*Not to be confused with another Swedish Third Class passenger, Carl Olof Jansson.
Carl Jonsson was a passenger on Titanic.
Early life[]
Carl Jonsson was born around 1880, somewhere in Sweden. He had one brother, named Andrew Palmkvist.
He lived in Huntley, Illinois, USA, and in 1912 he was returning to Huntley after a visit to his home in Kvilleberga in Småland.
He traveled from Sweden to England via Denmark, where, after arriving in Copenhagen he bought the ticket for the Titanic. Whilst he was to England, he joined a group of fellow Scandanavians, Nils Johansson with his fiancee Olga Lundin, Pål Andreasson, and Albert Augustsson. It was much safer for immigrants from Sweden to travel in a group of compatriots. Of course Carl had already immigrated.
Titanic[]
He and his friends boarded the new liner in Southampton on April 10. Carl and the others traveled in Third Class, although Johansson arranged for his wife Olga that she could be housed in Second Class after she felt very seasick.
He managed to get in lifeboat 15, which was launched from the Titanic at 1:45 A.M. and contained several Scandinavians, both men and women.Of the five traveling companions, only he and Olga Lundin were rescued.
Carl later told the media about his experiences after he arrived in New Haven. Interestingly, two of his survival stories differed from the official one. He describe for instance that he wore his lifebelt and swam to Collapsible lifeboat A which he managed to board. In a different version he has also said that he stayed afloat on a worn-out door for six hours before boat A spotted him and let him aboard. However, this has been shown to be incorrect; Carl was never in the water as he's officially placed in lifeboat 15, but was probably trying to make his story more exciting by adding some drama.
Carl received $25 from "The Women's Relief Committee’’ after the disaster.