SS ''Patna'' is a fictional ship in the novel '' Lord Jim'' by

Joseph Conrad Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, ; 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Poles in the United Kingdom#19th century, Polish-British novelist and short story writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in t ...

, originally published in '' Blackwood's Magazine'' from October 1899 to November 1900. Though never confirmed by the author, the ship is based on the real ship . The fictional ''Patna'' used steam and sail in combination. There was also a real three-master rebuild to use steam and sail in combination, the

steamship A steamship, often referred to as a steamer, is a type of steam-powered vessel, typically ocean-faring and seaworthy, that is propelled by one or more steam engines that typically move (turn) propellers or paddlewheels. The first steamships ...

named SS ''Patna'' built by William Denny and Brothers, Dumbarton, and launched on 21 April 1871. She was a single-screw passenger ship owned by British India Steam Navigation Company Glasgow & London and scrapped at Bombay in 1901. 1764 tons gross. Length: 298 feet, beam: 33 feet. Whether or not Joseph Conrad partially based his fictional ''Patna'' on this ship is unknown. The fact that he had a merchant-marine career in France and 15 years in Great Britain means that probably he heard of or even had seen the real SS ''Patna''. At least two groups of White Fathers (second and fourth caravan from Zanzibar) have travelled on the real SS ''Patna'' from

Algiers Algiers ( ; ar, الجزائر, al-Jazāʾir; ber, Dzayer, script=Latn; french: Alger, ) is the capital and largest city of Algeria. The city's population at the 2008 Census was 2,988,145Census 14 April 2008: Office National des Statistiques ...

Aden Aden ( ar, عدن ' Yemeni: ) is a city, and since 2015, the temporary capital of Yemen, near the eastern approach to the Red Sea (the Gulf of Aden), some east of the strait Bab-el-Mandeb. Its population is approximately 800,000 people. ...

on their way to Zanzibar, on the way to the later ''Heart of Darkness''. In the second caravan there was Adolphe Loosveldt, a former pontifical zouave. His correspondence was published in 2010. Loosveldt mentioned the name Patna in June 1879 in three letters; in his letter of 25 June 1879, he mentioned that the steamship Patna was a three-master with a length of 120 m. In the fourth caravan there was the Flemish White Father Amaat Vyncke, also former pontifical zouave, on his way to

Kibanga Kibanga, formerly called Lavigerieville, is a settlement in the South Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The White Fathers founded the first mission station on the west of the lake at Mulweba in 1880, and founded the mission a ...

who was on board the ''Patna'' from 23 April 1883 to 10 May 1883. In his letter of 24 April 1883 he mentioned that the second caravan of White Fathers had also been on the same ship.Amaat Vyncke, ''Brieven van een Vlaamsche missionaris in Midden-Afrika, Tweede Reeks: Reis van Algiers naar Zanzibar'' (Letters from a Flemish missionary in Central-Africa; second series: Voyage from Algiers to Zanzibar), Karel Steyaert-Storie, Brugge, 1885 p. 9. There is no doubt about being this ship because in the same letter, Father Vyncke mentioned it was a three-master and steamer length of 300 feet with capacity of 1800 tons - company: British India Company.

Allusions and references from other works

The ''Patna'', is also mentioned in Jorge Luis Borges' short story " The Immortal." In the '' Alien 3'' novelization by Alan Dean Foster, the "rescue" ship that Bishop II arrives in is called the ''Patna''.

Notes

External links

* {{gutenberg, no=5658, name=Lord Jim.
"Stephen Crane as a Source for Conrad's Jim"
Nina Galen, ''Nineteenth-Century Fiction'', vol. 38, no. 1 (1983).
Clyde Built Ships Database
Fictional ships