Lowry did suffer from chronic constipation as a child and battled a bout of conjunctivitis as a preteen that affected the sight in both his eyes temporarily. He began abusing alcohol by the time he was 14 years old.
Although his father expected him to attend Cambridge and then take his place in the family business like his three older brothers, Lowry wanted some worldly experience to draw on for his writing. In May 1927, having finally secured his father's reluctant consent, Lowry set sail from Liverpool bound for Yokohama as a deckhand on the freighter S. S. Pyrrhus. He returned five months later with material for several stories that he would eventually expand into his first novel.
Lowry was particularly influenced by American writer Conrad Aiken and his 1927 novel, Blue Voyage. Precipitated by a fan letter, Lowry moved to Boston in the summer of 1929 in order to learn from Aiken. This apprenticeship financed by Lowry's father. Lowry was also very interested in the Norwegian writer, Nordahl Grieg, and his dark novel about a young man's adventures at sea entitled The Ship Sails On.
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