From Library Journal
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
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Review
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 (20020607)
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 (20030102)
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 (20030201)
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, 1798-1801A 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 NavyAn evocative portrait of a unique and now vanished society. McKee has brought this world to life in an insightful and fascinating manner.
--Ronald Spector, author of
At War at Sea: Sailors and Naval Combat in the Twentieth Century
McKee's cumulative portrait shows the danger, boredom (and ways of combating it), camaraderie, discipline, diet, and 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.
--Michael F. Russo (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...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...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...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 )
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 )
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 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 )
