Joseph Conrad's EASTERN VOYAGES

Tales of Singapore and an East Borneo River

Ian Burnet

• Publisher: Alfred Street Press
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9780645106817
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The life of Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski reads like an adventure story, an adventure story that could be written by somebody like Joseph Conrad. The young Conrad dreamed of a life at sea, he eventually became a British merchant seaman and he spent fifteen years sailing on the classic three-masted, square-rigged sailing clippers before they were ultimately replaced by steamships. During this period he worked his way up from apprentice, to third mate, to second mate, to first mate and finally the captain of one of these beautiful ships.

Joseph Conrad once said that everything about his life can be found in his books. Because the material for his first books are mainly autobiographical then Ian Burnet has been able to use a mixture of his own words, together with those of Conrad, to tell this story of Joseph Conrad's eastern voyages and his tales of Singapore and an East Borneo River.

Conrad loved the 'mysterious East' and his first books - Almayers Folly, An Outcast of the Islands, Lord Jim and The Rescue were all set in Borneo and based on the people and places he encountered in his own voyages as first mate on a trading vessel based out of Singapore.   

In the latter part of this book Ian Burnet has taken the liberty to place the parts of these first novels into their proper narrative sequence and focus on the back-story of his characters, which will make it easier for readers to discover or rediscover Conrad's genius.

Large Format, 164 Pages, 42 Images

1 The voyage of the sailing ship Palestine, 1881

And this is how I see the East. I have seen its secret places and have looked into its very soul; but now I see it always from a small boat, a high outline of mountains, blue and afar in the morning; like faint mist at noon; a jagged wall of purple at sunset.

– Joseph Conrad, Youth

For his first voyage to the Far East, Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski found an insignificant little barque covered in rust, dust and grime lying in a dark pool in one of the smaller London dockyards. The Palestine needed a second mate and he appears on the ships articles as Konrad Korzeniowski, aged 24, of Gittomir, Poland. What Konrad was looking for was at least twelve months certified experience as a regular watch-keeping officer in a deep-sea vessel. The captain of the Palestine was Elijah Beard, a gnarled seaman of the old school who had spent his life sailing the rigours of the North Sea. A fine old man, he had been long overlooked as this was his first command and Konrad believed he was ‘sixty if a day’. The mate was an experienced Irish seaman of fifty years who had a Roman nose, a snow-white, long beard, and his name was Mahon, Both were thoroughly good seamen and between those two grizzled old sailors Konrad felt like a young boy standing between two grandfathers.

In Conrad’s story called Youth, which is essentially autobiographical, he changes the name of the Palestine to Judea and the Captain from Elijah Beard to Brierly, but all other elements are almost the same. The voyage would be life-changing for Konrad because it would bring him to the Far East, to Singapore, to the Malay Archipelago and to the Dutch East Indies, places which would become the background for his first books – Almayer’s Folly, An Outcast of the Island, Lord Jim and The Rescue.

The sailing ship Palestine, State Library of South Australia, A.E.Edwardes Collection

The Palestine had been laid up for such a long time that she was covered in dust, soot and dirt. However, underneath all this grime she was a well-built British wooden sailing vessel, a barque of symmetrical rig and graceful form. As Conrad first describes her in Youth:

To me it was like coming out of a palace into a ruined cottage. She was about 400 tons, had a primitive windlass, wooden latches to the doors, not a bit of brass about her, and a big square stern. There was on it, below her name in big letters, a lot of scroll work, with the gilt off, and some sort of a coat of arms, with the motto ‘Do or Die’ underneath. I remember it took my fancy immensely. There was a touch of romance in it, something that made me love the old thing — something that appealed to my youth!

The Palestine departed London on 21 September 1881 reaching Newcastle and the River Tyne where it remained for five weeks loading its cargo of coal. The vessel then left Newcastle in November with 600 tons of coal to deliver across the Indian Ocean and half way around the world to Bangkok in Thailand. This was Konrad’s first voyage as a ship’s officer and his first voyage to what he described as the mysterious East. At only 24 years of age his voyage on the Palestine was going to be a great adventure:

O Youth! The strength of it, the faith of it, the imagination of it! To me she was not an old rattletrap carting about the world a lot of coal for a freight — to me she was the endeavor, the test, the trial of life. I think of her with pleasure, with affection, with regret — as you would think of someone dead you have loved. I shall never forget her.

A new technical innovation had completely change the world’s sea freight. Built in Britain in 1839, the SS Archimedes was the world’s first screw propeller-driven steamship designed for open water voyages. It had considerable influence on ship development and in addition to her effect on commercial vessels it encouraged the adoption of screw propulsion by the Royal Navy. Ten years later the revolutionary SS Great Britain built by Brunel, became the first iron-hulled screw-driven ship, the first ship to combine these two innovations and the first ship of its type to cross the Atlantic. In the beginning these first ocean-going steamships also kept their sails because they could not carry enough coal or water for long-distance voyages and their engines were not always reliable. However the greater size and reliability of steamships allowed them to load much more freight than sailing ships and the insurance premiums for their cargo was much less.

The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 cut a distance of 6,100 km off the route from London to China and gave the steamships a critical advantage over sailing vessels on the busy Europe to Asia route. The Canal was not a practical option for sailing vessels, as using a tug to haul them through was expensive. Steamships immediately made use of this new waterway and found themselves in high demand in China for the start of the 1870 tea season. So successful was the steam ship trade using the Suez Canal that 45 new steamships were built in the Clyde shipyards in 1871 for the Eastern trade.

Coal was needed to fuel the iron steamships that were now traversing the world’s oceans and coal bunkers were positioned at ports around the world. To the regret of many, including a whole breed of ocean going sailors, graceful sailing ships were converted into grimy coal colliers. However it was much more difficult for the steamship to take over the really long-haul trades to Australia, New Zealand, Chile and California which entailed rounding the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn and it was on these routes that sailing ships lasted well into the twentieth century.

By 1883 the total tonnage of British steamships exceeded that of sail for the first time. The total tonnage had risen as the size of the iron steamships increased but the total number of vessels declined and it was estimated that 260 ship masters lost employment every year. This was not a good time to be employed as a merchant seaman but despite all these difficulties Konrad refused to go into steam as he loved the fine lines and character of the great sailing ships of the period. Competition with steam meant that sailing ships increasingly carried too much canvas, with too few men to safely work these ships.

It was a dangerous life and Conrad wrote that:

Like a beautiful and unscrupulous woman, the sea of the past was glorious in its smile, irresistible in its anger, capricious, enticing, illogical, irresponsible, a thing of love, a thing of fear. It cast a spell, it gave joy, it lulled gently into boundless faith, then with quick and causeless anger it killed. But its cruelty was redeemed by the charm of its inscrutable mystery, by the immensity of its promise, by the supreme witchery of its possible favour. Strong men with childlike hearts were faithful to it, were content to live by its grace – to die by its will.

The Palestine departed Newcastle in beautiful sunny winter weather which lasted all the way down the North Sea, the English Channel, and three hundred miles out into the Atlantic Ocean before the wind came around to the southwest and as described by Conrad:

In the stormy space surrounding us there was as much flying spray as air. Day after day and night after night there was nothing round the ship but the howl of the wind, the tumult of the sea, the noise of water pouring over her deck. There was no rest for her and no rest for us. She tossed, she pitched, she stood on her head, she sat on her tail, she rolled, she groaned, and we had to hold on while on deck and cling to our bunks when below, in a constant effort of body and worry of mind.

The Palestine started taking on water, forcing the crew to man the pumps in four hour shifts. According to Conrad they pumped all night, all day, all week. They pumped for dear life, watch after watch and for their exhausted bodies it seemed like an eternity:

And we pumped. And there was no break in the weather. The sea was white like a sheet of foam. Like a cauldron of boiling milk: there was not a break in the clouds, no – not the size of a man’s hand, no – not for so much as ten seconds. There was for us no stay, there were for us no stars, no sun, no universe – nothing but angry clouds and an infuriated sea. We pumped watch and watch for dear life … we had forgotten how it felt to be dry.

Despite the conditions this was a great test for Konrad, as second mate he had his crew to supervise, not only ‘to keep his chaps up to the mark’ as he describes it, but to work alongside them and to ‘keep himself up to the mark’. It was a life confirming experience and like the words written on her stern – ‘Palestine, London. Do or Die’ – he and his vessel braved the worst of the elements and survived. If he did not know this already, Konrad soon learned that life on ship was a special life and demanded the total loyalty and discipline of its crew. Not from any terms of service or compulsion by its officers, but as a means of their own survival.

Once the storm abated the Palestine was forced to return to Falmouth for repairs. Strained beyond endurance she had spat out all the oakum that sealed her lower seams. Most of the crew considered she was unsafe, refused duty, and deserted the ship in Falmouth. The initial and hasty repairs did not fix the real problems and after another failed voyage her owners decided that the Palestine needed a complete refit. Because of numerous delays the repairs took eight months, she was completely re-calked, given a copper bottom and according to Konrad made as tight as a bottle. Konrad stayed with the ship during all this time in port in order to gain the time in service required for his first mate’s examination. Falmouth was good to Konrad, for he had more leisure time and was able to indulge his favorite activity, which was reading and mastering the English language. He was able to go up to London to collect some books and recalls reading the dramatic works of William Shakespeare to the noisy accompaniment of caulkers’ mallets driving oakum into the dry seams of the Palestine. However the mysterious East still awaited and he wrote:

And for me there was also my youth to make me patient. There was all the East before me, and all life, and the thought that I had been tried in that ship and had come out pretty well. And I thought of men of old who, centuries ago, went that road in ships that sailed no better, to the land of palms, and spices, and yellow sands, and of brown nations ruled by kings more cruel than Nero the Roman and more splendid than Solomon the Jew.

Already a year after its initial departure from London, the Palestine finally departed Falmouth for Bangkok with its cargo of coal on 17 September 1882. The voyage down the Atlantic Ocean was now all smooth sailing, she rounded the Cape of Good Hope without stopping at Capetown and entered the Indian Ocean. Here she sailed south to catch the ‘Roaring Forties’, however the winds were light and weeks slipped by as the Palestine lumbered eastward towards that point in the Indian Ocean where their calculation of longitude told them they were due south of the Sunda Strait, between the islands of Sumatra and Java, and it was time to turn north:

The old bark lumbered on, heavy with her age and the burden of her cargo, while I lived the life of youth in ignorance and hope. She lumbered on through an interminable procession of days; and the fresh gilding flashed back at the setting sun, seemed to cry out over the darkening sea the words painted on her stern, ‘Palestine, London. Do or Die.’

Coal is a dangerous cargo, especially when it has been too long aboard and too often wet. So serious was the risk of fire in coal cargoes, that the subject had been considered by a Royal Commission in 1875 because of the number of coal laden ships lost because of the self-combustion of their cargo. It was reported that 57 coal-laden ships were known to have been lost because of their burning cargo and an appalling total of 328 crew were reported as missing at sea. The Royal Commission reported that the principle factors identified were the quality of the coal, as lower quality coals were more prone to self-heating, smaller coal lump size was also more prone to self-heating, and the wetness of the coal was a factor. It goes on to say that the self-heating is caused by oxidation of the coal, with the combustion going through several stages prior to flaming ignition.

Somewhere in the Indian Ocean, Conrad described in his novel Youth how when he unlocked the forepeak there was a heavy, sooty, smell of paraffin – the coal had started to combust! The next day the vessel began to smoke in earnest. Their cargo of coal had been broken up in the transfer to a storage hulk in Falmouth then it had been wetted when it rained all the time they were taking it back from the hulk. Now with this long passage there was another case of spontaneous combustion, although there was no sign of fire as without sufficient oxygen the coal only smoldered somewhere below.

Captain Beard called the crew into his cabin. He had a chart spread out on the table and explained that the coast of Western Australia is near but since it is the cyclone month, they would proceed to towards Java Head and would try to stifle the combustion by want of air. They battened down all the hatches and still she smoked. The smoke kept coming through the bulkheads and the covers and made its way into every part of the ship. Clearly if the smoke was coming out then the air was getting in. The only other solution was water and Conrad describes how they poured half of the Indian Ocean into the main hatch:

Steam ascended mingling with the smoke. We poured salt water as into a barrel without a bottom. It was our fate to pump in that ship, to pump out of her, to pump into her; and after keeping water out of her to save ourselves from being drowned, we now frantically poured water into her to save ourselves from being burnt.

After flooding the bottom of the ship with water the smoke decreased and in two days there was no smoke at all. Everybody had a broad grin. The crew cleaned themselves up for the first time in a fortnight and all had a special dinner. They spoke of spontaneous combustion with contempt and celebrated their success in extinguishing the smoldering cargo. Then as described by Conrad:

Next day it was my watch on deck from eight to twelve. At breakfast the captain observed, ‘It’s wonderful how that smell hangs about the cabin.’ About ten, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Acknowledgements
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Prologue
• 1. The voyage of the sailing ship Palestine, 1881
• 2. Jozef Konrad Korzeniowski’s early life
• 3. The voyage of the sailing ship Highland Forest, 1887
• 4. The Founding of Singapore
• 5. That Great Eastern Port – Singapore
• 6. The voyage of the steamship Jeddah, 1880
• 7. East Borneo
• 8. The voyages of the steamship Vidar, 1887-1888
• 9. Macassar
• 10. The voyage of the sailing ship Otago, 1888-1889
• 11. The voyage into the Heart of Darkness, 1890
• 12. The voyages of the sailing ship Torrens, 1891-1893
• 13. The voyage of the steamship Adowa, 1893
• 14. From Jozef Konrad Korzeniowski to Joseph Conrad
• 15. The Rescue – The Man and his Brig
• 16. Almayer’s Folly – Lingard & Company
• 17. An Outcast of the Islands
• 18. Almayer’s Folly – Of Gold and Gunpowder
• 19. The Rescue – The Shore of Refuge
• 20. Lord Jim
• 21. The Rescue – Claim of Life and Toll of Death
• Epilogue
• Timeline
• Bibliography
• Other books by Ian Burnet