Sober Men and True: Sailor Lives in the Royal Navy, 1900-1945
300Sober Men and True: Sailor Lives in the Royal Navy, 1900-1945
300Hardcover
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Overview
Thanks to Christopher McKee's groundbreaking work, it is now possible to hear from sailors themselvesin 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 McKee has scoured sailors' unpublished diaries, letters, memoirs, and oral interviews to uncover the lives and secret thoughts of British men of the lower deck.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 |
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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
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.
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
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
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
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
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