Information
As second mate on the ancient barque ‘Palestine’ Joseph Conrad had set sail from Gravesend in 1881 to collect a cargo of coal from Newcastle. It was ultimately an ill-fated voyage; the elderly vessel had to be abandoned in the Java Sea when fire broke out in March 1883 before she could reach her destination of Bangkok. Years later when Conrad had begun his second career as a writer, he set the opening of his novel ‘Heart of Darkness’ (1899) on board a yawl anchored off Gravesend. As sun sets over the marshes and London broods as a dark presence in the hinterland, Marlow begins to speak, prompted by his observation that ‘this also has been one of the dark places of the earth’ (referring to the feelings of the Roman soldiers sent to unknown Britain from their familiar Mediterranean) and to recount his journey to the ‘dark place’ in the heart of Africa.
Quotations
The Sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint and in the luminous space 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. A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth. …
The day was ending in a serenity of still and exquisite brilliance. The water shone pacifically, the sky without a speck was a benign immensity of unstained light, the very mist on the Essex marshes was like a gauzy and radiant fabric hung from the wooded rises inland and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds. Only the gloom to the west brooding over the upper reaches became more sombre every minute as if angered by the approach of the sun. …
The sun set; the dusk fell on the stream and lights began to appear along the shore. The Chapman lighthouse, a three-legged thing erect on a mud-flat, shone strongly. Lights of ships moved in the fairway – a great stir of lights going up and down. And further west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.
Place | Extract |
| Gravesend | As second mate on the ancient barque ‘Palestine’ Joseph Conrad had set sail from Gravesend in 1881 to collect a cargo of coal from Newcastle... |
