Book Review: The Night Lives On, by Walter Lord (1986)

More than thirty years after publishing his classic account of the sinking of the Titanic, 1955’s A Night to Remember, author Walter Lord returned to the subject for his 1986 book The Night Lives On. With the discovery of the wreck of the Titanic in 1985, interest in the ship was rekindled for another generation. I don’t remember hearing the news when the wreck of the Titanic was discovered, but I was soon obsessed enough with the Titanic to give a short presentation on it for show and tell in my kindergarten class during the 1986-87 school year.  

The Night Lives On is an excellent little book. It doesn’t aim to retell the story of the Titanic’s doomed voyage, but rather it explores incidents and controversies surrounding the ship. For example, what was the last song that the band on the Titanic played? It’s long been said that they played the hymn “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” but Lord sorts through the evidence and comes to the conclusion that it’s extremely unlikely.  

One of the most interesting chapters in The Night Lives On details the actions of the Californian, the closest ship to the Titanic that evening. The Californian had briefly been in contact with the Titanic before the collision with the iceberg, as the wireless operator sent a warning about the ice. But by the time the Titanic collided with the iceberg, the wireless operator on the Californian had gone to bed and shut off his receiver. The Titanic was in sight of the Californian, as there was much discussion on the bridge about the identity of the large steamer in the distance. The Californian even saw the distress rockets that the Titanic was firing but did nothing. It’s one of the tragic what ifs of that evening. What if, instead of doing nothing, the Californian roused its wireless operator and heard the Titanic’s distress call? The Californian was a slow ship, but even so, had they proceeded to the Titanic; they might have been able to assist in rescuing more survivors. What happened was that the Californian did nothing, and the Carpathia picked up the survivors in the lifeboats. The Californian did a cursory search of the area after the lifeboats were picked up, but they found only debris and wreckage.  

The saga of the Californian reads like something straight out of Joseph Conrad’s novels. Specifically, it reminded me of Lord Jim, and how the main character’s abandoning ship (when the ship ultimately doesn’t sink) and his dereliction of duty haunts him. We can only wonder if the crew of the Californian felt a similar pang of regret for their inaction that evening.  

The Night Lives On briefly covers the discovery of the Titanic in 1985, by Dr. Robert Ballard and his team. Ballard’s integrity and his desire to not exploit the wreckage of the Titanic shine through, even in this brief profile.  

The Night Lives On obviously ends before anyone was able to raise any of the wreckage from the Titanic, and the book highlights an anecdote showing Ballard’s opposition to any kind of souvenir hunting. When one of the submersibles came to the surface, a piece of cable from the Titanic had snagged on it. Without hesitation, Ballard threw the cable back into the sea. Future explorers of the wreck would view things differently, as many artifacts from the Titanic have been raised to the surface. Even a part of the ship’s hull itself, the so-called “big piece” has been raised and put on display.  

I saw one of the earliest exhibits of Titanic artifacts at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England in 1995. I remember long lines and buying a notebook with the Titanic on it, but honestly, I can’t recall much about the exhibit itself. I have stronger memories of an exhibit that came to the Science Museum of Minnesota in the early 2010’s. I have mixed feelings about salvaging objects from shipwrecks. Is it ethically correct to salvage anything from the Titanic, or any other shipwreck where lives were lost? I don’t have an easy answer to that question. I suppose I’d say that I’m happier that relics from the Titanic have been presented to the public in museums rather than just sitting in private collections of ultra-wealthy treasure hunters. But ultimately, the wreck of the Titanic itself will one day disappear, so do we have an obligation to salvage relics so future generations know this ship existed, and so we can continue to tell the story of this ship and the terrible tragedy that occurred? That’s a compelling argument. What I remember the most about the Titanic exhibit that I saw in Minnesota is a giant stack of dishes from the Titanic’s dining halls. It was massive, maybe 100 or more plates and dishes. And the mass of that pile of dishes stayed with me. It made me think about the sheer size of the ship, and how these dishes, even if they each represented a person who died on the Titanic, were but a fraction of all the souls that were lost that night. It was sobering.  Another Titanic artifact that stuck with me was a pocket watch that I saw in a museum in Sweden in 2023. The watch belonged to a Swedish man who died in the sinking. His body was recovered after the sinking, and his possessions returned to his widow. His watch had stopped at 2:34 AM, 14 minutes after the Titanic slid under the surface of the Atlantic. Items like a pocket watch give the tragedy of the Titanic a human dimension.  

The Night Lives On is an excellent book, and an essential one for anyone interested in the stories and tragedy of the Titanic.  

Book Review: The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World, by Maya Jasanoff (2017)

The paperback cover of The Dawn Watch, by Maya Jasanoff. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

Maya Jasanoff’s 2017 book The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World, is a fascinating examination of Conrad’s major writings. Focusing on Heart of Darkness, Nostromo, Lord Jim, and The Secret Agent, Jasanoff makes the argument that Conrad’s writings contain themes that speak deeply to our own era, as well as Conrad’s.  

Joseph Conrad had a fascinating life: born Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski to Polish parents in Berdychiv, in what was then the Russian Empire, and is now part of Ukraine. His parents were staunch Polish nationalists and were sent into exile by the Russian government. Jozef was 7 when his mother died, and just 11 when his father died. Sent to live with his uncle Tadeusz Bobrowski, Jozef dreamed of becoming a sailor, and he joined the French merchant marine at age 16.  

Korzeniowski eventually moved to England and joined the British merchant marine, becoming a British citizen and passing the master mariner examination—the highest examination level—in 1886. It would be nine more years before he published his first novel, Almayer’s Folly, written in English, his third language. It was not much of a change to go from Jozef Konrad to the Anglicized pen name Joseph Conrad.  

Conrad had a unique viewpoint through which to view the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His career in the merchant marine had taken him to Australia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Congo, to name just a few of his journeys. Conrad was better traveled than perhaps any other writer of his era, and his novels were set throughout the world.  

During his lifetime, Conrad’s world was becoming more interconnected. One of the major concerns of his fiction is what happens when different societies and cultures comes into contact with each other. You could argue that Conrad was not sufficiently attuned to indigenous peoples, but it’s clear that he was critical of European imperialism and colonialism.  

The Dawn Watch is a good book, but it’s a little odd. It’s part biography, part literary examination, but it might not be enough of either part to satisfy readers. You’d better make sure you’ve read all four of the major works that Jasanoff discusses, as she will take you through painstakingly detailed plot summaries. Jasanoff spends too much time detailing the plot points, and not enough time analyzing what makes Conrad’s writing great. I suppose that I am the target audience for The Dawn Watch: I’ve read the four books by Conrad, but I haven’t read any biographies of him.  

The narrative is not chronological, which fits with Conrad’s own writings, as they often jump forwards and backwards in time, but in a biography, the non-linear approach is tricky. For example, The Secret Agent is discussed first in the book, when it actually comes last in the chronology of the four major works that Jasanoff discusses.  

Conrad did not write much about his own childhood, which makes sense, given how painful the losses of his parents must have been. While I was reading The Dawn Watch, I happened to page through a novel by Dick Francis, the British mystery writer. Francis wrote in the foreword to the novel that people often speculated about his relationship with his parents, because so often his characters had difficult family lives. Francis wrote that he had a good relationship with his parents and enjoyed a good relationship with his two sons. He wrote, and I’m paraphrasing here, that because he had such good family relationships, he was able to write about dysfunctional families in his fiction. If he would have had bad family relationships, it would have been too painful to write about. That made me think of Conrad: he probably didn’t write about his parents because it would have been difficult.  

Conrad’s sailing career bridged the time between sail and steam, and he clearly preferred the former, which was quickly becoming a relic of the past. Conrad lived his life in a middle zone: the Polish side of him pined for a country that did not exist, and the English part of him perhaps sensed that he would never be “truly” English. Perhaps it was this push and pull that made Conrad such a great writer—he understood the displacement that all of his characters in Nostromo felt, for example.  

Conrad’s trip as a captain up the Congo River in 1890 was awful, and it provided much of the inspiration for Heart of Darkness. After his return to England, Conrad was still plagued by nightmares and poor health. He wrote in a letter: “I am still plunged in densest night and my dreams are only nightmares.” (p.215)  

Jasanoff pinpoints Conrad’s clear vision about the horrors of colonialism and imperialism in this passage: “What made the difference between savagery and civilization, Conrad was saying, transcended skin color; it even transcended place. The issue for Conrad wasn’t that ‘savages’ were inhuman. It was that any human could be a savage.” (p.224-5) This is exactly the point of Heart of Darkness: that Kurtz has been corrupted, not by the Africans, but by power, by the whole corrupt system of colonialism and imperialism.   

The Dawn Watch is a fascinating glimpse into the life and times of Joseph Conrad. After I finished reading The Dawn Watch, I pulled out my old Encyclopedia Britannica to read the entry on Conrad. The end of the first paragraph struck me as a wonderful summation of his talents: “A writer of complex skill and striking insight, but above all of an intensely personal vision, he has been increasingly regarded as one of the greatest English novelists.”