On the 25th of May 1817, an Ottoman Corvette named Africa set its sail from Alexandriaheaded for Livorno. The purpose was to sail further to Sweden with a cargo of wool and other Egyptian products addressed to the Egyptian general agent Ismael Gibraltar in Stockholm. Gibraltar was in Sweden inspecting foundries and purchasing rifles and cannons for Muhammed Aly Pasha, the Viceroy of Egypt. However, during the first years of the 19th-century, the plague had sporadically flared up in ports around the Mediterranean. At the time of Africa’s eventual departure from Livorno, reports reached Sweden informing the authorities of outbreaks of plague in the port of Alexandria and then later also in the port of Algiers. One of the few and rudimentary bulwarks against shipboard epidemics in Sweden at the time was the quarantine station on the little island of Känsö on the Swedish west coast which didnot yet have the capacity to accommodate any vessels infected or under suspicion of beinginfected by the plague. The quarantine commission in Gothenburg, which had been formedin 1804 as a response to the outbreak of yellow fever in the West Indies and North America, therefore had to resort to some rather extraordinary measures to accommodate Africa. This paper will thus follow the Africa from Alexandria via Livorno to Känsö and explore how this episode eventually unfolded and what it meant for the future of the quarantine station. Theoretically, I will argue that this episode shares many similarities with the concept of a rite of passage, a sort of baptism of fire which consequently laid the foundation for 19th-centuryquarantine in Sweden. The concept of rites of passage was first developed by Arnold van Gennep in the early 20th-century. As an ethnographer, he explored how an individual’s life, in any given society, could be understood in transitional terms. Rites of passages are, according to van Gennep, always subdivided into three stages, the first one is the separation from previous conditions which is followed by the transitional, or liminal phase, which lastly leads to incorporation. I argue that the voyage of the Africa can be subdivided into three transitional phases. Firstly, I will consider its departure from the plague-stricken port of Alexandria via Livorno as a rite of separation and cleansing from previous conditions. The following part will delve into the liminal, or transitional phase when Africa sailed from Livorno and headed for Känsö. Of interest here are reports from the Swedish consuls in plagued-stricken Mediterranean ports and the preparations made for the accommodation of Africa and its quarantine. This phasecan be defined as a moratorium for the quarantine station, an anxious period of uncertainty which would eventually culminate and lead into the next phase, incorporation. This part will set its focus on the aftermath of the quarantine of Africa and the lessons learned from the episode and what it meant for the future of quarantine on Känsö and Ottoman-Swedish relations.