Johan Marius Sundlo
From the notes of Konrad Bertram Holm Sundlo:
"Born the 9th of December, 1886, at Eg Asylum near Kristiansand. Died the 3rd of February, 1933, in Shanghai. Buried May 1933; his ashes were scattered in the Oslofjord, in line with Asker church and the Steilene lighthouse.
I remember my brother Johan from the time he lay in his little bed at Eg. We came to Christiania, and Johan attended the Cathedral School, concluding with the middle-school examination. He then went to sea — on the barque Krimhild of Kristiansand, owned by Schilbred, if I recall correctly; this would have been around 1904. Johan thereafter sailed the oceans of the world: South Africa, Australia, South America. He loaded timber at the White Sea at Onega and made a voyage into the Baltic as far as Riga.
After some years at sea, Johan returned home and took the mate's examination, then went out again, finding himself in East Asian waters when our father fell ill in the autumn of 1908 — though he did not arrive home in time.
Johan remained at home and completed the master's examination, then shipped as bosun on the Søndenfjeldske Line's Kong Ring running between Oslo and Hamburg, later rising to second mate. In the summer of 1913 he took a berth as mate on a Norwegian vessel in East Asia. He sailed in her for a time, but found it not altogether to his taste, and transferred to one of the Standard Oil tankers engaged in the Yangtze trade. He remained in that trade for a while before joining China's largest shipping company, China Merchants Steam Navigation Co., headquartered in Shanghai. He served with that company for many years, and his position had become thoroughly established when, in his mid-thirties, he was given the company's newest and finest vessel to command.
Johan then suffered a misfortune: he contracted an eye condition known as Vogelwing — a membrane growing over the eye — and when treated for it in Shanghai, the eye was so badly damaged that he was obliged to relinquish his command.
He was subsequently appointed to Hankow, in a post roughly equivalent to what we should call a shipping agent, overseeing the company's operations in that city of millions, where he lived for many years. In 1923 he came home on a visit and stood as godfather at Anna Margrethe's baptism in Leinstrand church. Later that summer he returned to China.
He longed, however, to come home to Norway, and in 1932 resolved to do so. He gave notice and departed from Hankow, but when he passed through Shanghai, the company persuaded him to stay and take up a position there — something in the nature of a wharfinger.
One day, whilst clambering about on a roof, he very nearly fell. He caught himself with his right hand, and the jerk was so violent that the upper arm snapped. It transpired that the bone had been hollowed out from within, and that Johan was afflicted with a disease of the utmost rarity. The arm had to be amputated, and his telegram announcing this news read simply: Crippled. Complications then set in; a tumour developed in the chest — cancer, presumably — and on the 3rd of February, his mother's birthday, he died."