Bill Dalton's review:
Joseph Conrad’s Eastern Voyages covers an unusual subject, one that has received scant attention - 19th century sailing adventures set in Indonesia. Several chapters also cover the formative modern history of Singapore, events that helped create this hyper-successful nation state that punches way above its weight.
The book’s main thrust is the life of a literary titan of the 19th century, Joseph Conrad, a great stylist in the English language, yet whose first language wasn’t even English.
Burnet inhabits Conrad’s character; you feel that you are living and working right alongside him, lowering yourself into a sampan with your seabag, as well as vicariously experiencing the excitement of commanding his own ship for the first time. At times, the author’s writing and Conrad’s writing are indistinguishable. You don’t know where Burnet’s writing ends and where Conrad’s writing begins, so seamless that it’s like reading Conrad himself.
Excerpts from Conrad, some very famous, are well chosen and the explanations of what Conrad was doing, feeling and seeing are made all the more vivid by providing context. Take for example the dramatic passages that describe a burning coal ship and the maritime travails of the Steamship Vidar.
The author starts each chapter with a quote from Conrad, Maugham or some other eminent contemporary that sets the chapter in its proper historical and geographic surrounds.
These quotes, some going back to the 17th century, from friars, travelers, scientists, officials, adventures, are apt and at times inspiring
The author keeps track of Conrad‘s movements around the inner Archipelago, selecting passages in Conrad’s books to elaborate on and identify the destination of each new voyage, ship or commission. In one chapter, the author zeros in on the port of Makassar, and then provides a lively description of quay side life and reenacts a real-life exchange between the captain in the ship’s engineer when Conrad informs them that he was signing off the ship.
The last sailing ship Conrad served as chief officer was the Torrens, from 1891 to 1893, a magnificent clipper built for the Australian wool trade that sailed from London to Adelaide. She was one of the best and fastest sailing ships ever built and set an unbroken record by sailing from Plymouth to Adelaide in an astonishing 64 days.
In another chapter, Burnet takes us west on the sailing ship Otago through the dangerous Torres Strait against a southeasterly gale past tides, currents, shallows and a huge gaunt gray wreck of a big American ship hung up on a reef for six days until finally reaching the Alafura sea and onwards to the Mauritius Islands where Conrad fell in love with a beautiful French girl.
Conrad led a life of high-adventure. Though he was a deep water sailor, a captain of sailing vessels, at age 32 he fulfilled a childhood dream of penetrating into the deep interior of Africa, Stanley Falls, which in 1868 was the blankest of blank spaces on the earth’s surface.
During a riverboat trip 1000 miles up the Congo River, he witnessed firsthand the Belgian Free State’s brutal use of black slave labor. This chapter, The Voyage into the Heart of Darkness, is the most harrowing in the whole book, filled with graphic descriptions of man’s inhumanity to man and the extreme cruelty of white men exploiting African resources. What was even worst for Conrad personally is that he emerged from the experience with a severe nervous breakdown and a persistent tropical disease.
There is also much in the book to satisfy the student of naval history with details of shipbuilding, shipwrights and the lore of exotic cargos and long and treacherous sea voyages. This is high adventure of the first order.
Meet Bill Dalton, Travel Writer
Bill has spent much of his life travelling and writing. His saga took flight in 1971 as he embarked on an eight-year backpacking journey across 65 countries that was the journey of a lifetime and would later result in his highly-acclaimed travel guidebooks. Bill Dalton’s Indonesia Handbook was first published in the mid-1970’s and ran for six editions until the early 1990’s and The London Sunday Times called it “One of the best practical guides ever written about any country”. Today Bill resides on the island of Bali and continues his travelling and writing, including his column Toko Buku for the Bali Advertiser.