“The Secret Sharer” by Joseph Conrad

“The Secret Sharer” was the strangest maritime story I read of all. It is unusual in a number of ways. First, although the Captain and crew are at sea for the entire length of the narrative, all the most important action takes place in the captain’s stateroom. So everything happens below decks, out of sight and out of touch with the sea, and the captain, the narrator of the story, is almost never seen captaining his own ship. Indeed, there is something odd about the whole ship’s hierarchy. And the secret sharer himself is a strange figure.

When Leggatt, the secret sharer, arrives at the ship, the captain is on deck—alone, at night. In other words, unusual. He’s been keeping watch, all alone, and thinking to himself about this his first voyage in command.

And suddenly I rejoiced in the great security of the sea, as compared with the unrest of the land, in my choice of that untempted life presenting no disquieting problems, invested with an elementary moral beauty by the absolute straightforwardness of its appeal and by the singleness of its purpose.

But how untempted this life, how quiet, how single of purpose? The story will, of course, make a fool of that sentence. The captain loses all sight of taking care of his ship and crew and becomes, quite singlemindedly, obsessed with the secret sharer, Leggatt, to whom he feels an immediate and mysterious connection.

That connection seemed to me very ephemeral and strange. Leggatt sitting around in the captains pajamas, barefoot—barefoot and padding around the stateroom almost noiselessly—seems almost ghostly. And the captain’s communion with him, at night in bed, in whispers, equally eery.

Below, the captain and his secret sharer plan their course together,

And it was as if the ship had two captains to plan her course for her. I had been so worried and restless running up and down that I had not had the patience to dress that day. I had remained in my sleeping suit, with straw slippers and a soft floppy hat. The closeness of the heat in the gulf had been most oppressive, and the crew were used to seeing me wandering in that airy attire.

Were they really? It sounds more like the ship has no captain, forget about two. And wearing the sleeping suit just puts him that much closer to Leggatt.

After so much strange and irresponsible behavior the captain finds he may have let his ship get too close to the coast—because of Leggatt, of course. He’s confident in the face of his crew’s fear, until he realizes that he’s been so caught up with the secret sharer that he hasn’t taken the time to really get the feel of the ship—this is his first voyage on her, after all. But just at the last minute, he can use a happy accident of the secret sharer’s escape to judge the ship and save them washing ashore. Why? I felt like the captain had really gotten away with something here.