Carl Gustaf Ekeberg

Trained as a pharmacist and chemist, Ekeberg started his career as a ship's doctor, and became an expert navigator.

He brought back numerous natural history specimens from his voyages for Carl Linnaeus, with whom he had a close friendship.

[2] Swedish ships from 1750 avoided calling at Cape Town, preferring to reprovision in Madagascar and St. Helena.

He was an excellent cartographer, compiling good maps of the coastlines along which he sailed, publishing them in his book Ostindisk Resa 1770-71 (Stockholm 1773).

[3] Ekeberg was also responsible for having Anders Erikson Sparrman, whom he had met on a voyage to Canton in 1765, sent to the Cape in 1772 to take up a tutoring post.