Ships and Sailors in Early Twentieth-Century Maritime Fiction

In the Wake of Conrad: Ships and Sailors in Early Twentieth-Century Maritime Fiction Alexandra Caroline Phillips BA (Hons) Cardiff University, MA King’s College, London A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Cardiff University 30 March 2015 1 Table of Contents Abstract 3 Acknowledgements 4 Introduction - Contexts and Tradition 5 The Transition from Sail to Steam 6 The Maritime Fiction Tradition 12 The Changing Nature of the Sea Story in the Twentieth Century 19 PART ONE Chapter 1 - Re-Reading Conrad and Maritime Fiction: A Critical Review 23 The Early Critical Reception of Conrad’s Maritime Texts 24 Achievement and Decline: Re-evaluations of Conrad 28 Seaman and Author: Psychological and Biographical Approaches 30 Maritime Author / Political Novelist 37 New Readings of Conrad and the Maritime Fiction Tradition 41 Chapter 2 - Sail Versus Steam in the Novels of Joseph Conrad Introduction: Assessing Conrad in the Era of Steam 51 Seamanship and the Sailing Ship: The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ 54 Lord Jim, Steam Power, and the Lost Art of Seamanship 63 Chance: The Captain’s Wife and the Crisis in Sail 73 Looking back from Steam to Sail in The Shadow-Line 82 Romance: The Joseph Conrad / Ford Madox Ford Collaboration 90 2 PART TWO Chapter 3 - A Return to the Past: Maritime Adventures and Pirate Tales Introduction: The Making of Myths 101 The Seduction of Silver: Defoe, Stevenson and the Tradition of Pirate Adventures 102 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Tales of Captain Sharkey 111 Pirates and Petticoats in F. Tennyson Jesse’s Moonraker 127 Myths of Piracy and Childhood: A High Wind in Jamaica 137 Chapter 4 - New Directions in Maritime Fiction I: From Tall Ships to Modern Yachts Introduction: The Changing Shape of Adventures at Sea 156 Spies, Sailors, and The Riddle of the Sands 163 Chapter 5 - New Directions in Maritime Fiction II: From Sail to Steam Introduction: Mechanisation and the Dismantling of Maritime Myths 173 Sailors and Whores in James Hanley’s Boy 174 Man, Machine, and Ultramarine 191 Chapter 6 - How to Survive Storms at Sea Introduction: Following in the Wake of Conrad? 210 The Mechanics of Seamanship: Richard Hughes’s In Hazard 214 Conclusion New Horizons: The Diversification of Sea Stories into the Twenty-First Century 231 Bibliography 238 3 Abstract The aim of this thesis is to explore the changing representation of ships and sailors in English maritime fiction in the early twentieth century, as sailing ships were being replaced by steamships. It begins with a critical review examining the reception of Joseph Conrad’s maritime fiction and subsequently presents new readings of five of his sea novels and their response to the transition between sail and steam: The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ (1897), Lord Jim (1900), Romance (1903), Chance (1913) and The Shadow-Line (1917). Arguing that Conrad’s work is not the culmination of the maritime fiction genre, the third chapter examines sea stories that retreated back to the past in pirate adventure narratives. It begins with a contextual review of pirate fiction, followed by analyses of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s pirate short stories (1897 and 1911), F. Tennyson Jesse’s Moonraker (1927), and Richard Hughes’s A High Wind in Jamaica (1929). In the same period, other maritime texts turned away from the pirate romance to embrace the harsh realities of the brave new mechanised maritime world and the changing role of the sailor on modern vessels; chapter four examines the impact of war on maritime fiction through an analysis of Erskine Childers’s The Riddle of the Sands (1903), which responded to and exacerbated national fears about invasion, while chapter five considers the impact of industrialisation on maritime fiction in James Hanley’s Boy (1931) and Malcolm Lowry’s Ultramarine (1933). The sixth chapter considers the role of fact and fiction in Richard Hughes’s In Hazard (1938) and examines the ways in which this text looks back to Conrad’s work. Ultimately, the texts discussed prompt a reconsideration of the maritime fiction genre, while the conclusion suggests how it enables further experimentation with the sea story throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. 4 Acknowledgements So many people have contributed their time, wisdom, and support while I have been writing this thesis that it is a privilege to be able to acknowledge my gratitude here. First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Heather Worthington, whose dedication has helped me to turn ideas into written reality and whose expert guidance has enabled me to pursue an academic career. I would also like to thank Dr. John Peck, who supervised my first year and has stayed in touch in his retirement, buoying me up with kind words in tough times. I am indebted to the support of many people in ENCAP, particularly Prof. Martin Coyle, Dr. Becky Munford, Dr. Katie Gramich, Dr. Melanie Bigold and Dr. Carl Plasa, who have provided invaluable advice in seminars, meetings, and annual reviews. I have also been part of a thriving student community, sharing laughter, tears, tea and beers with Lisa Phillips, Fiona Edwards, Amy Lowcock, Dr. Katie Garner, Dr. Nicole A. Thomas, Dr. Erica Moore, Dr. Emma Schofield, Dr. Laura Foster, Dr. Lucy Andrew, Dr. Nicky Lloyd, Dr. Katy Jones, Martha Baldon, Daný van Dam, Emily Blewitt, and Elinor Shepley among others. I would also like to thank the staff in the Arts & Social Studies library and the administrative staff in ENCAP, particularly Rhian Rattray. In the wider academic community I am grateful to Susan Cowling, Dr. Richard and Joy Marsden, Jeremy and Ceri Wilcock, Dr. Chloe Sellwood, former ENCAP staff Prof. Faye Hammill and Prof. Ralph Pite, the staff at the British Library, and the members of the Joseph Conrad society, especially John Crompton and Dr. Keith Carabine, for their advice, book recommendations, and encouragement. Special thanks are due to Graham Dimmer, Steve Dimmer, Gemma Page, and James Godwin for inviting me into their world of sailing adventures, including the epic voyage from Sri Lanka to Majorca. Above all, there are five people who have been my beginning, middle, and end: my father (and sailing mentor) Graham Miller, my mother Maureen Miller, my husband Huw Phillips, and my daughters Fiona and Clara Phillips. They have made everything possible and all of it worthwhile. 5 Introduction: Contexts and Tradition Historically, the transition between sail and steam began in the mid-1800s, but it was at the turn of the twentieth century that the demise of sail became increasingly evident in maritime fiction, particularly in the sea novels of Joseph Conrad, which reflect the usurpation of the steamship. In brief, the shift from sail to steam meant that responsibility for the ship’s movement passed from sailors and sails to engineers and engines. Sailors now became ‘deckhands’, in charge of loading the ship, navigating, and keeping watch. The fundamental change in the role of sailors during the mechanisation of the maritime industry had a significant impact on early twentieth-century maritime fiction. Critical studies of the genre, particularly those of John Peck, Robert Foulke, and Margaret Cohen, locate the genre’s end in the sea novels of Joseph Conrad. This thesis challenges that assumption, reconsidering Conrad’s maritime fiction and assessing the sea story after Conrad. It opens with an account of the cultural and historical transition from sail to steam in the context of steamship development and the maritime fiction tradition. Twentieth-century maritime texts were not only influenced by changes in the maritime industry, but also by the legacy of maritime adventure narratives stretching back to the seventeenth century. ‘Maritime fiction’1 is the description used by John Peck in his study of the genre in terms of Empire, while Margaret Cohen writes about the ‘novel of the sea’2 and Robert Foulke speaks of ‘sea voyage narratives’.3 Peck, Cohen, and Foulke have all 1 John Peck, Maritime Fiction: Sailors and the Sea in British and American Novels 1719 – 1917 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001). Peck uses the definition ‘maritime fiction’ in order to cover a broad range of texts, some of which seem only to touch lightly on the subject, such as novels by Jane Austen and Elizabeth Gaskell, arguing that they use ‘maritime references to explore some broad questions about British life’ (p. 4). My thesis uses a similar approach and so I apply the same term. 2 Margaret Cohen, The Novel and the Sea (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2010). Cohen takes a broader approach than Peck by encompassing English, American, and French sea literature. She uses the concept of the ‘sailor’s craft’ to extend her analysis to works of non-fiction, visual art, and poetry. 3 Robert Foulke, The Sea Voyage Narrative (New York and London: Routledge, 2002). Foulke suggests that voyage narratives do much more than simply tell the story of a long and difficult journey at sea; they offer metaphorical explorations of unknown lands, unfamiliar parts of the human psyche, and the re-telling of tales in the sailor’s return. Having established the enormous amount of sea literature and the variations in quality of writing, Foulke deliberately narrows the scope of his approach to the detailed study of a few selected ‘sea 6 focused on canonical authors and texts, but this thesis turns its attention to lesser-known works, contending that maritime fiction is more prevalent and significant than previously thought. A selective and representative number of texts are the focus of this thesis, and they have been grouped into six chapters, covering the period 1897-1938. The choice of end date is the consequence of the Second World War, which itself marks a whole new chapter in the history of shipping.

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