Sober Men and True: Sailor Lives in the Royal Navy, 1900-1945

by Christopher McKee

Overview

The image of the naval sailor is that of an enigmatic but compelling figure, a globe-trotting adventurer, swaggering and irresponsible in port but swift to flex the national muscle at sea and beyond. Appealing as this popular image may be, scant effort has been expended to reveal the truth behind the stereotype.

Thanks to Christopher McKee's groundbreaking work, it is now possible to hear from sailors themselves—in this case, those who served in Great Britain's Royal Navy during the first half of the twentieth century. McKee has scoured sailors' unpublished diaries, letters, memoirs, and oral interviews to uncover the lives and secret thoughts of British men of the lower deck. From working-class childhoods teetering on the edge of poverty to the hardships of finding civilian employment after leaving the navy; from sexual initiation in the brothels of Oran and Alexandria to the terror of battle, the former sailors speak with candor about all aspects of naval life: the harsh discipline and deep comradeship, the shipboard homoeroticism, the pleasures and temptations of world travel, and the responsibilities of marriage and family.

McKee has shaped the first authentic model of the naval enlisted experience, an account not crafted by officers or civilian reformers but deftly told in the sailors' own voices. The result is a poignant and complex portrait of lower-deck lives.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674007369
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	05/30/2002
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Christopher McKee is Rosenthal Professor and Librarian of the College at Grinnell College.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Jack's Wrong Image

1. I Went Away to Join the Navy

2. They Were Officers and You Were Not

3. The Finest and Most Sincere Crowd of Men

4. I Never Thought I'd See Daylight Again

5. This Rum It Was Wonderful Stuff

6. A Sailor's Paradise

7. Traveling with an Oar on My Shoulder

Appendix 1: Ratings in the Royal Navy, 1914

Appendix 2: Ratings in the Royal Navy, 1943

Appendix 3: Daily Standard Naval Rations, 1914

Informants for Sober Men and True

Abbreviations

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

What People are Saying About This

An evocative portrait of a unique and now vanished society. McKee has brought this world to life in an insightful and fascinating manner.

Kenneth J. Hagan

Sober Men and True recounts the lives of the enlisted men who served in Britain's Royal Navy from the dreadnought era through World War II, from Gallipoli and Jutland to Taranto and Normandy. With his characteristic diligence, keen insight and superb literary grace, Christopher McKee brings to pulsating life a maritime society of working-class men that has now disappeared. He honors these British naval ratings and demonstrates that the Royal Navy was truly blessed to have such steady hearts of oak beating below decks in its last days of imperial majesty. His glowing and humane achievement will be deeply appreciated.
— Kenneth J. Hagan, author of This People's Navy: The Making of American Sea Power

Peter Karsten

This beautifully written and engaging reconstruction of the 'inner worlds' of British naval ratings in the first half of the twentieth century will delight and entertain. A tour de force!
— Peter Karsten, author of The Naval Aristocracy

Andrew Lambert

It is not ships but men that make a navy, observed one great British admiral. In Sober Men and True, Christopher McKee brings to life the men who made the Royal Navy such a success. Their success was built on professionalism, courage, commitment and loyalty, human qualities that can best be understood through McKee's brilliant analysis.
— Andrew Lambert, author of War at Sea in the Age of Sail

Michael Palmer

McKee's elegantly written history of travel and tradition, rum and religion, skylarking and sex, and combat and comradeship, provides the reader with multi-dimensional and iconoclastic portraits of British seamen during the dreadnought era.
— Michael Palmer, author of Stoddert's War: Naval Operations During the Quasi-War With France, 1798-1801

N.A.M. Rodger

A vivid recreation of lower-deck life, full of psychological insights. We have had so little real social history of the 20th-century Royal Navy, that this will open up completely new vistas.
— N.A.M. Rodger, author of The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy

Editorial Reviews

McKee's elegantly written history of travel and tradition, rum and religion, skylarking and sex, and combat and comradeship, provides the reader with multi-dimensional and iconoclastic portraits of British seamen during the dreadnought era.

Michael Palmer

A rich and valuable account of the way sailors lived and worked and the kind of people they were.

London Review of Books - Ian Jack

There is much more to this book than initially meets the eye...It is the only real attempt I have read to look into sailors' lives and to bring out their backgrounds, their true feelings, their thoughts on their officers, teamwork, war fighting, discipline, drink, the run ashore, and many other aspects that can only be fully understood if you are part of the lower deck. And it makes fascinating reading—all the more so because, as the book progresses, the theme is absolutely clear—sailors' lives, their thoughts, feelings and aspirations are very much the same now as they were then...Sober Men and True is full of gems...[It is] a thoroughly entertaining read [and] has serious lessons for us all that are always worth revisiting.

Naval Review - Martin Ewence

It is not ships but men that make a navy, observed one great British admiral. In Sober Men and True, Christopher McKee brings to life the men who made the Royal Navy such a success. Their success was built on professionalism, courage, commitment and loyalty, human qualities that can best be understood through McKee's brilliant analysis.

Andrew Lambert

Sober Men and True recounts the lives of the enlisted men who served in Britain's Royal Navy from the dreadnought era through World War II, from Gallipoli and Jutland to Taranto and Normandy. With his characteristic diligence, keen insight and superb literary grace, Christopher McKee brings to pulsating life a maritime society of working-class men that has now disappeared. He honors these British naval ratings and demonstrates that the Royal Navy was truly blessed to have such steady hearts of oak beating below decks in its last days of imperial majesty. His glowing and humane achievement will be deeply appreciated.

Kenneth J. Hagan

A vivid recreation of lower-deck life, full of psychological insights. We have had so little real social history of the 20th-century Royal Navy, that this will open up completely new vistas.

N.A.M. Rodger

An evocative portrait of a unique and now vanished society. McKee has brought this world to life in an insightful and fascinating manner.

Ronald Spector

This beautifully written and engaging reconstruction of the 'inner worlds' of British naval ratings in the first half of the twentieth century will delight and entertain. A tour de force!

Peter Karsten

There is much to lure even the novice in naval history. The voices for one. They spill from diaries, letters, memoirs, questionnaires, and an archive of taped interviews in London's Imperial War Museum. Christopher McKee uses each to bring the "lower deck" alive. The seaman talk of everything, from what they ate and wore and gambled to the pleasures of shore leave, the panic of wartime, the plague of officers.

Chronicle of Higher Education - Nina C. Ayoub

There is much more to this book than initially meets the eye...It is the only real attempt I have read to look into sailors' lives and to bring out their backgrounds, their true feelings, their thoughts on their officers, teamwork, war fighting, discipline, drink, the run ashore, and many other aspects that can only be fully understood if you are part of the lower deck. And it makes fascinating reading—all the more so because, as the book progresses, the theme is absolutely clear—sailors' lives, their thoughts, feelings and aspirations are very much the same now as they were then...Sober Men and True is full of gems...[It is] a thoroughly entertaining read [and] has serious lessons for us all that are always worth revisiting.
— Martin Ewence

Naval Review

A rich and valuable account of the way sailors lived and worked and the kind of people they were.
— Ian Jack

London Review of Books

There is much to lure even the novice in naval history. The voices for one. They spill from diaries, letters, memoirs, questionnaires, and an archive of taped interviews in London's Imperial War Museum. Christopher McKee uses each to bring the "lower deck" alive. The seaman talk of everything, from what they ate and wore and gambled to the pleasures of shore leave, the panic of wartime, the plague of officers.
— Nina C. Ayoub

Chronicle of Higher Education

The image of the Royal Navy man as swaggering, reckless, and overly indulgent regarding alcohol and sex is embedded in the minds of the general public as a virtual truth. By quoting the lyrics of H.M.S. Pinafore in his title, however, McKee (A Gentlemanly and Honorable Profession) signals the reality check to come. Drawing from the first-person accounts (e.g., letters, memoirs, and interviews), McKee explores the everyday world of the sailors, or "ratings," who toiled below deck in the first half of the 1900s. These were not officers and probably never would be; they joined largely to escape the poverty and boredom of working-class existence. McKee's cumulative portrait shows the danger, boredom (and ways of combating it), camaraderie, discipline, diet, and the many other mundane details of a sailor's life that are rarely encountered in the romantic renderings of fiction. Vivid and full of personality, this portrait of life below decks during the first half of the last century is very readable and is recommended for both public and academic libraries. Michael F. Russo, Louisiana State Univ. Libs., Baton Rouge Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

A meticulously researched look at the lives of sailors serving in the British Royal Navy during the first half of the 20th century. McKee (History/Grinnell Coll.), who profiled US Navy officers in A Gentlemanly and Honorable Profession (not reviewed), here paints a portrait that contravenes commonly held stereotypes about enlisted sailors. Such stereotypes, he argues, are generally drawn from either formal military histories written by officers and academics or from the visions of novelists and filmmakers. These sources often portray sailors as hard-drinking sexual deviants—a cliché, McKee asserts, that too easily dismisses the intense pressure these men endured during their cruises. Rather than rely on traditional military histories, he makes use of the diaries, letters, memoirs, questionnaires, and taped recollections of the former sailors themselves. These documents reveal a decidedly monotonous and often dangerous shipboard existence. Interweaving conventional history and detailed enumeration of naval regulations into the sailors' own anecdotes, McKee captures the tension endemic on ships where public routine governed every moment of the day. Such an endless cycle of bland rations, lack of privacy, severe discipline, and hard physical labor inspired much of the portside drinking and sexual enthusiasm so often glamorized by novelists. While he does not deny the common existence of such behavior, McKee finds that it obscures the finer feelings that motivated sailors to live under such discipline: a sense of camaraderie, spirit of adventure, and love of country. These are the qualities, he suggests, that made British seamen essential to Allied efforts in both world wars; a truer portraitshould supplant the popular image of the roistering sailor. Particularly appealing to those concerned with naval history, but written in vivid prose that will sustain the interest of more general readers as well

Kirkus Reviews