Augustine Podmore Williams

Augustine Podmore Williams (May 22, 1852 - April 17, 1916) was an English mariner who gained notoriety in the 1880s as the result of a scandal on the high seas [Gavin Young, "In Search of Conrad", Penguin Books, 1992, pp. 48-91] . Williams' story served as the inspiration for Joseph Conrad's novel "Lord Jim". Conrad, who was himself an experienced sailor, had spent time in Singapore in the 1880s and had come across Williams as a result.

Biography

'Austin' Williams was born in Porthleven, Cornwall, the son of a country parson. He was a merchant mariner. In July 1880, the 28-year-old Williams was serving as chief mate aboard the "Jeddah", a boat owned by the Singaporean merchant Syed Mohammed Alsagoff. The boat was captained by Joseph Clark, who set sail from Singapore on 18 July 1880. The ship stopped at Penang and took on board more than 950 Muslim pilgrims, all making their way to Arabia in order to perform the hajj in Mecca. The ship's destination was the Red Sea port of Jeddah. On 3 August, the ship found itself in the middle of a fierce hurricane which gradually grew in intensity. As the "Jeddah" began to take on water, the officers lost nerve and Captain Clark, spurred on by his chief mate Williams, decided to abandon ship in a boat which would only take on himself, his wife and a few of the officers and passengers. As there were nowhere near enough boats for the pilgrims, they would have to fend for themselves. The pilgrims found this out and the officers only managed to abandon ship and launch their boat with great difficulty in the middle of the night. They assumed that the ship would founder.

However, the next day, the storm died down and the skies cleared. The "Jeddah" was towed to Aden port by the steamship "Antenor". Meanwhile, the deserting officers had been rescued by another vessel (the "Scindia"), and Captain Clark had reported the "Jeddah" lost in the high seas. When the true story became known, the scandal made news throughout the nautical world. The case was discussed extensively and written about in the contemporary press in Singapore, Britain and elsewhere. An inquiry found Captain Clark guilty of gross misconduct and his captain's certificate was suspended for three years. Austin Williams, on the other hand, was seen to be a key instigator of the desertion and faced the opprobrium of the entire shipping community. He left the sea soon after the trial. He became a water-clerk with the Singaporean ship chandlers McAlister & Co., for whom he worked for the next 27 years. Eventually, he went into business on his own, but met with scant success. On 15 March 1916, he slipped and fell, fracturing a hip bone. He failed to recover from this injury, and died of complications a month later.

Williams married a Eurasian girl from Singapore by the name of Jane in January 1883 in St Andrew's Cathedral. They had sixteen children, seven of whom died before their father. Williams was interred in the now-defunct Bidadari Cemetery in northeast Singapore.

Joseph Conrad based his novel "Lord Jim" on the story of the "Jeddah" and the character of Austin Williams. A century later, the author Gavin Young tracked down the few remaining traces of Williams in Singapore, including his long-forgotten grave in Bidadari, in the course of researching "In Search of Conrad", a book of travel and literary detection. It was reported that when the dead of Bidadari were exhumed in the early 2000s in order to make way for redevelopment plans, Williams' descendants managed to reclaim his ashes ["Singapore's dead make way for the living", "The Daily Telegraph", London, 17 August 2004] .

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