The youthful captain comprehends the gravity of Leggatt’s situation, and is determined to protect him. Leggatt’s efforts save the ship and the crew, but the captain of the Sephora puts him in shackles allegedly for murder. They differ in that Leggatt has had the bad fortune to have been embroiled in a conflict with a troublesome deck hand, ending in a violent confrontation during a typhoon, in which the vessel is almost lost.
The captain recognizes in Leggatt a youthful “double” of himself: The two men are similar in appearance, personal history and maritime experience and aspirations. He explains he is a fugitive from the ship, having been arrested by the ship’s captain for killing a crewmember during a violent storm.Īfter hearing his story, the captain-rather than summoning an officer to seize the man-fetches clothing for him and conceals him in his quarters. That night, with the crew below deck, he discovers a naked half-submerged figure clinging to a rope ladder: it is the first mate named Leggatt from the Sephora, the only other ship anchored in the bay. The youthful captain, to the surprise of his officers, takes the evening watch. Recently commissioned to command his first ship, he is unfamiliar with both the vessel and its crew. The story is written from the first-person point-of-view, in which the unnamed captain is the narrator. A film, Secret Sharer, inspired by the story and directed by Peter Fudakowski, was released in the United Kingdom in June 2014.
The story was adapted for a segment of the 1952 film Face to Face, and also for a one-act play in 1969 by C. It was later included in the short story collection Twixt Land and Sea (1912). "The Secret Sharer" is a short story by Polish-British author Joseph Conrad, originally written in 1909 and first published in two parts in the August and September 1910 editions of Harper's Magazine.
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