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Pehr Kalm’s journey to North America was financed by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. They expected an economic return from the discoveries he made. Among other things, he was sent out to find the red mulberry, Morus rubra. The plan was to be able to cultivate mulberry in Sweden, with the aim of starting up a domestic silk industry. Mulberry is one of the host plants of silkworms, the larvae of moths of the genus Bombyx. The finest silk is produced from larvae that feed on mulberry. The North American red mulberry tree was believed to be capable of surviving the Swedish climate and was therefore of great interest.
On 30 November 1747 (according to the Julian calendar; Sweden adopted the Gregorian calendar on 1 March 1753), Pehr Kalm left the Swedish port of Gothenburg. He had been waiting three weeks for the captain to arrive, and then another three for the winds to be right for the crossing to England. When the ship finally sailed, she ran into a severe storm that almost sank her, but the captain managed to find shelter at Grimstad in Norway to carry out repairs. After a long unscheduled stop in Norway, the vessel was able to set sail again on 28 January 1748, arriving in London on 6 February 1748.
After six months in England, during which Kalm made many acquaintances and gathered a wealth of new knowledge, the ship that was to take him to North America, the Mary Gally, left the port of Gravesend on 5 August 1748. On the 11th she left the coast of England. The journey across the Atlantic was swift and pleasant. Kalm saw fishes, birds and other animals that he had never seen before. He studied the floating seaweed of the Sargasso Sea and the organisms living on and around it. In his journal he also recorded details of how food and water were stored on the ship to keep them edible and drinkable. Kalm was amazed to see dolphins, flying fish and “lightning in the water”. As the ship approached the coast of North America, she suddenly struck a sand reef. This was at 5 a.m. on 13 September. The passengers realized that there was only one lifeboat on the ship, to be shared by 80 people. They all got out of their beds and started praying, and there was great relief when, after a while, the vessel floated free. On 15 September the ship anchored in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, part of the old settlement of New Sweden.
Kalm made the Swedish communities of southern New Jersey his base of operations. He served as pastor of a local church and got married there in 1750. In North America he journeyed as far west as Niagara Falls and as far north as Quebec before returning to Sweden in 1751. Of course botany was the main reason for his travels, but Kalm applied his scientist’s eye to every aspect of American culture. The careful and somewhat dispassionate observations recorded in his diaries allow us to study life in the colonies in great detail.
Linnaeus, who was ill with gout when Kalm returned to Sweden, was so excited at the prospect of being able to dig into Kalm’s collections that he quite forgot his aches and pains. Kalm had collected at least 60 new plant species which were later included in Species Plantarum.
On his return from North America, Kalm moved back to Finland. He obtained a position as a lecturer in natural history and political economy in 1746, and in 1747 was offered a professorship in political economy at Åbo (Turku). He took up this post in 1752, teaching mineralogy, botany, zoology and chemistry, with an emphasis on explaining how these four subjects relate to improving a country’s wealth by means of agriculture, mining, manufacturing and trade. Kalm died in Åbo on 16 November 1779.
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Text: Elisabeth Långström