I don’t think anyone has created a better picture of a storm than Joseph Conrad has in Typhoon. Not John Ford in his 1937 movie The Hurricane; not even Herman Melville in his many books of sailing adventures. But he does much more.
In this story, Conrad does what he does best: give us a fully drawn character. Captain MacWhirr is one of Conrad’s most fascinating people.
(Take note: spoilers ahead)
Captain MacWhirr
The captain is an ideal example of our stereotype of the middle manager — someone who is uncreative, unimaginative, and merely doing his work by rote in order to keep his superiors happy. He follows the instructions.
Conrad begins with that essential truth about him — lack of imagination. But he isn’t simply unimaginative. He has other qualities and the storm creates conditions that bring these out.
It is this that the story centres around. Conrad says, “I felt that to bring out its deeper significance which was quite apparent to me, something other, something more was required…What was needed of course was Captain MacWhirr.”
As you read and acquire more information about the situation the steamer Nan-Shan is headed into, you know there is very rough water ahead and MacWhirr almost drives you mad with his indifference to it. He recognizes there is trouble in the offing but he can’t imagine it. “Having just enough imagination to carry him through each successive day, and no more, he was tranquilly sure of himself…”
Having no experience of a typhoon, he can only say there is “dirty weather” ahead, as if a very rainy day was on the way. Even when he sees the barometer has fallen dramatically, “…Omens were as nothing to him, and he was unable to discover the message of a prophecy till the fulfillment had brought it home to his very door.”
The modern office parallel extends beyond Captain MacWhirr. If he is the bland middle manager, his crew are his staff, and they mock him behind his back. They don’t take him seriously. To them, his best quality is that he is relatively quiet and benign, as opposed to less agreeable captains they have had. So they complain to one another but no ever does anything more than complain.
This is particularly true of Jukes, the first mate, another major character in the story. He is not particularly happy with his Captain but rarely does he voice his grievances or, more significantly, challenge MacWhirr. This is a key element in the story because Jukes recognizes that they are sailing into a typhoon and has no trouble imagining what that means. Yet he says almost nothing. He suggests obliquely, shows some reluctance in carrying out orders, but never states outright what he knows to be true. He just does his job while grumbling under his breath. From the text:
Jukes watched the flying big stars for a moment, and then wrote: “8 P.M. Swell increasing. Ship labouring and taking water on her decks. Battened down the coolies for the night. Barometer still falling.” He paused, and thought to himself, “Perhaps nothing whatever’ll come of it.” And then he closed resolutely his entries: “Every appearance of a typhoon coming on.”
Having laid the foundation, the Nan-Shan sails into a typhoon and Conrad really goes to work.
It is fascinating to look back at the story and see Conrad employing contrasts. There are the wives of MacWhirr and Solomon Rout, the chief engineer. Then there are the letters sent to the wives by MacWhirr and Rout. In the wheelhouse, there is the sailor at the wheel who has not been relieved and tells his captain he can continue as long as no talks to him, and there is the second mate who has, “lost his nerve,” cowering in a corner. Then there are MacWhirr and Rout once again, both leading in their very different ways, and the rest of the crew who without those two anchors, don’t know what to do.
So what are the other qualities that MacWhirr has that the storm highlights and redeem him from the image we have of a dull, unimaginative man? What makes him a heroic figure?
MacWhirr As Hero
As is usually the case with Conrad, it is MacWhirr’s moral sense. Though lacking imagination, he is steadfast and resolute. He has a keen sense of responsibility — he is captain and has a duty. And it is in his ethics, as seen with his approach to his Asian passengers and how he resolves the issue that comes up in the storm. With that matter, no one on the crew understands why he would care about them. MacWhirr’s response is simply a mumbled, “Had to do what’s fair by them.” He uses that expression several times.
It’s also important to note that MacWhirr is changed by the typhoon. Before it, he was unimaginative and did what he was supposed to do, almost as if life was a paint-by-numbers picture or a process described in a technical manual that he followed. He was a man incapable of improvising. He followed the instructions.
The typhoon erased all instructions. Eventually, MacWhirr realizes that. As he says toward the end, “You don’t find everything in books.”
And yet as the story concludes, he is still the methodical, plodding man he has always been. But that follow-the-instructions approach to living combined with his moral sense is also how he redeems the situation. It is in how he resolves the situation with the Chinese (or Siamese) and that resolution saves the Nan-Shan when it finally makes safe harbour in Fu-chau.
It is recognized by Rout, the engineer, in his letter to Mrs. Rout, which she reads aloud to her mother. “That captain of the ship he is in — a rather simple man, you remember, mother? — has done something rather clever, Solomon says.”
Even Jukes, who still cannot bring himself to openly respect MacWhirr, says, “I think that he got out of it very well for such a stupid man.”
What I love about Typhoon, and to return to the idea of a contemporary office and the modern tropes about leadership, creativity, and so on, is that Conrad takes his unimaginative man and illustrates how characterizing someone by one thing alone misses the mark. The heart of MacWhirr doesn’t reside in his imagination or lack thereof, but in his resolve; it’s in his ethical and moral sense; his sense of duty.
That is how he leads.
Typhoon is a wonderful portrait, not just of MacWhirr, but of the crew — of human behaviour. Of course, it is also a fabulous nautical adventure about a typhoon.
(Joseph Conrad began the story Typhoon in 1899. It was serialized in early 1902.)