97
FIG. 7 (above): Cabinet
card of C. W. Öberg.
Stamped Eden Society Studio.
Hometown Society Museum Stora
Skedvi.
Photo © Bart van Bussel.
The studio was established
1895–1900 in Sydney, by Ernest
Eden George (1863–1927).
From an early age Öberg began to write
diaries, notes, and poems. Later, as a fullfl
edged sailor, he almost daily wrote meticulously
about the weather conditions,
coordinates, direction, and location. His
diaries that survive today consist of seven
individual volumes written between
the years 1871 and 1914 (fi g. 6). Some
are fi lled with writing exercises, poems,
and thoughts about life and living. One
dates from his early years as a sailor and
three are devoted entirely to his time in
the South Seas.
Whenever Öberg had a port of call in
London, he stayed at the Scandinavian
Seamen’s Temperance Hostel, located
near the West India Docks, a fi ve-story
building that had beds for 200 sailors and separate
apartments for offi cers.4 The place was
founded by the Swedish Lutheran missionary
Agnes Welin in 1888, who previously had run
the seamen´s mission in Whitechapel, where she
most likely met Öberg. They maintained contact
throughout their lives.5
With this base in London, possibilities were
open to Öberg for destinations in the British colonies,
and he served aboard several ships destined
forß ports in Australia and New Zealand
FIG. 5 (above): The Hometown Society
Museum at Stora Skedvi, which holds the
collection of C. W. Öberg.
Photo © Bart van Bussel
FIG. 6 (right): The diaries of Carl Wilhelm
Öberg.
Photo © Bart van Bussel.
CARL WILHELM ÖBERG
with various cargoes, such as freezedried
meat and wheat. Each journey
lasted about ninety days, and occasionally
the course was set south to Cape
Horn with a call in Buenos Aires.
One particular voyage he was on that
went around Cape Horn raised issues
about unpredictability, individual character,
and the professional skills of sailors
at the time. The ship had become
surrounded by icebergs in a furious
storm with freezing temperatures. The
crew, Öberg among them, were maneuvering
the best they could when a mast
broke and injured three of his ribs. He
was wrapped with sailcloth as fi rst aid
but had to continue to participate in
saving the ship. After nineteen exhausting days,
the ship and its crew fi nally reached the port of
Neutral Bay, Sydney.6 This and other harsh experiences
at sea made Öberg stay ashore in Sydney,
taking a break to recover. Here he made his
living by becoming employed with railroad construction
and working as a shepherd.7
Sydney became another place to which Öberg
returned many times (fi g. 7). One of these voyages
was in late 1887 when he sailed for Suva
on Viti Levu, Fiji, aboard a ship bearing a cargo
of coal and returning with timber. There he
purchased a “lava lava” tapa skirt from “a noble
Catholic native lady” (fi g. 19). Öberg relates