The Secret Sharer Joseph Conrad 9781544245980 Books
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"The Secret Sharer" 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, whose name is never given. He is unfamiliar with both his ship and his crew, having joined the ship only a fortnight earlier, and unsure of his ability to exert his authority over the officers and crew who have been together for some time. He makes the point several times that he is the "stranger" on board. After being towed downriver (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 of the morning, 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, the man introduces himself as Leggatt and he and the captain find a natural rapport, almost as if Leggatt were the captain's other self, especially as the captain has now fetched some of his own clothes for Leggatt to wear. Still on deck, Leggatt explains that he was the First Mate of the other ship, but was placed under arrest after being accused of 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 the captain is on his, would certainly face the gallows on landing. However, he escaped his locked cabin and swam between islands to reach the narrator's ship. Though the captain could, and by all the rules should, arrest Leggatt, he instead leads him to concealment in his cabin. The captain has no plan yet, and hiding Leggatt seems impossibly difficult, given that his cabin is regularly serviced by his steward, the problem of food, a captain's movements being conspicuous to all, and the long voyage ahead. In the morning the captain of Leggatt's ship arrives by boat to inquire 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 behavior....
The Secret Sharer Joseph Conrad 9781544245980 Books
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Tags : The Secret Sharer [Joseph Conrad] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Secret Sharer 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,Joseph Conrad,The Secret Sharer,CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform,154424598X,FICTION Thrillers Suspense
The Secret Sharer Joseph Conrad 9781544245980 Books Reviews
I read this book and understood it on the surface but I'm sure there is some underlining statement I didn't understand. Very strange read.
Fascinating character study of a "outsider" under pressure which never
clearly leaves the reader certain of the
events.
A captain in his first command helps another without telling others about the man, the secret sharer. I enjoyed the book. The duality that the captain felt while this man was on board. The aloneness the captain felt before this man came on board. It was an interesting story.
Joseph Conrad's gorgeous, captivating short-short story titled, "The Secret Sharer" was written in 1909 and published in 1910. It's classic seafaring prose by the master of the genre. There is also a factual basis for the story as it magnifies a true event of a sailor arrested in London for his at-sea murder of a mate.
At about page 20, this quote reflects the captain's requirement on board for attention to detail. "...exactitude in some small matters is the very soul of discipline."
This is a story from the bad old days when men sailed on small merchant ships for months at a time, often stalled by lack of wind for their ships' sails. The story is set in the Gulf of Siam, and it's a haunting, clever, taut and rather somewhat homo-erotic (though not all intended so) story. A play and a portion of a movie were made of this little story. Take an hour or so and enjoy it!
It's a 5, for sure.
The intensity borders on melodrama at times, especially when the captain imagined the stow away to be another part of his own mind. The story held together despite the detailed seafaring language and description of the ship's interior using the almost incomprehensible language of sailors of that era.
This story by Joseph Conrad was published 107 years ago, but it still has power. It’s about a young sea captain already struggling in his first command, who then takes on a secret passenger. What follows is a sometimes strange situation that evolves as the captain must keep the passenger’s presence from being detected by the crew. The relationship between the two men is peculiar, as is the captain’s apparent insanity to his crew. Conrad tells the tale in a compelling manner, right to a riveting and suspenseful final scene.
"The Secret Sharer" is Conrad at his best. It tells the story of a young man on his maiden voyage as captain in the British Merchant Service, isolated and endangered by his loyalty to a stowaway. Conrad had a special gift for writing about young men — especially young seamen — facing a life-altering challenge. The novel "Lord Jim" is about a similar challenge, which the young seaman fails to meet, thus dooming himself in a very subtle area of his ego. Conrad's novella (half-way between a "short" story like "Sharer" and a novel) "The Shadow Line" also involves a nerve-wracking challenge to a young sea captain. Actually, the great novella "Typhoon" involves a challenge too, but to a much older sea captain.
At the time that Conrad decided to write "Sharer," he was working on a long, tense novel about Russia ("Under Western Eyes") that had nothing to do with the sea. It's a very fine novel, but Conrad suffered so much in scratching it out that the experience might have shortened his life. By contrast, he wrote "Sharer" with the greatest of ease, and it's almost perfect. Conrad had been a Merchant Service captain himself (which is how he happened to add English to his native Polish and near-native French), and it may be that he was more comfortable when the conflict was in his element, aboard ship.
At any rate, the "The Secret Sharer" raises questions that critics still don't agree on. One of them is simply whether the young captain is only imagining his secret guest. You be the judge, but I think there's a clear answer to that question. Above anything else, the story is exciting. It's long for a short story — almost a novella — but you might well find yourself reading it all in one sitting. If you like intelligent, vivid suspense, you're bound to enjoy this experience. The story can be read again and again, revealing new perfections each time.
Joseph Conrad, born Jozef Teodor Korzeniowski, to minor Polish nobility family in the Ukraine (both occupied by Russia at that time), was sent to apprentice on ocean-going vessels to improve his health and character. Nobody suspected that this Polish, Russian, and French speaking seaman was about to become one of the giants of English literature. He was described as a writer who skippered, rather than a skipper who wrote. However, his time on board served him as a source of most of his plots and descriptions of nature, including human nature. In this rather short novella, the skipper who accidently gets the command of an unknown ship with an unknown crew, finds himself hiding a first-mate of another ship. The man ran away after killing one of the sailors, but also after saving his ship in a storm. The skipper discovers he has more in common with the fugitive from justice than with the law-abiding simpleton members of his crew. His identification with the fugitive is so strong that he feels the poor runaway is indeed his double, sharing his cabin, food, and confidence. In a word, his secret sharer. Despite more than a hundred years separating the writing of the story from to-day's reader, it is as gripping and chilling as ever. Absolutely great!
A note – the publisher (Xist) will do well to occasionally skim through the books he publishes. The whole story is played out on a sail-ship, a clipper, or at least a schooner. What in the name is the steamship doing on a cover?!!!
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