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Captain MacWhirr, the stolid, literal-minded master of the steamer Nan-Shan, has no imagination at all and does not believe in steering round a storm just…
Captain MacWhirr, the stolid, literal-minded master of the steamer Nan-Shan, has no imagination at all and does not believe in steering round a storm just because the books say so. Carrying two hundred Chinese labourers home with their savings across the China Sea, he sails straight into a typhoon. While the ship is battered for hours, the labourers' boxes break open below decks, their silver dollars scatter, and a fight breaks out in the hold.
Context and significance
Joseph Conrad published the story in 1902, and its description of the storm is one of the most powerful in literature; the captain's unimaginative courage turns out to be exactly what the crisis needs. Read Conrad's Youth and Lord Jim, and see his life.
About the author
Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) was born Józef Korzeniowski to Polish parents in today's Ukraine. His father was exiled for patriotic activities, and Conrad was orphaned at eleven. At sixteen he went to sea from Marseille, and he spent twenty years as a sailor, rising to captain in the British merchant navy.
A voyage up the Congo in 1890 marked him for life and led to Heart of Darkness. He began writing in English, his third language, and became one of its great novelists with Lord Jim and Nostromo. His books ask what people do when no one is watching.