Carl Emil Pettersson
Swedish-born King of Tabar Island (1875-1937)
Carl Emil Pettersson (23 October 1875 – 12 May 1937) was a Swedish sailor. He became king of Tabar Island in Papua New Guinea after he was shipwrecked there in 1904.
Early life
Pettersson was one of six children of Carl Wilhelm and Johanna Pettersson. His father left the family, and Carl went to sea around 1892, at about age 17. Around 1898, he ended up in the Bismarck Archipelago of German New Guinea, where he worked for the German trading house, Neuguinea-Compagnie, headquartered in Kokopo.
Shipwreck
On a recruiting trip in the Pacific, Pettersson's vessel, the Herzog Johan Albrecht (Duke Johan Albrecht), sank on Christmas Day 1904, off Tabar Island in New Ireland Province. He washed ashore near a village and ended up in a hibiscus hedge, where he was immediately surrounded by islanders. The islanders carried him to their king, Lamy. The king's daughter, Princess Singdo, fell in love with him, and in 1907 they married.
He entered the copra trade and created a coconut plantation that he called Teripax.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Carl Emil Pettersson” as swedish-born King of Tabar Island (1875-1937). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the places & architecture register because the source frames it as swedish-born King of Tabar Island (1875-1937). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q338095. VIAF identifies the subject as 40308461. The Library of Congress control number is no2007149282. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1875, 1937, 1904 and 1892.
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This entry incorporates text from “Carl Emil Pettersson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.