Kilmory of Glasgow, Karl Adolf’s first yearlong trip.
My grandfather, Karl Adolf, grew up on a tiny soldier’s farm, and died a sea captain. He left the home of his mother and stepfather in Toresund, Sörmland, to become a sailor out of the Stockholm Seaman’s House in 1890. He was 19 years old. The coming months he worked on ships that criss-crossed the Baltic sea. When his mother died in late September of 1891 he came home.
A little more than two weeks later, on Oct. 16, 1891, he left Hamburg onboard the Kilmory of Glasgow. He disembarked in Glasgow on Aug. 30, 1892. For the next decade he had similar year long contracts on ships based on the British Isles and in Germany. They sailed between ports in Europe, North America, and the far East. On one of the trips he met his future father-in-law, a captain from Oskarshamn, Sweden. Karl Adolf officially moved from Toresund to Oskarshamn in 1903.