through generations.

The passengers embarking on the brig
Charlotta
in Karlshamn this April day wandered about her deck uncertain, insecure, lost, bewildered. They felt they had surrendered unconditionally to the unknown, were irrevocably in the hands of a power whose presence left them impotent, a lord whom they could not entreat—the Sea. This unfathomable antagonist had taken them on its world-encircling back to carry them to another continent.

It was a day of calm weather, haze and mist, when the
Charlotta
sailed from Karlshamn. A light rain began to drive in from the Baltic Sea. The ship’s movement was only a weak, slow roll.

A small group of emigrants had gathered in the stern. A few peasants in their gray wadmal jackets and robust high boots stood there on the ship’s rocking deck and watched the cliffs of Kastellholmen—that little isle in the harbor entrance—gradually disappear into the April fog.

What they saw was the last outpost of the land they had rejected.

The travelers spoke in low voices while they cast their farewell looks on their homeland. Some spoke as if to themselves, others stood silent, eyes peering landwards. Talking emigrants and silent ones stood side by side; there were open words and hidden thoughts at this, their last glimpse of Sweden.

“I had a farm, foreclosed last fall; a homey place. It hurt me to see it go. But a farmer once fallen here at home can never rise again. I could never have got out of debt, not in a thousand years. Let the sheriff keep the place. Taxes were too heavy; when taxes are collected, that’s the time we are good enough, we in wooden shoes and patched pants: then they come to see us. Other times we’re peasant rabble. But I’ll miss the old place. I’ll miss relatives and friends, too; but never the country—no, never, never the country!”

Or—“I had nothing to lose. What could there have been? I slaved on the manor until I spit blood: Is that something to lose? I tired of the drudgery. I’ve stuffed the gullets of sluggards too long; I am through. The masters can be their own servants; that would only be fair. Perhaps one day they must be. The gentry’s arrogance is the bitterest thing. They despise honest work, they despise us in our poverty. Let them do the dirty work themselves; it would serve them right. No one can stand it in the long run, to do the dirtiest and heaviest work, and be treated like a dog, looked down on. All poor people should emigrate to America; that’s what they should do. So help me, all devils. That would serve the gentry right! Then they could do their own dirty chores! If only this ocean weren’t so broad and big. . . .”

Or—“I couldn’t stand the minister. We became enemies. I couldn’t stay at home. Might as well go far away when you have to move anyway. Now the minister can sit and watch his sheep running off; he won’t be able to shear them any more; he’ll get less income, and a good thing, too. There are too many giving orders and commands—everyone must have some devil to torture. There are too many lords and masters to inspect and guard us; too many of the gentry for us to feed; too many useless lords. In the end it’s unendurable. The gentry have smothered me long enough! It’s over! I’m away from that country at last! But there’s an ache somewhere. Why? I don’t know. Perhaps I’ll miss them, a little, the rest of them—only never the priest! I hated that priest. . . .”

Or—“I’ll never regret it. I couldn’t advance. It was hopeless: however I slaved, I stood in the same place. Labor brought nothing—I had to get out. But now land disappears, I remember. Perhaps—perhaps . . . in the long run I’ll miss—I don’t know. One is born there: father and mother remain; I couldn’t bring them, but I’ll remember. It wasn’t always sorrow. There was happiness too. I’ve been young in that country, been with girls on summer evenings, when it was warm and pleasant. I’ve danced at road crossings and dance halls. No, it wasn’t always sad. I’ll remember. And I’ll never forget the old ones, toiling still. Much comes to my mind as I stand here, looking backward—things I haven’t thought of before. But regret? Never!”

So thought those emigrants in the stern, as the rock islet melted into the April haze.

The Captain:

Back aft on the poop deck next the helmsman Captain Lorentz stood, near the wheel, where he would watch the easing of his ship out of the harbor. The wind was southeast and light, giving the vessel little speed, barely sufficient for steering.

“Starboard a bit. Steady. Steady as she goes.”

His voice, trained in long service as ship’s master, was far-reaching and powerful. The
Charlotta
’s captain was about sixty, and of stocky build. He had an ugly face with thick, blunt nose, protruding eyes, and weather-beaten red skin. His broad, sunken mouth with the outjutting lower jaw was strikingly like the snout of a large pike. He looked capable of biting as sharply as those beastly fish, too. From the pike-snout hung a pipe. Captain Lorentz had spent almost fifty years of his life at sea, and for the last ten years he had commanded this old sailing vessel that was his home.

At last, anchor had been weighed, and his ship liberated from her shackle to the bottom. The time in harbor always gave Captain Lorentz a feeling of discomfort and disgust. At sea was the decent place for a grown man; to the
Charlotta
’s captain, riding at anchor was almost degrading, to step on land a disgrace. The only occupation worthy of a human being in this world was to sail a ship. To this occupation, unfortunately, one repulsive duty belonged, one painful necessity he could not shirk: at certain intervals he must steer his ship into harbor.

But now this humiliating time was over again. Captain Lorentz had lain eight days in Karlshamn, and it had been a week of annoying tasks, trying the patience of the
Charlotta
’s master. More cargo had had to be taken on, provisions stored, new crew members signed on. But the biggest nuisance were these damned peasants. In her old age the
Charlotta
had been turned into an emigrant ship instead of a merchantman, and her most important cargoes nowadays were these people emigrating to North America: peasants—peasants from Blekinge, Småland and Öland. Each time he had shipped such passengers across the ocean they had filled and overrun Captain Lorentz’s ship. This time they had even chased the rats from their holes before they all found room. This time they had come dragging still larger chests, still heavier boxes, still bulkier sacks, more baskets, bags, and belongings. Not even God the Almighty knew what junk they contained. This voyage they also had brought along more women and children than ever before. Never were so many brats aboard the
Charlotta
before—whole families, from old white-bearded grandfathers to suckling cradle-infants; cradles, yes, the number that were dragged on board this time! Devil take the captain if his ship wasn’t a nursery this trip!

And all these people his old ship must transport to the other side of the globe. The
Charlotta
was getting somewhat squeaky and ancient and sour in her hull, but was still seaworthy. Captain Lorentz loved watching her ride the sea, taking rough weather, curtsying to the waves like a court lady to a queen. She had only one fault, the old ship: she sweated. Perhaps she hadn’t been quite dry when launched—and such ships remained moist in their hulls as long as they lasted; only usually they didn’t last long.

Skipper Lorentz thought back in regret to the years when the
Charlotta
had been a simon-pure merchantman. The captain on an emigrant ship had many heavy new duties, and much greater responsibility. Nor did Lorentz like the idea of taking so many people out of the country. With each voyage he asked himself: Why did these peasants with their wives and children cross the sea? What did they expect to find in North America? In the captain’s mind all countries were equally good or bad. Dry land was dry land the whole world over, in North America as in Sweden. The sea was the part of the globe where sane people lived. He could never understand these peasants who undertook a long and costly voyage to the other side of the earth just in order to find another patch of soil to till! They might as well keep turning their patches in Sweden as in America; to poke and dig in the earth was the same degrading prison-chore everywhere. These peasants traveled from one field to another, from one dunghill to another—for what?

A seaman ought to spend his time at sea, a farmer on the farm. But strangely enough, it was actually the farmers, the homestead people in Sweden, who crossed the seas to change their country. Why? They were of course crowded in their bunk-beds over the fireplaces. There were too many around the potato pot. But it was their own fault: they begot too many children. If these peasants had been as busy in their fields as in their beds they would never need to emigrate. Apparently they used their wives every night of the year—except Christmas night; that night they abstained for fear of getting thistles and weeds in their fields next summer, for these peasants were as superstitious as they had been a thousand years ago.

Oh, well, some of them came from good stock in Sweden, and they might find a better lot in North America, where they would at least have elbowroom. He himself had never been farther inland than the harbor town of New York. And no decent soul could enjoy that dirty hole. When for the first time, some ten years ago, he had touched at that port, he had seen pigs poking in the stinking filth of the town streets. Some quarters were veritable pigpens. Cholera raged then, with hundreds dying daily, and most of the inhabitants had moved inland to uncontaminated regions. The town of New York had looked dead, stinking of corpses. Now it was lively again, and noisy, and beautiful women in white silk dresses drove in stately carriages through the streets. But it wasn’t a town where a seaman felt at home, not even for a few days. On Broadway there were some taverns, but none could offer a traveler the comforts he was accustomed to in the harbor towns of Europe. New York, after all, was a town for peasants.