Abstract: Based on a true event， Joseph Conrad represented the incident that several British crew members abandoned the steamship “S.S.Jeddah” and all passengers in 1880 when facing a crisis in Lord Jim. In the novel， Conrad turned the eight-year-old “S.S.Jeddah” into a rusty old ship “Patna” which continued sailing after being whitewashed， attempting to use the rusty Patna as a metaphor to imply the declining Englishness such as the spirit of British Merchant Navy and the gentleman spirit， and alert British people at the same time. That is， through the rewriting， Conrad offered his own solution， that of “polishing” and “whitewashing” it successively， to the problem of “rusty” Englishness to glorify the declining Englishness by rewriting real events. The adaptation， writing and re-creation in Lord Jim reflected Conrad's anxieties and hopes about the future and destiny of the British Empire.

Key words: Lord Jim; Englishness; the spirit of British merchant navy; the gentleman spirit