Gallery Samples Stories of our Ancestors | Page 16
involvement and ship building expertise one just might assume that he was an officer of some
sort. But perhaps he was only a quite ordinary sailor. The ship was smashed beyond repair
during a violent storm but all the crew was saved.
Carl Gustav never returned to Sweden, nor did he ever set sail again. In fact he gave up the sea
and ships, along with his language, his family, his friends and the wealth forever in favour of a
quite different reincarnation in South Africa.
For interest sake, it has been recorded that the Snorre-Sturlasson was a brig built in Ziana
(Christiana) Norway in 1867. You can look up tonnage and size on the chart if you’re
interested. Her captain was John Cornish of England who was drowned on the 18th June 1875
at Port Elizabeth while trying to enter the harbour.
And if you want to know what a brig is, it is described on Wikipedia as :
A sailing vessel with two square-rigged masts. During
the Age of Sail, brigs were seen as fast and
maneuverable and were used as both naval warships and
merchant vessels. They were especially popular in the
18th and early 19th centuries. Brigs fell out of use with
the arrival of the steam ship because they required a
relatively large crew for their small size and were
difficult to sail into the wind. …In the narrow technical
field of sailing rigs, a brig is distinct from a three-masted
ship by virtue of only having two masts.
This then must have been the kind of ship that Carl Gustav’s father owned. But, where was this
one en route? Was it sailing round the coast to India or China or was it on its way home and
about to travel around the Cape for another reason? Had it been heading for Cape Town for
rest and supplies?
Who knows?
We must rely only on Ruby’s story of the events that followed, as told to her, probably by her
father, Jack. After the shipwreck, Carl Gustav made his way into Port Alfred. We have no idea
whether he had money, documents or clothing with him, possibly not given the circumstances.
By then news of the shipwreck and the drenched crew would have got around and when he
knocked on the door of a boarding house, the owners, Mr John and Mrs Emily Platt (formerly
Smith, born Wall) and their young daughters, Catherine, aged eleven and Lilian Smith, aged
eight. They must have realised where he had come from.
I doubt whether he spoke English but perhaps he knew enough to make himself understood.
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