The Secret Sharer

"The Secret Sharer" is a short story^[1] by Joseph Conrad written in 1909, first published in Harper's Magazine in 1910, and as a book in the short-story collection Twixt Land and Sea (1912).

The story was filmed as a segment of the 1952 film Face to Face.

The Secret Sharer was adapted to a one-act play in 1969 by C. R. (Chuck) Wobbe. The play was published in 1969 by the Dramatic Publishing Company.

A new film, Secret Sharer, inspired by the novella and directed by Peter Fudakowski, was released in the UK in June 2014.

Plot summary

The story takes place on a sailing ship in the Gulf of Siam (now the Gulf of Thailand), at the start of a voyage with cargo for Britain. The date is probably in the 1880s (when Conrad was at sea himself). In common with many of Conrad's stories, it is narrated in the first person. The narrator is the ship's young captain, and he is unfamiliar with both his ship and his crew, having joined the ship only a fortnight earlier. He is unsure of his ability to exert his authority over the officers and crew who have been together for some time, and makes the point several times that he is the "stranger" on board.

After being towed down-river (presumably from Bangkok) by a steam tug, the ship is left at anchor near a group of small barren islands a few miles off shore, waiting for wind to begin its voyage. An incoming ship is anchored similarly a couple of miles away, awaiting a tug to go upriver.

That night, the captain, being restless, unusually takes the watch. As the only man on deck in the small hours, he sees that a man has swum up to the ship's side. The naked swimmer is hesitant to talk or come on board, but seems pleased to discover he is speaking to the captain. Once on board he and the captain find a natural rapport, almost as if he, Leggatt, were the captain's other self; especially as the captain has now fetched some of his own clothes that Leggatt is now wearing.

Still on deck, Leggatt explains that he was the First Mate of the other ship, but under arrest for murdering a crew member. The victim was a disobedient bully. During a storm which nearly sank their ship on their voyage here, Leggatt was physically wrestling with the man to make him to pull a rope when a freak wave threw them both against a bulwark and the man was killed. Leggatt, a "stranger" on the other ship just as our captain was on this, would certainly face the gallows on landing. However, he had escaped his locked cabin and had swum between islands to reach the narrator's ship.

This is the point at which our captain could, and by all the rules should, arrest Leggatt. But instead he leads him to concealment in his cabin. The captain has no plan yet, and the situation is one of extreme difficulty, with his cabin regularly serviced by his steward, the problem of food, a ship's captain's movements being conspicuous to all, and a long voyage ahead. In the morning the captain of Leggatt's ship arrives by boat to enquire if the escapee has been sighted. Our captain, not a natural liar, manages to bluff through, but is left terrified as to what his own officers make of his strained behaviour.

With rising wind the ship gets under way, and there starts a routine of the captain helping Leggatt evade the dutiful visits of the steward to the captain's cabin. Leggatt comes close to discovery several times, almost like a stage farce. All the while, the captain is tormented by any small sign that any of his crew suspect (or even might have discovered) the secret. The captain and Leggatt evolve a plan; Leggatt, being a good swimmer, will drop into the sea and swim ashore further down the Gulf of Siam while the ship is sailed as close in to land as possible. This is done, although the risky manoeuver under the captain's direct command nearly puts the ship onto the rocks, testing his seamanship and horrifying the crew. He succeeds, and leads the ship away.

Analysis

The story has a theme seen in some other Conrad stories (Lord Jim, Nostromo) of the hero facing a decision and drifting into the one which is "wrong" by normal social standards, a lapse from the rules he is expected to follow. The decision by the captain to conceal Leggatt is the hinge point of this story. While the reader is likely to believe that Leggatt does not deserve to be convicted of murder, there is no doubt that the captain, as the representative of the law on his ship, was breaking all the rules in concealing Leggatt. For the sake of a man whom he had known for only 15 minutes, and after hearing only this man's version of events, the captain takes an enormous risk of ruining his own career and reputation.

Yet interestingly, there is no clear point at which the decision is made. Although our narrator is speaking his thoughts, fears and doubts, he never says "I decided to conceal Leggatt". When they move from the deck to the cabin, it seems at first only to get Leggatt dry and to hear his story more fully, but the situation somehow drifts into one of concealment. This happens when they instinctively lower their voices on hearing the footsteps of the second mate (who has now taken over the watch) on the deck overhead. "I, too, spoke under my breath" the captain says – from that point the conspiracy is in place.

Despite the captain's fears, it is clear that no-one else in the ship has any suspicion of the secret even to the end. It is even possible to see Leggatt as entirely a figment of the captain's imagination, a doppelgänger, or a ghost – perhaps Leggatt actually drowned and sank after reaching our ship's side. At the end of the story, when Leggatt drops into the sea from a stern porthole, we do not even know if he survives the long swim to the Indo-China shore, to start a new life.

The story was created in just 2 weeks, while Conrad was writing Under Western Eyes. He wrote "The Secret Sharer" as a break from his much larger novel that was emotionally difficult for him. There are similarities between the two stories, with the Captain and Leggatt becoming Razumov and Haldin respectively. The story originally appeared in Harper's Magazine, under the title "The Secret-Sharer", but Conrad revised the title to make it more ambiguous, making Leggatt secretly share with the captain, rather than merely sharing a secret.

The story contains elements of real events – the chief mate of the Cutty Sark killed another crew-member for insolence during a storm, and was later arrested in London for his murder. Conrad also drew on his own time as captain of the Otago, when his first mate did not trust him, and got a particular scare when Conrad maneuvered the ship dangerously close to rocks in the Gulf of Siam.

The 2014 film adaptation received good reviews, while taking liberty with the story (most notably, Leggatt's character is transformed into a Chinese woman). It was praised by the seafarers' charity Apostleship of the Sea for its portrayal of some of the issues facing seafarers.

References

External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article: The Secret Sharer

• The Secret Sharer at Project Gutenberg
• The Secret Sharer public domain audiobook at LibriVox
• Secret Sharer movie praised by seafarers' charity Apostleship of the Sea

Official site for Secret Sharer, released in the UK on 27 June 2014:

• www.secretsharerthemovie.com