Summary The Skipper of the Sephora arrives on board the Captain’s ship, looking for any sign of Leggatt. The Skipper is distressed over Leggatt’s actions and disappearance, explaining that he has been at sea for thirty-seven years and has never seen anything like what happened with Leggatt. The Captain offers […]

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Summary As dusk begins to fall, the unnamed narrator of the story stands on the deck of his ship, currently anchored at the mouth of the Meinam River in the Gulf of Siam. The narrator is the Captain of the ship who leaves the deck to eat supper with his […]

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The Captain The unnamed Captain of an unnamed ship who narrates the story. A young man struggling to prove himself worthy of the command he was given a fortnight before the story begins, he finds Leggatt in the water, hides him in his cabin, and eventually helps him escape to […]

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Introduction “The Secret Sharer” was published in 1910, and the story is based on an actual incident, with some of the facts altered to suit Conrad’s artistic purposes: In the 1880s, a mate aboard the Cutty Sark killed an insubordinate sailor during an altercation in which the insubordinate sailor eventually […]

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“The Secret Sharer” begins with the anonymous narrator — the recently appointed captain of an unnamed ship — anchored in the Gulf of Siam (what is now called the Gulf of Thailand). As the Captain stands on the deck, alone, he soaks in the sunset and silence of the sea. […]

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