Joseph Conrad, Sailor

It is among the most evocative first lines in literature: “The NELLIE, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest.” Thus, the scene is set and, as a windless twilight descends upon the lower reaches of the River Thames, a seaman named Marlow spins a yarn for his shipmates. It is the 1890s, just before the coming of small, gasoline engines suitable for yachts, and NELLIE’s captain and crew adapt to nature’s dictates, the ebbing and flooding of the tide, as sailors must.

“The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide…the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits.”

Joseph Conrad is painting with words. Only a writer who was also a thorough sailor could have composed such lines or imagined the cockpit of a 33' yawl as just the place for his characters to relax while their shipmate relates his adventure as skipper of a small steamboat on the Congo River. Like Conrad himself, the fictional Marlow had once been in the employ of a Belgian trading firm exploiting native tribes in its quest for ivory. There was, however, a price to be paid for such endeavors. Conrad explored that price in his 1899 novella, Heart of Darkness, which opened with those lines about NELLIE.

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