Between 1862 and his death in 1908 Joseph Mathia Svoboda, born to a family of European origin in Baghdad, kept diaries detailing the journeys he made as purser aboard British Lynch Company steamships plying the Tigris between Baghdad and Basra. In addition to recording ship data, including weather, river conditions, cargoes, passengers, port calls, epidemic diseases, and other significant events affecting the ship, he adorns his narrative with accounts of his large extended family, an extensive circle of friends, his relations with local officials, and political and social gossip. The result is a unique glimpse of life from the perspective of the European expatriate community of 19th century Iraq.