Indian Ocean

The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia—including India, after which the ocean is named on the north, on the west by Africa, on the east by Australia, and on the south by the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, by Antarctica.). Read more on Wikipedia

The Indian Ocean probably featured in his imagination before he crossed the ocean twice in 1927 on his Far East voyage aboard the Blue Funnel ship Pyrrhus. Lowry had already created or heard the myth of his grandfather being lost in the Indian Ocean:

Evelyn Boden Lowry (1873–1950) ... She was the daughter of a master mariner, Lyon Boden, lost at sea in circumstances that were variously described and embellished , by both Evelyn and her son, in the telling. As Lowry told the story to Margerie (who, again, seems to have taken it as gospel)Captain Boden and his command, The Scottish Isles, were becalmed in the Indian Ocean, the crew dying of cholera;  so the Captain gave orders to a nearby British gunboat to blow up the ship, with him on board. Bradbrook debunks this by saying that Captain Boden had died of cholera, the news relayed to a passing vessel before before The Scottish Isles vanished and was lost in a storm with all hands. Bowker found that the ship that John [sic] Boden disappeared on 26 April 1884, somewhere in the Indian Ocean, was the Vice Reine, of which Boden was not captain but first. Chris Ackerley Paradise Street blues: Lowry's Liverpool in Writing Liverpool: Essays and Interviews By Michael Murphy, Deryn Rees-Jones 2007

Lowry makes reference to the myth of his grandfather's loss in Ultramarine Pgs 110-11; and in letters to Derek Pethwick dated 6th March 1950 (Collected Letters Vol 2 Pg. 207) and to George Sumner Albee dated 17th March 1957 in which he again refers to his grandfather being "at the bottom of the Indian Ocean." (Collected Letters Vol 2 Pg. 896); in the short story 'The Forest Path to the Spring'; "And I thought of my grandfather, becalmed in the Indian Ocean, the crew dying of cholera,my grandfather giving orders finally, at the beginning of wireless, to the oncoming gunboat, to be blown up himself with the ship." (Pg.258); in his incomplete novel La Morida the West Coast"Could their captain love these diesel-engined monstrosities to the extent, like his grandfather, of going down with them?" (Pg 188)

The ocean would have featured in many of the books and magazines read by Lowry about the sea including Joseph Conrad's novels and short stories, Bill Adams's works; James Johnston Abraham's The Surgeon's Log , Eugene O'Neill etc. It is interesting to note that the father of the character Swede Chris C. Christopherson in Eugene O'Neill's play Anna Christie died in the Indian Ocean. Lowry received a copy of the play as a prize at his school The Leys. (Collected Letters Vol. 1 Pg. 26).

Lowry makes other references to the ocean other than alluding to the death of his grandfather; in a letter to Betty and Gerald Noxon dated January 15th 1943; "I wish you could both be here for we seem to see potential pictures for Betty everywhere and moreover we are putting on some magnificent freezing blue weatherwith the sun raining diamonds in Burrard Inlet and sea-gulls and the washing frozen on the line and a two hundred foot alder plunging above the house like the mast of a ship on a rough day in the Indian Ocean. (The Letters of Malcolm Lowry and Gerald Noxon: 1940-1952 Pg. 50); and the novella Lunar Caustic when Lowry's alter-ego Bill Plantagenet recalls sailing across the Indian Ocean with a cargo of animals; "The panthers died, in the Indian Ocean at night the lions roared, the elephants trumpeted and vomited so that none" (Pg. 69); and again in Under The Volcano; "A piece of driftwood on the Indian Ocean. Is India my home? Disguise myself as an untouchable, which should not be so difficult, and go to prison on the Andaman Islands for seventy-seven years, until England gives India her freedom?" (Pg. 157)  "This chow the crew hadn't eaten went into the Indian Ocean, into any ocean, rather, as the saying is, than “let it go back to the office.” (Pg. 165 )

Lowry further refers to the ocean in his incomplete novel La Morida the West Coast; " — ridiculous, unimaginative name, although it would be beautiful if encountered, say, in the Indian Ocean — or would be beautiful in French Cote Aouest — which makes him reflect about the prophet being without.. " (Pg. 188) and later; "it were eponymous, and certainly not so unimaginative as the beautiful horrible romantic old freighter he'd seen in the Indian Ocean, the British Motorist — the ship has a cargo of rolls of rusty barbed wire. Ugly ships. Possibly she'd done yeoman service in the war. Had oil-tankers got souls? Could their captain love these diesel-engined monstrosities to the extent, like his grandfather, of going down with them?" (Pg 188) and his posthumously published novel Dark as the grave wherein my friend is laid; "of hundreds of miles behind this childhood dream of heaven, and rolling valleys, the dream of the sailor sleeping on the poop in the vast violet of the Indian Ocean as it deepens at noon. (Pg. 221)

Eugene O'Neill Beyond The Horizon

Eugene O’Neill’s seminal, Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Beyond the Horizon, was written in 1918 but not produced or published until 1920, when it made its debut in New York. Beyond the Horizon was O’Neill’s first successful full-length play, and it signaled a change in American drama. Critics and audiences responded favorably to O’Neill’s dark, tragic vision, which contrasted sharply with the unrealistic, melodramatic plays of the day. The play drew heavily on O’Neill’s own experiences, including his tuberculosis and his sea voyages. During one of these sea trips, he met a Norwegian sailor who criticized his choice of going to sea as opposed to staying on his family’s farm. Taking this idea as a starting point, O’Neill crafted a tale of missed opportunities and failed dreams, involving two brothers. Robert, a poetic but sickly dreamer, wants to go to sea to strengthen his health and see the world. His brother, Andrew, is a born farmer who wants nothing more than to work on his family’s farm. Because they love the same woman, both brothers choose to go against their natures. Robert stays on the farm, and Andrew goes to sea. Enotes

In an article published in the New York Times April 11th 1920, O'Neill talks about the sources for his play Beyond The Horizon . 

O'Neill had got the idea for it from a Norwegian shipmate on the voyage from Buenos Aires to New York:

The sailor habitually cursed the day when he left his farm and went to sea twenty years before. This was a familiar lament among seamen, and O'Neill realized that this man was too much "a creature of the God of Things as They Are" to have stayed at home. But the playwright began to speculate about "a more intellectual, civilized type" in a comparable situation. In such a man, the "inborn craving for the sea's unrest" would be "intellectually diluted into a vague, intangible wanderlust. His powers of resistance, both moral and physical, would also be correspondingly watered." Electronic Eugene O'Neill Archive

Lowry alludes to the New York Times article in Chapter 3 of his first novel Ultramarine when Dana say to Popplereuter ; "Consequently I have in me an inborn craving for the unrest of the sea....Oh, but this craving was not, is not conscious enough, as Petit the poet said, intellectually diluted into a vague, intangible wanderlust" Pg. 96.

Bertram Martin Adams (Bill Adams) 1879–1953

Like Bill Adams I came fresh to sea life from an English public school where I wore a tophat and carried a silver topped cane. 'China'

Lowry appears to have been an avid reader of sea stories before he went to sea in 1927. It is easy to see why Lowry would identify himself with Bill Adams who had gone off to sea himself at 17 as had Lowry at the same age in 1927. Bill Adams also used his sea experiences as a source of inspiration for his writing. Similarly, Lowry used his experiences from his Far East voyage in 1927 for his early short stories 'China', 'Port Swettenham' and later his first novel Ultramarine.

Bill Adams would have also appealed to a young Lowry with his mentions of windjammers, Liverpool and the Mersey.

Bill Adams was born in England to American parents. He left college to go to sea at age seventeen in a career that lasted four or five years and logged seven passages around Cape Horn. Before his sailing career was ended by ill health, he had attained the rank of mate. After retiring from the sea, he lived in the San Francisco area, where he became involved in the socialist movement and found inspiration in Jack London’s writings of the sea. In 1921 Adams began a modest literary career of his own, culminating in 1937 with an autobiography, Ships and Women.

His early sea stories were collected in Fenceless Meadows (1923), and he published a volume of sea verse, Wind in the Topsails, in 1923. In the late 1920s and early 1930s he published several good sea stories. Although they appeared in such excellent magazines as The Atlantic Monthly and Esquire, and there were enough for another volume of stories, he never collected them. At least three of his stories appeared in O. Henry collections of best short stories of the year: 'Jukes' (1927), 'Home Is the Sailor' (1928), and 'The Lubber' (1933). 'The Foreigner' appeared in Best Short Stories of America (1932). As ex- pressions of his socialist values, his stories often celebrate the lives of working sailors, and they are notable for their frequent inclusion of sea songs.

Many of his poems were previously published in magazines such as Adventure, The Outlook, Pictorial Review, The Saturday Evening Post, Short Stories, McCure's, Premier, London, Neptune's Log, Hearst's International and Blue Peter.

Blue Peter

Launched in July 1921, The Blue Peter: The Magazine of Sea Travel published maps, historical articles, short fiction, and features on ships - merchant sailing ships, passenger liners, excursion steamers, steamships, yachts, luxury steam yachts and motor cruisers - both the famous and not so well known, and articles on voyages, naval subjects, travel, and yarns of the sea, etc. Edited by A.M. and Frederick Arthur Hook, whose other publications included Merchant Adventurers, 1914-1918 (1920), Sail: The Romance of the Clipper Ships(1929), and Eastwards (1929). Photo-illustrations throughout, with full-colour advertisements and reproductions of paintings of sailing ships, it was to be found in the saloons of numerous passengers ships of the day. Published in London, price 1/-. Succeeded in May 1939 by The Trident.

Lowry refers to reading the magazine in his first novel Ultramarine; "or reading The Blue Peter" (Pg. 111) "The copy of the Blue Peter on top of my heaped clothes" (Pg. 133). A possible source for many nautical references in Lowry's work and his knowledge of Joseph Conrad and Bill Adams whose work was published in the magazine.