You know that drawer or cupboard with miscellaneous…stuff. Things that do not belong with any other things and end up sitting there – undefined. Runar´s mother had one of those. The contents of this particular little drawer got thrown into a little cardboard box some time in the 1990s, and ended up being moved around to a couple of attics and storage rooms. In the spring of 2019, we had sorted through the houses, attics and storage rooms of other family members who had passed away, and the little cardboard box reappeared.
It was time to look through this very last of many cardboard boxes. Inside we initially found little that excited us – dry pens, paperclips, phone bills from the 1980s. There was some amusing correspondence between the municipality planning office and Runar´s father Johan Emil. Johan Emil had ordered materials for a cabin, but assumed the planning office was closed over the summer, and had started building anyway with no permit. The planning office was not thrilled, but somehow approved the application (after the cabin was built). Anyway: Then – treasure! A small envelope with three sheets of paper – service records from three ships. Finally, we could learn more about what Johan Emil had experienced at sea, something he had never shared with anyone.
The most interesting piece of paper was the one from S/S Wanja. We knew Johan Emil had been at sea early on in the war and something had happened with his ship. Someone in the family had once remembered it as perhaps being sunk by a torpedo, but definitely off the coast of Sweden. The service papers, however, disclosed that he had signed off in Kirkwall on 23 October 1939. With what we knew about that area in this period in time seemed like an unwise place and time to sign off. Our shipwreck research was on!
Photo: Johan Emil top center
X marks the spot 