Two writers meet at sea

Joseph Conrad and John Galsworthy met aboard the clipper ship Torrens at Port Adelaide in 1893. Neither was yet a published novelist, but their meeting would shape both their careers.

Conrad through Galsworthy's eyes

Galsworthy, a young English law graduate, described Conrad as a man of travel and experience. He noted Conrad had been up the Congo and around Malacca and Borneo and other out of the way parts.

“He is a man of travel and experience in many parts of the world, and has a fund of yarns on which I draw freely.”

Conrad's path to the Torrens

Conrad was born in 1857 into minor nobility in what is now Ukraine, son of an insurgent opposed to Russian rule over Poland.He resolved as a child to become a sailor and voyaged the world.

Galsworthy's unexpected voyage

Oxford-educated Galsworthy was sent to sea by his father to hone skills in maritime law. He hoped to cross paths with Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa, but found Conrad instead.

A loyal friendship begins

The pair spent weeks aboard the Torrens before Galsworthy disembarked in South Africa. The Age newspaper later reported that in that meeting commenced one of the most loyal of personal and literary friendships.

Conrad's influence on Galsworthy

Galsworthy reflected on staying with Conrad and his wife Jessie, and the impact Conrad had on his career.He wrote that Conrad was indefatigably good to him while his own puppy's eyes were opening to literature.

“[Conrad] was indefatigably good to me while my own puppy's eyes were opening to literature.”

The ship's bridge conversations

Elsie Belle Champion, a Melbourne booklover who corresponded with Galsworthy, reported his account of their time together.

“Galsworthy told me that he first thought about writing after having met Joseph Conrad in Adelaide.”

Galsworthy wins the Nobel Prize

In 1932, Galsworthy was honoured with the Nobel Prize, largely in recognition of his social saga about the Forsytes, an upper-middle-class Edwardian family riven by conflicting senses of duty.

Conrad's Heart of Darkness endures

Conrad's novel Heart of Darkness became a masterpiece and inspired the film Apocalypse Now. It occupies an exalted place in the post-colonial canon as an indictment of European brutality in Africa.

Two lives, two legacies

Neither Galsworthy nor Conrad reached especially old age. Galsworthy died aged 65 and Conrad at 66. Both attacked the unconscionable foundations of their own privilege, becoming pallbearers of empire.

Conrad's final resting place

After Conrad's death in 1924, he was laid to rest in Canterbury. Scottish author Robert Cunninghame Graham accompanied him on his final voyage and wrote that the gulls would bring him tidings as they fly…

“The gulls will bring him tidings as they fly past above his grave, with their wild voices, if he should weary for the sea.”