Since its first appearance in 1910, "The Secret Sharer" has elicited critical reading focused primarily upon psychological or symbolic aspects of the story. On the other hand, a number of critics have perceived that the surface as well as the symbolic aspects are worthy of examination. Nevertheless, although this story has received a large number of readings and explications, not a single critic appears to have fully understood and exploited the actual physical action of the story. Although R. W. Stallman argues that the "meanings which attach to the narrative or surface level are less likely to be missed" [The Art of Joseph Conrad, 1960] than the symbolic meanings, I shall try to show that indeed critics have overlooked or failed to understand significant surface activity. Instead, they have plunged, like pearl divers, into the dark recesses of the captain's mind, preferring to believe and interpret what he tells and hints, rather than to examine what he actually does. Indeed, it is the startling dichotomy between the captain's thoughts and his actions, between inner and outer reality, that makes "The Secret Sharer" the rich yarn that it is. It is interesting to speculate that the old salts, had they read the story when it first appeared in Harper's, would have had a better insight into certain of its complexities than many of the modern critics now publishing in learned journals.

When one follows carefully the captain's activities and the maneuvering of the vessel as the climactic moment of Leggatt's escape approaches, there emerges a rather different story from that normally presented by the critics. For example, the commonly-held opinion is that the captain's seamanship and abilities are crippled by Leggatt's presence and that only when Leggatt leaves can the captain regain control of his situation. Such a view, however, is incorrect. As I will demonstrate, the captain is completely in control of both ship and crew as the dark mountain of Koh-ring is approached, and it is only in the final inshore tacking maneuver that he momentarily loses his grasp on his situation for perfectly valid psychological reasons. Leggatt is not primarily the "dark" or "violent" side of the captain as some critics suggest. He is what his name implies, a legate, an envoy or messenger, or something coming from an ancestor or predecessor, and what he brings or bequeaths to the captain is nothing less than the authority of command. "The Secret Sharer," then, is, as many critics have noted, a story of initiation, but here, the initiation is into captainship—the very specialized occupation of master of a square-rigged vessel. "The Secret Sharer" is extraordinarily elitist in its view, but its real fascination is in the insight that it gives us into what Conrad thought was the making of master—or at least one component of that process.

"The Secret Sharer" begins with the introspective captain ruminating on himself, his crew, and his impending journey. At supper with his mates, he makes conversation about another ship he has noticed inside the islands. But this first attempt at familiarity fails when the first mate foolishly blurts out "Bless my soul, sir!" and the second mate attempts to enlist the captain, by glance, in poking fun at the first mate. The second mate after allowing the captain and first mate to speculate on the strange ship, finally gives its name and particulars, "thus overwhelming us with the extent of his information." The important point of this scene is that in attempting to be familiar with his officers, to establish human contact, the captain is rebuffed and produces an entirely different effect.

Next he decides to take the watch himself since "the crew had had plenty of hard work …" But here again, his motives are misunderstood and his officers astonished; indeed, the young captain wonders if "my action might have made me appear eccentric."

Throughout and surrounding these two scenes we are treated to the captain's inner ruminations. His Hamletlike questionings and the tentativeness of his dealings with his officers are in concert in these first few pages. The captain reassures himself, "the ship was like other ships, the men like other men…" yet he also is "vexed" with himself at his failure properly to set the anchor-watch and thus insure the rope-ladder's being brought aboard. It would be ridiculous to suggest that these modest difficulties and oversights presage disaster in the captain's long journey, nor does Conrad appear to urge this. What the young captain lacks is more than a sense of ease with his officers. Rather, it is that essential component of captainship that might be described as self-assurance, that emotional coolness that permits one to act with complete independence.

Captain Archbold from whose ship, the Sephora, Leggatt has escaped, despite his thirty-seven years at sea and his twenty years of "immaculate command," has never (his name notwithstanding) gained this independent sense, this mastership, yet he has made many safe voyages. But in a crisis, Conrad is suggesting, a master without this confidence is lost, as Archbold, his ship, and his company would have been without the intervention of Leggatt's boldness in setting the sail during the storm.

The turning point in the captain's tentativeness occurs once Leggatt has come aboard, as the captain's words reveal: "The self-possession of that man had somehow induced a corresponding state in myself." Moreover, in contemplating Leggatt, the captain becomes aware of what he lacks—the very traits required of the good captain: "And I could imagine … a stubborn if not a steadfast operation; something of which I should have been perfectly incapable." The brush with the steward in the cabin is enough to convince the captain that his actions are suspect, and he reflects wisely, "I must show myself on deck." At this point a crucial change occurs in the narrative. The captain's speculations, musings, and inner doubts continue with little or no change; he seems at times the classic neurotic afraid even to imagine the next moment. But outwardly, in his actions as master and seaman, the shift is dramatic. First, he cuts the grinning first mate with "the first particular order I had given on board that ship," and he "stayed on deck to see it executed too." Such actions see the "sneering young cub [get] taken down a peg or two." During breakfast, far from making vague and friendly attempts at conversation with his crew, the captain presides "with such frigid dignity that the two mates were only too glad to escape from the cabin as soon as decency permitted." Now, when the steward comes unexpectedly to the cabin, the captain, instead of starting and turning red, responds with a peremptory" 'Well!'" and coolly orders the steward to get the ladder over for the approaching Captain Archbold.

In the extended conversation with the older man, the captain betrays no outward panic, even though his mind is racing with questions and alarms: "From its novelty to him and from its nature," says the captain, "punctilious courtesy was the manner best calculated to restrain the man." In addition, the captain cleverly feigns partial deafness. This episode with Captain Archbold shows us that the captain has an inaccurate view of his own actions. Despite his impression that he is attracting attention, the captain is totally cool and collected. When Archbold indicates that he will report a suicide, the captain's retort shows masterly self-control: "'Unless you manage to recover him before tomorrow,' I assented dispassionately.… 'I mean alive.'" Yet only a few lines further on, the captain asserts that he "felt utterly incapable of playing the part of ignorance properly, and therefore was afraid to try." Propelled by his fear—"fear, too, is not barren of ingenious suggestions"—the captain dissembles smoothly and convincingly, despite his protestations to the contrary.

The same observation holds true for his behavior in front of his crew. Here again, the two threads of the narrative are sharply diverging. In his mind, the captain is agonizing: "I felt I was producing a bad impression … I felt less torn in two when I was with [Leggatt]." And later: "I was not wholly alone with my command." No wonder that so many critics have misread the events after the sails are set. The captain himself says, "There are to a seaman certain words, gestures, that should in given conditions come as naturally, as instinctively as the winking of a menaced eye.… But all unconscious alertness had abandoned me. I had to make an effort of will to recall myself back (from the cabin) to the conditions of the moment. I felt I was appearing an irresolute commander to those people who were watching me more or less critically." What we are seeing here is a somewhat paranoid reaction produced by the captain's guilty feelings about harboring Leggatt. He is convinced that the crew is talking about him and remarking his strange behavior:

My nerves were so shaken that I could not govern my voice and conceal my agitation. This was the sort of thing that made my terrifically whiskered mate tap his forehead with his forefinger. I had detected him using that gesture while talking on deck with a confidential air to the carpenter. It was too far to hear a word, but I had no doubt that this pantomime could only refer to the strange new captain (emphasis mine).

We have only the captain's words for the reaction of the crew to his behavior, and it may well be that they remark nothing at all. In any event, the captain's actual ability to function is not impaired in the slightest. In fact, the very presence of Leggatt is forcing the captain towards independent decision and action, precisely as the storm and Captain Archbold's irresoluteness forced Leggatt to save the Sephora, and, in so doing, to kill a recalcitrant seaman. Leggatt's fierce and unique example and his actual presence "educate" the young captain in two steps. The first effect is to force the captain to stand apart from his crew, even to the point of treating them with coldness, rudeness and hostility. But this, of course, is only part of the captain's voyage to mastership. This hard-won loneness must next be applied to its logical use: the welding of ship and underlings into a perfect tool with which the captain can accomplish whatever he chooses. Thus the Leggatt-captain relationship cannot continue indefinitely. Continuous rigidity and elitism by the captain toward his mates and crew can only result in as much difficulty as his former vagueness and pointless good fellowship has done. Thus, after Leggatt has forced the captain to share his command only with him, he next insists that he be put ashore. It is in this putting ashore that the captain must assemble the several skills that Conrad is suggesting are required of a sailing master: independent aloofness, a cool head in the face of danger, total control of the men under him, and seamanship.

The ship is proceeding down the eastern side of the Gulf of Siam. The wind is blowing lightly from the south and the captain is making slow tacks against it, running close-hauled. At midnight of the fourth day, having decided to move in close enough to the eastern shore of the Gulf to put Leggatt off, the captain puts his ship on starboard tack; that is, the wind is blowing over the right side of the ship and the vessel is moving about southeast. At noon, when the captain might be expected to change tack and head back out into the Gulf, he fails to do so, explaining that he is looking for the "land breezes." After dinner he makes his final plans with Leggatt: "'It's got to be Kohring.… It has got two hills and a low point.'" Koh-ring is evidently an island running roughly north and south with hills on each end. "'She will clear the south point as she heads now,'" says the captain to Leggatt, but a bit later it becomes evident that he has no intention of passing south of the island and heading in to the mainland shore.

The captain explains the scheme to Leggatt, "'I shall stand in as close as I dare and put her round.… when the ship's way is deadened in stays [a ship's forward motion stops as she changes tacks in a light breeze] and all hands are aft at the main braces you will have a clear road to slip out and get overboard through the open quarterdeck port.'"

The captain has been badgering the steward for several days whenever he approached the captain's cabin and the hidden Leggatt. This background of authoritarian treatment now enables the captain to send the steward on a pointless errand for hot water while he smuggles Leggatt into the sail locker, which communicates to the open quarter-deck ports.

The captain next goes on deck and sees the southern hill of Koh-ring bearing off his port (left) bow and close by. The "wise" young second mate is on watch and the captain coolly deceives the young man as to his intent, "'She will weather'" to which the mate replies incredulously, "'Are you going to try that, sir?'" The captain, ignoring the mate, speaks to the helmsman, "'Keep her good full.'"

What is going on here is simply this: the captain might if he chose "weather" Koh-ring island, that is, stay on starboard tack and by keeping as close to the wind as possible, pass by the island close to its southern point on a long south-east diagonal. We know that such a course is possible: the captain has told Leggatt, "'She will clear the south point as she heads now.'" But, of course, the captain has no intention of weathering. On the contrary, he has explained to Leggatt that he will put the ship about onto port tack (in layman's terms, change from the zig to the zag in his zig-zag course) when he gets as close to the land as he dares. Moreover, his next order, "'Keep her good full'" makes it highly unlikely that the ship could weather. Nor would he issue such an order if he hoped or intended to weather. In order to weather the point, the helmsman would have to steer the ship more nearly into the southerly wind with the result that her sails would spill some of their wind. On the other hand, if the helmsman is to keep the sails full, as ordered by the captain, he must steer more to port, that is, in an easterly direction, off the wind, and directly toward, rather than just past, the southern tip of Koh-ring so that it would be impossible to weather the point. Thus, the captain's intent is to deceive the mate, and he is essentially lying, because immediately after speaking the words, "'She will weather,'" he issues the order that makes the statement false. As will be shown later, the tacking maneuver is essential to the captain's plan for putting Leggatt off without detection by the crew.

There is a crucial reason for this deliberate and cool manipulation of the second mate. The captain is dealing with a conceited and "sharp" young man, but one probably lacking in experience and the judgment that stems from experience. To have explained that he was going to sail inshore to a desperately short distance and then to tack would have not only disturbed the young second mate but might have produced some sort of semi-mutinous action. Yet inshore tacking is the only course of action that will allow Leggatt's escape to go undetected. The captain's problem is that he cannot possibly give any plausible reason for putting the ship about so close to the southern hill of Koh-ring as he wishes to do. He must pretend that he plans to weather in order to account for going in so close. His strategy is to confuse the second mate on a matter of sailing judgment. The mate's judgment is that the ship will not weather, but we know that there is sufficient doubt about this to inhibit the young second mate's intervention in the matter when he is, himself, not sure whether the vessel will pass the island or not.

The intriguing thing about this scene is that the captain has no inner qualms whatever about his manipulation of the second mate. Indeed, it is his lack of introspection at this point that has deceived many critics who have built their readings of the story on the captain's inner thoughts and psychological reactions. In his earlier scene with Captain Archbold, the young captain says, "I could not, I think, have met him by a direct lie, also for psychological (not moral) reasons. If he had only known how afraid I was of his putting my feeling of identity with the other to the test!" Yet here, though he is lying now to his mate, he feels no qualms or doubts whatever. There are two factors in operation to produce this change in the captain. First, his days of hiding Leggatt have toughened him in his relationships with his men. Second, Archbold is a captain, an equal member of the select society into which the young captain is being introduced. If, as I maintain, Conrad is dealing in this story with the rather specialized way in which a sailing master is made, then this second possibility is the most interesting. Essentially, we are seeing that captains do not lie to each other, but captains lie, without hesitation, to underlings.

The deception cannot continue indefinitely. As the southern mountain looms blackly, the second mate speaks again in an "unsteady voice," "'Are you going on sir?'"

The captain refuses to answer but speaks to the helmsman, "'Keep her good full. Don't check her way. That won't do now.'" Up to this point the captain has maintained the pretense that he intends to pass close by the southern tip of Koh-ring keeping on starboard tack, but with this order he drops this pretense and makes it evident that he intends to tack the ship close to the shore. The most typical error of a beginning sailor or a nervous helmsman coming in on a lee shore (a shore toward which the wind is blowing) is to ease his vessel into the wind (away from the shore) and thereby check her forward progress. The reason this is a dangerous error is that if a ship does not have sufficient speed she will not respond to her rudder when it is put over for the tacking maneuver. The captain, aware that such an error is instinctive, warns against it, and in so doing effectively notifies the second mate that he intends to tack momentarily and needs as much speed as possible.

By now, however, the second mate is too awed by the nearness of the mountain to attempt any action. Further, there is no sensible action available to him at this juncture other than the one being pursued by the captain. Essentially, the captain has been manipulating the second mate as a puppeteer dangles a puppet. When indirection was required to lull him, the captain used it, and when the truth of the captain's intention became obvious, it was too late for the mate to react in any harmful way.

The final scene is not only the climax of the story, but the rock on which the bulk of criticism of the story shatters. Most critics founder at this crucial action over two questions: First, why does the captain take the vessel in so close to shore? And second, what, exactly, is the risk involved?

On the first point, the commonest reading seems to be that the captain is proving something in a psychological sense to himself, his crew, and/or Leggatt. But a more reasonable understanding of the situation becomes available if one accepts the captain's thoughts as meaning exactly what they say: "There could be no going back for him." The captain is responsible for Leggatt's life. The only way to insure that this life will be preserved is to take the vessel as close inshore as a capable seaman dares. Many critics have noted that Leggatt can swim several miles so that the ship could have comfortably tacked much further offshore. But the captain's contention that there could be no going back for Leggatt is exactly true in at least two senses. First, if Leggatt cramps or is unable to make a nearby landing because Koh-ring's rocky side falls sheerly into the water, the captain cannot go back to retrieve the swimmer. Further, if Leggatt cannot get into the water because of a near-by crew member or some other last minute hitch, he cannot get back from the quarter deck to the captain's cabin without considerable risk of discovery. But there is more to the captain's problem than this. While the on-deck business is going forward, Leggatt must go from the sail locker, to the lobby, and thence overboard through the quarter-deck port. For this is to be carried out, it is essential that the below-decks area be completely clear of men—men who have already bridled at the thought that they might be harboring a murderer. On a quiet night, only a single watch would be needed to accomplish a tacking maneuver. Square riggers normally kept two watches, port and starboard, with the first and second mates going on duty with their respective watches. But this would mean that half the crew would be below or lounging around who knows where during the time the vessel was coming about. Double watchstanding is normally resorted to only in foul weather or conditions that require extra hands. What then is the captain to do? Clearly, he must create an "artificial" emergency, so paralyzing as to bring every man on deck and then transfix their attention away from the quarter-deck area while Leggatt is escaping. In meeting this requirement, the captain is fortunate that the mountain of Koh-ring admirably fills his needs. The entire crew is on deck when he calls for the second watch—" 'And turn all hands up'" and we can be sure that every man is looking up at the black mountain.

The question of wilfully taking the ship into danger still remains, and bothers several critics. Even if the captain must "shave the land" to insure Leggatt's safety, this is still an ignoble decision if it condemns many sailors to death, or even risks such a tragedy. But again, critics have failed to penetrate that what actually is at stake is only the captain's reputation as he notes himself: "I realized suddenly that all my future, the only future for which I was fit, would perhaps go irretrievably to pieces in any mishap in my first command." And "mishap" is exactly what is being risked here. At most a minor injury to the vessel, and a blot on a young captain's record. There is no surf and no sign of the rocks that the first mate mentions when the captain runs easterly toward the Cambodje shore ostensibly seeking the land wind (which, indeed, he might in part be doing). The captain presumably does have an Admiralty chart of the area which, while it might have been sketchy on inshore soundings, would surely show any above-water rocks. But even if the vessel did strike a rock (and this would be the worst disaster that could befall it) it seems unlikely that she would be badly holed, much less that she would sink. From the description, it appears she is moving at barely a knot, since at any greater speed she would presumably have come about more handily than she does. The first mate, certainly not the most optimistic member of the crew, speaks out: "'She'll drift ashore before she's round. O my God!'" But this is hardly a disaster to make maritime history. If the ship did ground, it is to be expected that the longboat would be lowered, a kedge anchor taken out westward from Kohring, and the anchor capstan worked to pull the ship into deep water. The point is, no one's life is in danger here except Leggatt's He is the one who must swim to a dark and strange shore, avoiding even the slightest noise that would attract instant attention by those on board. The only real casualty from a grounding would be the captain's reputation, for the incident would appear in the log and attract attention, especially if sufficient damage were done to force the ship back into a local port. The captain is gambling his reputation on assuring Leggatt's safety. This seems a fair trade—a reasonable moral equation. The other human actors in the drama are involved in only a peripheral manner.

The first mate is more of a problem for the young captain. He is older and more experienced, less easily fooled on questions of seamanly judgment. We recall that "his dominant trait was to take all things into earnest consideration." He is also cautious. The best way of handling this man, while the ship slides under Koh-ring's bulk, is to let him sleep, off watch. But the captain cannot very well call the other watch without calling its chief and so the first mate arrives on deck at the crucial moment and promptly has hysterics. There is certainly a similarity between this scene, where the captain shakes his mate and orders him forward, and the scene described by Leggatt when he strangled a mutinous sailor, but Conrad is too subtle a writer to suggest that the correspondence is one-to-one. Actually, the captain-first mate confrontation is a kind of parody of the more serious and violent business on the Sephora. The bewhiskered first mate is simply not as important to the captain, or his story, as the mutinous sailor was to Leggatt. The young captain is a puppet-master controlling all his men, mates and seamen. He confuses the second mate by coolly lying about his intention. He controls the first mate by steadiness and disciplined violence and he manipulates the crew members with the help of the awesome blackness of Koh-ring. The point to recognize here is the considerable discrepancy between the captain's thoughts, which are chaotic and disturbed and his actions, which are purposeful, economic, and sound in both a psychological and seamanship sense.

Whether one believes Leggatt is an ideal or a dark force, it is a critical commonplace to represent his effect on the captain as detrimental. The fact is, however, that it is not until Leggatt goes over the side that the captain slips seriously. Until he puts his vessel about, he is completely in control of his situation. But at this moment psychology and seamanship come together. The captain's mental confusion finally overwhelms his nautical judgment. It is not Leggatt's being on board that almost destroys the captain, it is his leaving.

To understand this final moment of the story, it is necessary to know what is going on vis-á-vis the nautical situation. The vessel is moving very slowly in a southeasterly direction on starboard tack (wind over the right bow). The captain gives the order to put the rudder over to the right so as to bring the ship around, "'Hard alee!'" She has so little way, however, that she hangs "in stays" (that is, stops in the midst of the turn). This happens when the turning motion of the ship is so slow that the wind and water-drag resist and stop it, usually when the ship is pointing dead to windward. The ship then begins to move backward. But the captain must know whether the ship is still moving ahead in order to steer correctly: "And then I watched the land intently. In that smooth water and light wind it was impossible to feel the ship coming to. No! I could not feel her." If the captain had reversed his rudder (turned it to the left) before the forward motion had ceased, the ship would have tended to fall back off on her original tack and again point directly toward Koh-ring, probably drifting onto the shore before she could get way again. If, on the other hand, the forward motion had ceased and the ship had started to drift backward because of the wind pressure on her square sails and upper works and the captain had failed to reverse the rudder the effect would have been equally troublesome. When a ship moves backward, the stern becomes the front in terms of steering and a right rudder will move the stern to the right and the bow to the left, toward Koh-ring in this case. Thus, the captain must know exactly when his vessel gains sternway so as to reverse the rudder at that critical instant. When the captain sees the hat "drifting forward" he knows that the ship has gathered sternway and that he must reverse the rudder. "'Shift the helm,'" he says, and now the left rudder moves the stern to the left toward Koh-ring and moves the bow to the right toward open water. As soon as the ship has fallen far enough off on the port tack her sails will fill and the very slight rearward motion will be stopped. She will then draw ahead out toward the middle of the Gulf of Siam.

The important thing to understand about this situation is that it is one of the most essential considerations in large-ship sailing. The great bulk of lost sailing vessels foundered because they could not come about when being driven down on a lee shore and could not, in the vernacular, 'claw up to windward.' On a dark night and in a strange vessel, it is inconceivable that a master who has shown the planning and operational skill that our young captain has exhibited would not have anticipated the essential point: that he would have only one try at coming about, and it must work. Furthermore, his own words to the helmsman—" 'Don't check her way. That won't do now.' "—prove that he is aware of the necessity of either getting her around or reversing the rudder if she hangs in stays, as proves to be the case. Yet when the crucial moment comes, the captain is totally unprepared: "Had she [stern] way on her yet?.. It was impossible to tell.… What I needed was something easily seen.… To run down for it I didn't dare."

At this point I must, like the other critics, leave the certainties of seamanship for the ambiguities of psychological motivation. Whereas the captain does behave (whatever his thoughts) cleverly and surely until the final moment, he suddenly muffs a completely obvious and predictable emergency. The reason, I submit, lies in the meaning of Leggatt to the captain. Leggatt is not only a kind of model or example but he is also the problem which forces the captain to make his way towards mastership. Leggatt not only teaches the captain how to treat the first mate with fierce discipline and to overawe the crew, but his presence forces the captain actually to do these things. The hitch is that the captain has not thought beyond the moment when Leggatt goes over the side. He has so closely identified himself with Leggatt, that this parting has almost the trauma of the surgical parting of Siamese twins. Thus the very common critical reading of the story, which assumes the captain is crippled when Leggatt is aboard and only becomes whole when Leggatt has gone, actually has the situation backward.

At this critical juncture, Leggatt providentially "returns" through the intervention of that most interesting and controversial symbol, the floating hat. The captain had given Leggatt the hat to "save his homeless head from the dangers of the sun," but it fell off or Leggatt discarded it and the captain was able to assess the moment when his ship gained sternway by watching the relative motion of the ship and hat. Although my reading of "The Secret Sharer" leans heavily away from inner psychological complexities and symbolic interplay, it would be an error to avoid the clear symbolic importance of the hat. Leggatt is certainly that "ideal conception of [the young captain's] personality" and, as such, he transmits to the young captain the attitudes and aptitudes that befit a commander. When the young captain falters at the end, because his model has left, the model provides, unwittingly but importantly, a final "saving mark for [his] eyes." The hat is then a kind of crown which Leggatt is symbolically passing to the captain. Leggatt has exhibited his boldness in saving his vessel, the Sephora. The young captain has yet to meet such a stern test. His handling of the inshore run and tacking maneuvers cannot be compared, either in importance or personal ability, to Leggatt's setting of the sail during a hurricane. Yet Leggatt's career has now turned to different channels and it is reasonable to assume that whatever coolness and bold decision he possessed has somehow passed to the young captain. The crown symbol is especially apt, since what Leggatt has passed is a rather elitist and authoritarian standard. The true master makes moral decisions that may disturb the academic critic. To be sure, a vessel's safety is worth more than a single man's life. But a man's life is more important than the chance of a minor wreck. Lying and bullying are acceptable when required to work the ship properly. Above all, the important thing is to act decisively. Skill without this coolness and nerve can lead to many years of "immaculate command" (witness Captain Archbold) but will not triumph at that critical moment.