The Ferry Disaster: It Is Joseph Conrad’s LORD JIM
Yesterday I wrote a brief post on the Egyptian-Saudi ferry disaster, and mentioned Joseph Conrad’s novel, Lord Jim. (Here’s a link to the prior post.)
It looks like reality imitates art, in a tragic, ugly manner. Reuters reports that the ship’s captain abandoned the ferry, the Al Salam 98.
Survivors of the Red Sea ferry disaster said its captain fled the burning ship by lifeboat and abandoned them to their fate, as hopes faded on Saturday of finding some 800 missing.
Some passengers plucked alive from the sea or from boats after the ferry caught fire and sank early on Friday said crew had told them not to worry about a fire below deck and even ordered them to take off lifejackets.
Officials at el-Salam Maritime Transport Company, which owned the Al Salam 98, were not immediately available to answer the allegations.
Rescue workers have recovered 195 bodies from the Red Sea and saved 389 people but about 800 more, most of them Egyptian workers returning from Saudi Arabia, are missing.
Like Conrad’s Patna, the Al Salam 98 was an old, inadequate vessel, plying a “backwater” route and transporting pilgrims.
Conrad based the novel on an actual event. At first I thought the Lord Jim and Al Salam 98 parrallels would be superficial– after all the Patna did not sink and hundreds of lives were lost in the Al Salam 98 disaster. With the senior officers abandoning the Al Salam 98, the parrallels run deep. While I doubt that the Al Salam 98 inquirywill be as dramatic as the novel’s inquiry , the issues of professional and personal duty, courage, and honor will be at the center of the investigation.
Yesterday I linked to this essay by George Panichas.
Jim’s “dilemma” as the leap:
For Jim the overwhelming question, “What could I do—
what?”, brings the answer of “Nothing!” The Patna, as it ploughs
the Arabian Sea (“smooth and cool to the eye like a sheet of ice”)
on its way to the Red Sea, is close to sinking, with its engines
stopped, the steam blowing off, its deep rumble making “the
whole night vibrate like a bass ring.” Jim’s imagination conjures
up a dismal picture of a catastrophe that is inescapable and merciless.
It is not that Jim thinks so much of saving himself as it is the
tyranny of his belief that there are eight-hundred people on ship—
and only seven life-boats.
Dozens Dead After Egyptian Ship Disaster An Egyptian ferry carrying about 1,300 people sank in the Red Sea overnight during bad weather, and
Trackback by Unpartisan.com Political News and Blog Aggregator — 2/4/2006 @ 8:33 am
Call it what it is, corruption. Either soft (neglect due to lack of competition, oversight, and/or democracy - aka the need to appeal to the voters by (claiming to) do better) or hard (nepotism, (captain) forewarned but no follow-up). Everyone who’s been on a U.S. ferry has seen the bomb-sniffing dogs, and rigor in safely factors incl. load, over crowding, etc. At least they won’t (immediately) be blaming the Israelis. Shades of EA Flight 990.
Comment by Ari Tai — 2/4/2006 @ 10:55 am
Yes, an amazing parallel with ‘Lord Jim’! Despite his origins I always think of Conrad, and ‘Lord Jim’ specifically, in the context of that uncanny pessimism that settled on the great Edwardian-era novelists. I don’t know a thing about the captain in the recent disaster, but ‘Jim’s’ momentary collapse/abandonment captured the self-doubt of another affluent generation, no longer trusting of traditions (think of Forster) yet uncertain of how to proceed into the emptiness that lay ahead (think of the Darwinian pessimism in Hardy). And while they collectively laid the foundations of modernism, following Joyce into the smithy of an uncreated conscience, they also seemed to foreshadow the darkness of a world war.
Comment by pothos — 2/4/2006 @ 11:26 am
What will be interesting will be to see if there is a credible investigation. There was a fascinating article in The Atlantic a few years ago about the investigation into that aircrash where the Egyptian (co?)pilot used the loaded airplane to commit suicide. Apparently the Egyptian government decided early on that it would not allow that conclusion as it reflected badly on Egypt so the whole investigation became a (very frustrating to the Americans involved) farce.
Comment by TedN — 2/4/2006 @ 1:20 pm
“Everyone who’s been on a U.S. ferry has seen the bomb-sniffing dogs, and rigor in safely factors incl. load, over crowding, etc.” Hmmm. What about the Staten Island ferry disaster in 2003 where a Captain on medications passed out at the wheel, causing a serious collision, the death of 11, and the serious injury of many more? Abetted and compounded by the bureaucrat who failed to enforce the rule requiring two pilots operating a ferry during docking? None of which is any excuse for the crew of Al Salam 98, but let’s not pretend this is something unique to an Arab society.
Comment by DSmith — 2/4/2006 @ 2:01 pm
A captain who passed out because he was on medications (perhaps from an illness due to overwork, or to addiction? I don’t know the facts of the case) isn’t quite the same as one in apparent possession of all his faculties who deliberately abandons his ship.
Comment by Andrea Harris — 2/4/2006 @ 7:50 pm
re: Staten Island. Amen, they are not unique in terms of statist (soft) corruption (public choice theory without frequent electoral correction). The NTSB found the NYC DoT at fault. If the ferry service had been provided by private firms, competing (without price controls) odds are small to nil it would have happened. (i.e. better motivated and supervised employees, ease of dismissal of the unfit, etc.) Ref: NTSB report and Merchant Marine report (PDF)
Comment by Ari Tai — 2/4/2006 @ 8:34 pm
It’s pretty important to note what is and what isn’t similar in the Staten Island disaster and the Egyptian one if you’re going to advance the Staten Island incident as proof that the Egyptian ferry disaster demonstrates nothing about Arab society. What is similar: They were both ferry disasters. The captains demonstrated irresponsibility. (Probably) there were regulations in place that should have prevented them. What is not similar: The number of the dead (greater by two orders of magnitude in the Egyptian incident). The reaction of the command crew. One might maintain that the dissimilarities tell us more about the relative wealth of our societies than cultural differences, but there’s a good argument that the dissimilarities–especially the reactions of the crew–tell us a lot about the differences between western and Arab culture.
Comment by Seneca — 2/5/2006 @ 4:35 pm