Youth, a Narrative

"Youth" is an autobiographical short story by Joseph Conrad. Written in 1898, it was first published in Blackwood's Magazine, and included as the first story in the 1902 volume Youth, a Narrative, and Two Other Stories. This volume also includes Heart of Darkness and The End of the Tether, stories concerned with the themes of maturity and old age, respectively. "Youth" depicts a young man's first journey to the East. It is narrated by Charles Marlow who is also the narrator of Lord Jim, Chance, and Heart of Darkness. The narrator's introduction suggests this is the first time, chronologically, the character Marlow appears in Conrad's works (the narrator comments that he thinks Marlow spells his name this way).

Similar to Joseph Conrad's better-known Heart of Darkness, Youth begins with a narrator describing five men drinking claret around a mahogany table. They are all veterans of the merchant navy. One of the men, Marlow speaks of his first voyage to the East as second mate on board the Judea. The story is set twenty-two years earlier, when Marlow was 20. With two years of experience, most recently as third mate aboard a crack clipper, Marlow receives a billet as second mate on the barque Judea. The skipper is Captain John Beard, a man of about 60. This is Beard's first command. The Judea is an old boat, belonging to a man "Wilmer, Wilcox or something similar", suffering from age and disuse in Shadewell basin. The 400-ton ship is commissioned to take 600 tons of coal from England to Thailand. The trip should take approximately 150 days. The ship leaves London loaded with sand ballast and heads north to the Senn river to pick up the cargo of coal. On her way, the Judea suffers from her ballast shifting aside and the crew go below to put things right again. The trip takes 16 days because of 'the famous October gale of twenty-two years ago', and the battered ship must use a tug boat to get into port. The Judea waits a month on the Tyne to be loaded with coal. The night before she ships out she is hit by a steamer, the Miranda or the Melissa. The damage takes another three weeks to repair. Three months after leaving London, the Judea ships off for Bangkok.