I suppose he had heard I was freshly passed and without experience as an officer, because he turned about and looked at me as if I had been exposed for sale. ‘He’s young’ he muttered. ‘Looks smart though.. You’re smart and willing (this to me sudden and loud) and all that aren’t you?’
I had just managed to open and shut my mouth, no more, being taken unawares. But it was enough for him. He made as if I had deafened him, with protestations of my smartness and willingness.
Captain Stuart promoted his third mate to second and made Conrad his new third. This position is often given to senior apprentices trying to make up the time to sit their second mate’s examination. Both first and second mates are in charge of the two separate watches of men and the third mate simply fills in. If the position wasn’t terribly prestigious, Conrad had certainly struck gold with regard to the ship. The Loch Etive was one of a number of extremely fast clippers owned by Aitken and Lilburn’s Loch Line, which specialised in the Australian trade. To serve in the Loch Line was the rough sailing equivalent of the Cunard Line or P&O services today. The Loch Etive was not quite as fast as some of their earlier clipper ships, but she benefitted from being commanded by one of the finest captains in the world at the time. Captain Stuart was a dour old Scotsman who had previously skippered the Tweed, a quirky vessel out of which he had coaxed some extraordinarily fast passages. He had made the Tweed’s name and she had made his. Conrad soon ascertained that his captain was in mourning for his old ship, and seemed to console himself by wringing the last ounce of speed out of his new one, as Conrad noted later:
It was hopeless for Captain Stuart to try to make his new iron clipper equal the feats which made the old Tweed. There was something pathetic in it, as in the endeavour of an artist in his old age to equal the masterpieces of his youth – for The Tweed’s famous passages were Captain Stuart’s masterpieces. It was pathetic, and perhaps just the least bit dangerous. At any rate, I am glad that I have seen some memorable carrying on to make a passage. And I have carried on myself upon the tall spars of that Clyde shipbuilder’s masterpiece as I have never carried on in a ship before or since.
It was during this voyage from London to Sydney and back that Conrad also got his first taste of real responsibility aboard ship, for the second mate was taken ill and Conrad was briefly put in charge of a watch of men. The experience sounds truly terrifying, for Captain Stuart clearly did not make life easy for his young officers, as this encounter between the two illustrates beautifully:
He was, I must say, a most uncomfortable commander to get your orders from at night. If I had the watch from eight till midnight, he would leave the deck about nine with the words, ‘Don’t take any sail off her.’ Then, on the point of disappearing down the companion-way, he would add curtly: ‘Don’t carry anything away.’
It was in this tough school that Conrad learned the art of being an officer and there can’t have been many more exacting arenas than the wool trade in which to learn: after a run down the Atlantic, the hard work really started off the Cape of Good Hope. From here the clippers ‘ran their easting down’, blown before the wild winds of the Roaring Forties, which howl unrestricted around this empty part of the globe. Dipping far south in search of fresh westerlies, the rigging of a ship would be adorned with icicles, the deck a maelstrom of confused water and icy spume flying inboard with the force of buckshot, cutting to the skin and freezing to the bone. The seas were often immense and daunting and the vessels driven almost under by their commanders. It was here that the rigging of the ship, always thrumming, would start to emit a deep roaring moan and the whole vessel would tremble like a leaf. This description by Conrad of a gale in the southern ocean gives some insight into the suffering and terror and beauty:
For a true expression of dishevelled wildness there is nothing like a gale in the bright moonlight of a high latitude. The ship, brought-to and bowing to enormous flashing seas, glistened wet from deck to trucks; her one set sail stood out a coal-black shape upon the gloomy blueness of the air. I was a youngster then, and suffering from weariness, cold, and imperfect oilskins which let water in at every seam.
Arrival in Sydney must have been a blessed relief and there was a brief pause as ship and crew girded their loins for the run back home around Cape Horn; once more, the vessel would enter the screaming wasteland of the Roaring Forties with only the lonely albatross and the howling westerly wind for company. It was here that Conrad was involved in the dramatic rescue of a small Danish brig, which was right on the verge of sinking when the Loch Etive reached her and launched her boats with unseemly haste, as Conrad recalls:
We made a race of it, and I would never have believed that a common boat’s crew of a merchantman could keep up so much determined fierceness in the regular swing of their stroke. What our captain had clearly perceived before we left had become plain to all of us since. The issue of our enterprise hung on a hair above that abyss of waters which will not give up its dead till the Day of Judgment. It was a race of two ship’s boats matched against Death for a prize of nine men’s lives, and Death had a long start. We saw the crew of the brig from afar working at the pumps – still pumping on that wreck, which already had settled so far down that the gentle, low swell, over which our boats rose and fell easily without a check to their speed, welling up almost level with her headrails, plucked at the ends of broken gear swinging desolately under her naked bowsprit.
Her bulwarks were gone fore and aft, and one saw her bare deck low-lying like a raft and swept clean of boats, spars, houses – of everything except the ringbolts and the heads of the pumps. I had one dismal glimpse of it as I braced myself up to receive upon my breast the last man to leave her, the captain, who literally let himself fall into my arms. It had been a weirdly silent rescue – a rescue without a hail, without a single uttered word, without a gesture or a sign, without a conscious exchange of glances. Up to the very last moment those on board stuck to their pumps, which spouted two clear streams of water upon their bare feet. Their brown skin showed through the rents of their shirts; and the two small bunches of half-naked, tattered men went on bowing from the waist to each other in their back-breaking labour, up and down, absorbed, with no time for a glance over the shoulder at the help that was coming to them.
It was a dramatic rescue and the culmination of a truly adventurous and educational trip. Conrad signed off in London and went in search of a new vessel. The choice of his next berth clearly illustrates that his thirst for adventure was far from quenched. She was the Palestine, an ancient ship under the command of the equally ancient and wonderfully named Captain Beard. Despite his advanced years, this was Captain Beard’s first command and from the first this little man enchanted Conrad. He offered him the berth of second mate for the Palestine’s voyage round to North Shields to load coal. From there, she would make the long haul around the globe to Bangkok. This shabby little vessel was a million miles away from the smart Loch Etive, but her dilapidated air and epic voyage appealed to the romantic in Conrad and he eagerly signed on.
The passage did indeed prove to be a challenge and is narrated in Conrad’s short story, ‘Youth’. The bare facts of it are as follows: the Palestine (renamed ‘Judea’ in ‘Youth’) headed from London around to North Shields and ran straight into a series of equinoctial gales. It took her a month to reach her destination, by which time she had lost the berth booked for her and had to wait some weeks to load. While in dock, she was hit by an out-of-control steamer and further delayed while repairs were carried out. Setting out to Bangkok in November, she struggled down channel against a succession of gales and after a month of being battered by the elements she was seriously leaking. Fortunately, progress had been so slow that Falmouth was a two-week sail away, so while the hands pumped for their lives, the Palestine limped back to port. Despite the hardship, Conrad was clearly enjoying the trip, as he recalled in ‘Youth’:
As soon as we had crawled on deck I used to take a round turn with a rope about the men,
the pumps, and the mainmast, and we turned, we turned incessantly, with the water to our waists, to our necks, over our heads. It was all one. We had forgotten how it felt to be dry.
And there was somewhere in me the thought: By Jove! this is the deuce of an adventure – something you read about; and it is my first voyage as second mate – and I am only twenty – and here I am lasting it out as well as any of these men, and keeping my chaps up to the mark. I was pleased. I would not have given up the experience for worlds. I had moments of exultation.
On finally reaching Falmouth, carpenter and crew effected repairs, the ship sailed again and promptly started leaking anew. Once more she returned to Falmouth, where most of her cargo was unloaded and the shipwrights got to work on her. She was then reloaded but leaked worse than ever. By now the vessel was becoming something of a joke, as Conrad related:
They towed us back to the inner harbour, and we became a fixture, a feature, an institution of the place. People pointed us out to visitors as ‘That ’ere bark that’s going to Bankok – has been here six months – put back three times.’ On holidays the small boys pulling about in boats would hail, ‘Judea, ahoy!’ and if a head showed above the rail shouted, ‘Where you bound to? – Bankok?’ and jeered.
In all, the vessel was six months in Falmouth but when they finally made good their escape there were no further dramas until they neared their destination. At this point ill-fortune descended again, when a wisp of smoke was detected rising from the main hatch; the Palestine was on fire. This was probably due to her cargo of coal getting damp through all the leaks and being loaded and unloaded for repairs.
Spontaneous combustion of a cargo was an ever-present danger back in those days of leaky wooden ships and the crew now set to work pumping water back in to the boat they had spent so long emptying, while the vessel proceeded on her course. She was tantalisingly close to her destination, but after several days of containing the blaze, the barque finally blew her decks off, sending many of the crew flying overboard. Fortunately the weather was calm and a steamer that was close at hand offered to tow them, as Java was within striking distance. The tow only succeeded in fanning the flames however, and the line was cut. The steamer offered to take the crew to safety, but Captain Beard declined, preferring to stick with his ship until the bitter end. The crew took to the ship’s boats and awaited the death of their doomed vessel. It came thus:
Between the darkness of earth and heaven she was burning fiercely upon a disc of purple sea shot by the blood-red play of gleams; upon a disc of water glittering and sinister. A high, clear flame, an immense and lonely flame, ascended from the ocean, and from its summit the black smoke poured continuously at the sky. She burned furiously, mournful and imposing like a funeral pyre kindled in the night, surrounded by the sea, watched over by the stars. A magnificent death had come like a grace, like a gift, like a reward to that old ship at the end of her laborious days. The surrender of her weary ghost to the keeping of stars and sea was stirring like the sight of a glorious triumph.
And that was the end of the Palestine debacle. It took Conrad and his crew three hours or so to row to Java and he was able to observe for the first time the East and all the mysteries it held. It was a significant moment, for these waters were to provide the inspiration for many of his tales.
Yet he did not tarry for long here and returned to Britain in a more prosaic manner as passenger on a steamer. His next vessel was the Riversdale, a ship which sailed to Madras via Africa. At this point Conrad signed off due to a dispute with the skipper. It appears that the captain was a heavy drinker and was suffering from delirium tremens when he arrived in Madras. He ordered Conrad to fetch a doctor, which he did, informing him that the captain was suffering from an alcohol-related illness. This unfortunately got back to his captain, who promptly dismissed his second mate. This could have left Conrad in a bit of a fix; many sailors ended up stuck ‘on the beach’ in eastern ports and Conrad obviously did not have a reference from the Riversdale. Fortunately, he headed to Bombay and easily secured a berth aboard the beautiful full-rigged ship, the Narcissus. Any stain on his character regarding the Riversdale had been cleared once that vessel had left Madras, for her skipper immediately wrecked her despite the weather being perfectly calm and clement. An official inquiry found that the ship was many miles off course, and gave a good insight into her drunken captain by stating: ‘Either he did not know where he was going, in which case there was culpable recklessness; or, he did not know where he was, in which case there was equally culpable negligence or ignorance.’ The skipper’s certificate of competence was suspended for twelve months. Conrad was clearly best off out of the Riversdale and returned to London aboard the Narcissus, the elegant ship that was to provide the setting for his later book, The Nigger of the Narcissus. On returning to London, he had gained enough sea time to sit his examination for First Mate and was once more tormented by the Board of Trade examiner who set him the most impossible theoretical situations from which he had to rescue a wayward square-rigger. He later recalled:
The imaginary ship seemed to labour under a most comprehensive curse. It’s no use enlarging on the never ending misfortunes; suffice it to say that, long before the end I would have welcomed with gratitude the opportunity to exchange into the Flying Dutchman.
Despite these travails, he successfully attained his first mate’s certificate and shipped aboard another big square-rigger, the Tilkhurst, which made a round trip to Singapore and back without incident. On being discharged, Conrad sat his master’s certificate and also applied to become a British citizen. He was successful on both counts and at the age of 24 had achieved a great deal. For his uncle Thaddeus it was a very proud moment; a triumph of his own sensible, pragmatic nature over the natural instinct of the Korzeniowskis to go off the rails. He wrote effusively to his nephew praising him for his achievements. It was a far cry from the angry missive he had sent on Conrad’s first arrival in London.
Although Conrad was now technically a captain, it was common to spend several years as first mate before stepping up to command, and this is exactly what he did, signing on aboard the Highland Forest, another big windjammer. He joined the vessel in Amsterdam during an epic cold snap. The weather was so cold that the cargo was frozen upriver and, as a result, the crew were all discharged. To add to the loneliness, the captain was also absent and would not join the vessel until just prior to departure. Conrad later recalled the chilly desolation of this frustrating time beautifully:
Notwithstanding the little iron stove, the ink froze on the swing-table in my cabin, and I found it more convenient to go ashore stumbling over the arctic waste-land and shivering in glazed tramcars in order to write my evening letter to my owners in a gorgeous café in the centre of the town. It was an immense place, lofty and gilt, upholstered in red plush, full of electric lights and so thoroughly warmed that even the marble tables felt tepid to the touch. The waiter who brought me my cup of coffee bore, by comparison with my utter isolation, the dear aspect of an intimate friend. There, alone in a noisy crowd, I would write slowly a letter addressed to Glasgow, of which the gist would be: There is no cargo, and no prospect of any coming till late spring apparently. And all the time I sat there the necessity of getting back to the ship bore heavily on my already half-congealed spirits – the shivering in glazed tramcars, the stumbling over the snow-sprinkled waste ground, the vision of ships frozen in a row, appearing vaguely like corpses of black vessels in a white world, so silent, so lifeless, so soulless they seemed to be.
Eventually the cargo did arrive and, in the absence of the captain, Conrad was responsible for loading the ship. This was not as easy as one might think, for sailing ships were tricky vessels and no two were the same. Load some down by the stern and they would be sluggish in light weather but fly before a storm. Down by the bow might lead to the opposite being true, but not always. Load a vessel with the cargo too high up and she might become unstable or ‘crank’, load her too low and she would b
e too ‘stiff’ and not roll naturally. It was vital to load a ship to suit her personal requirements. Conrad did not know the Highland Forest, and had to do the best he could. Sadly, it was not good enough, as he discovered on Captain McWhirr’s arrival:
Without further preliminaries than a friendly nod, McWhirr addressed me: ‘You have got her pretty well in her fore and aft trim. Now, what about your weights?’ I told him I had managed to keep the weight sufficiently well up, as I thought, one-third of the whole being in the upper part ‘above the beams,’ as the technical expression has it. He whistled ‘Phew!’ scrutinizing me from head to foot. A sort of smiling vexation was visible on his ruddy face. ‘Well, we shall have a lively time of it this passage, I bet,’ he said.
Neither before nor since have I felt a ship roll so abruptly, so violently, so heavily. Once she began, you felt that she would never stop, and this hopeless sensation, characterizing the motion of ships whose centre of gravity is brought down too low in loading, made everyone on board weary of keeping on his feet. The captain used to remark frequently: ‘Ah, yes; I dare say one-third weight above beams would have been quite enough for most ships. But then, you see, there’s no two of them alike on the seas, and she’s an uncommonly ticklish jade to load’.
It is perhaps understandable that after many months of this interminable rolling and jerking the Highland Forest lost one of her lighter spars from aloft, and it is poetic justice that the offending spar should strike the man responsible on the back. Conrad was seriously injured by the blow and was laid up for many months in a hospital in Singapore. When he finally got back on his feet he made another unusual move; signing up as first mate aboard a small coasting steamer, the Vidar, which plied her trade along the numerous colonial outposts of the China Seas. This was quite a leap from treading the deck of a big square-rigger, and would demand an entirely different skill set, for the little steamer threaded her way through some of the most treacherous waters in the East. Conrad came to understand them intimately and described them perfectly:
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