Conrad wrote “The Secret Sharer” in a matter of weeks at the end of 1909 which was “exceptionally quick for him.”[6] Conrad found that his American publisher, Harper & Brothers, and its president Colonel George Harvey were particularly receptive to his material. Between 1903 and 1913, they would publish five of his novels and four works of his short fiction.[7] “The Secret Sharer” appeared in Harper’s Magazine in August–September 1910.[8]
“The Secret Sharer” is based on an incident that occurred aboard the Cutty Sark in 1881, reported when the vessel arrived in Singapore. The first mate of the Cutty Sark—“a despotic character with a sinister reputation”—had killed an insubordinate crew member who had defended himself against the mate’s threatening behavior with a capstan bar.”[9] Conrad’s fictional first mate Leggatt, who has fled from his ship Sephora, is presented as a victim of circumstances that compels him to commit homicide.[10] Indeed, Conrad altered the reports from the Cutty Sark incident “to make Leggatt more agreeable.”[11]
Conrad’s own early experiences as a newly commissioned captain commanding his first ship are also tapped in “The Secret Sharer”, in which the youthful narrator is described as “a stranger to the ship” and “somewhat of a stranger to myself.”[12]
According to biographer Joycelyn Baines “Honor and dishonor, in their particular aspects of fidelity and betrayal, were constantly recurring themes throughout Conrad’s work. It is clear from ‘The Secret Sharer’ that he was especially concerned with them” at the time he wrote it in 1909.[13]
