This is How, more than thirty years later, Conrad described his first encounter with the ensign of the British Merchant Marine. Contrary to the legend he wished to create, his joining an English ship was not the result of a previously formed decision, “if a seaman, then an English seaman.”At the same time it was not entirely accidental: in those days over half of all ships afloat in the world belonged to the British fleet; since sailors were in considerable demand, no special permits were required for enlisting foreigners, who, as a rule, were less demanding, more tractable, and ready to accept lower wages.

The voyage of the small steamer Mavis (763 tons), which Konrad Korzeniowski boarded on 24 April 1878 in Marseilles, was somewhat mysterious.

On the basis of press notices we can establish that the Mavis reached Malta on 26 or 27 April; on the 27th she left for Constantinople, arriving there on 2 May en route to Kerch in the Crimea; she passed through the Straits of Kerch on 6 May heading for Yeysk, on the Sea of Azov; passed the Dardanelles again on 22 May, and four days later left Malta for England, passing Dungeness on 8 June on her way to Lowestoft. However, the ship’s documents record solely the forty-seven-day voyage from Marseilles to Lowestoft.