The Secret Sharer, Typhoon, Youth by Joseph Conrad

This Free eBook contains three stories written by Joseph Conrad


The Secret Sharer, Typhoon and Youth,

The Secret Sharer:


"The Secret Sharer" takes place on a sailing ship in the Gulf of Siam (now the Gulf of Thailand), at the start of a voyage with cargo for Britain. The date is probably in the 1880s, when Conrad was at sea himself. In common with many of Conrad's stories, it is narrated in the first person. The narrator is the ship's young captain, whose name is never given. He is unfamiliar with both his ship and his crew, having joined the ship only a fortnight earlier, and unsure of his ability to exert his authority over the officers and crew who have been together for some time. He makes the point several times that he is the "stranger" on board.


Typhoon :

Typhoon is a classic sea yarn, possibly based upon Conrad's actual experience of seaman's life, and probably on a real incident aboard of the steamer John P. Best (according to the book by Jerry Allen on the "Sea years of Joseph Conrad", first published in 1965). The author of the mentioned book - an American journalist - did not reveal in her book any further details. Joseph Conrad himself described it as a "recent and much-discussed incident" (Author's note to the novella). The "Typhoon" describes how Captain MacWhirr sails the SS Nan-Shan, a British-built steamer running under the Siamese flag, into a typhoon - a mature tropical cyclone of the northwestern part of the Pacific Ocean. Other characters include the young Jukes - most probably an alter ego of Conrad from the time he had sailed under captain John McWhirr - and Solomon Rout, the chief engineer. The novella classically evokes the seafaring life at the turn of the century. While Macwhirr, who, according to Conrad, "never walked on this Earth" - is emotionally estranged from his family and crew, and though he refuses to consider an alternative course to skirt the typhoon, his indomitable will in the face of a superior natural force elicits grudging admiration.


Youth :


Similar to Joseph Conrad's better-known Heart of Darkness, Youth begins with a narrator describing five men drinking claret around a mahogany table. They are all veterans of the merchant navy. The main character, Marlow, tells the story of his first voyage to the East as second mate on board the Judea. The story is set twenty-two years earlier, when Marlow was 20. With two years of experience, most recently as third mate aboard a crack clipper, Marlow receives a billet as second mate on the barque Judea. The skipper is Captain John Beard, a man of about 60. This is Beard's first command. The Judea is an old boat, belonging to a man "Wilmer, Wilcox or something similar", suffering from age and disuse in Shadewell basin. The 400-ton ship is commissioned to take 600 tons of coal from England to Thailand. The trip should take approximately 150 days. The ship leaves London loaded with sand ballast and heads north to the Senn river to pick up the cargo of coal. On her way, the Judea suffers from her ballast shifting aside and the crew go below to put things right again. The trip takes 16 days because of inclement weather, and the battered ship must use a tug boat to get into port. The Judea waits a month on the Tyne to be loaded with coal. The night before she ships out she is hit by a steamer, the Miranda or the Melissa. The damage takes another three weeks to repair. Three months after leaving London, the Judea ships off for Bangkok.