Global nautical livelihoods in the late nineteenth century: the sea careers of the maritime writers Frank T Bullen and Joseph Conrad,1869–1894 1

At the level of the individual, there can be few better examples of the global nature of maritime history than the travels and experiences of merchant seafarers serving in foreign-going commercial ships whatever period is chosen for investigation. By the 1870s the numbers of seafarers from maritime countries making international voyages were numbered in their hundreds of thousands and their collective global experience was penetrating an increasingly literate society ashore through sea travel writing and maritime fiction, as well as through their presence when between voyages. Bullen and Conrad were exact contemporaries born in 1857 whose time at sea was often in general trading vessels of the lower class of merchant sail shipping, though both served time in better class vessels and served in steam shipping. Their careers are representative of the collective of seafaring of their times. The paper makes a comparative study of the two sea careers with reference to internal and external social elements, and to the commercial and geographical dimensions of their voyages. Conrad’s life has been exhaustively examined, though principally from a literary perspective. Bullen, in contrast, has received little detailed attention. Both sea careers have been reconstructed using official records and autobiographical writing. The paper commences with a re-examination of “global” as the preserve of ocean navigators in contrast to the current usage related to economic activity and cultural transfer. It concludes with the suggestion that there is scope for the development of a systematic methodology for comparing sea careers.