In his short story Typhoon, Joseph Conrad, the early 20th century author famous for his tales of the sea, describes the story of a steam ship and its Captain, who “having just enough imagination to carry him through the day, and no more“, ignores the conventional wisdom to avoid early signs of bad weather and steams straight into a vicious storm. A fight for survival ensues.
“I don’t believe you can make a man like that understand anything“ despairs Jukes, the first mate, when the Captain misunderstands his indignation that, rather than sail under his native red ensign, the ship sets sail under a foreign flag.
“What’s the matter with the flag“ says Captain Mac Whirr “it looks alright to me“.
Conrad sums up the Captain’s mundane character thus -“The sea itself…..had never put itself out to startle the silent man, who seldom looked up, who wandered innocently over the waters with the only visible purpose of getting food, raiment and house-room for his family ashore…..Captain MacWhirr had sailed over the surface of the oceans as some men go skimming over the years of existence to sink gently into a placid grave, ignorant of life to the last….. Had he been informed by an indisputable authority that the end of the world was to be finally accomplished by a catastrophic disturbance of the atmosphere, he would have assimilated the information under the simple idea of dirty weather, and no other, because he had no experience of cataclysm, and belief does not necessarily imply comprehension.”
Jukes tries to respectfully warn of the approaching Typhoon by telling the Captain “what ever there might be about, we are heading straight into it”.
At the suggestion of a change of course the Captain explodes “To Eastward? You want me to haul a full powered steamship four points to eastward just to make the Chinamen comfortable?….What put it into your head that I would start to tack a steamer as if she were a sailing ship? …..suppose I went swinging off my course and came in two days late and they ask me ‘where have you been all that time?’ ‘Went around to dodge bad weather‘ I would say. ’Must have been dam’ bad weather ‘ they would say. ‘Don‘t know‘ I would have to say ‘I dodged clear of it.’”
So its full ahead into the storm. The ship, crew and passengers take a battering, only just survive and arrive in port looking like a wreck. After Conrad’s wonderful descriptive prose he ends the story concluding that the skipper “ got out of it very well for such a stupid man“.
I’m struck by the relevance of this short story, from over a century ago, to our modern world.
Are we not being warned by scientists of approaching bad weather and all the disruptive effects of human induced climate change? Are we not full steam ahead in our high tech world, detached from nature, ploughing on at full throttle into a massive storm of our own making?. Like captain MacWhirr, do we not lack the imagination and sense to take avoiding action, but by putting our faith in new inventions. think that we will be able to ride out the rough seas and make it to better times ahead?
We will shortly exceed 1.5 degrees C of human induced global warming and temperatures will keep rising beyond that. A few decades ago, our governments set targets. but then did nothing of any consequence. We were warned what was coming, but like Captain MacWhirr, lacked the imagination to see it. We now think we can adapt or invent a technological solution and delude ourselves we are detached from nature, like a steamer independent of the wind. We are still unable to accept why it is vital that we lose our addiction to fossil fuels as it is not urgent, but very important. And how can we explain at a future date why we changed, if no disasters occurred? Similarly, as Conrad highlights. we cannot comprehend the approaching cataclysm, as we have no experience of it. But change we must, because the difference between Conrad’s story and ours is, the coming storm will not pass, it will be permanent
How stupid are we?
But It’s never too late to change course. As Captain MacWhirr says "She ain't lost yet".
