"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 died. Like Leggatt, the killer who escapes punishment and befriends the story's narrator, the murderer escaped his punishment by swimming to a new destiny. Conrad uses the story of a sailor to explore themes of great scope.
The story can also be read as a bildungsroman — a tale of a young man's coming of age, much like Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Charles Dickens's David Copperfield, or James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Examining the story in light of these deeper levels of meaning transforms the work from a typical adventure story to an allegorical work, rich in symbolism.
