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We Saw the Sea
This highly acclaimed and popular series of humourous books of naval life has now been reprinted in hardback. Readers can follow the adventures of the Artful Bodger.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1960
28 people want to read
About the author
John Winton
57 books12 followersA former officer in the Royal Navy, John Pratt was the author of a variety of fiction and non-fiction works published under the pen name John Winton. Pratt also served for 14 years as an obituarist for The Daily Telegraph.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 16, 2021
A follow-up to "We Joined The Navy". This book follows Mike, and the Bodger, on their first cruise. Quite as funny as the first book, so if you didn't enjoy that one, you won't enjoy this. If you did enjoy it - enjoy! I've seen it available as an e-book, as well.
December 20, 2018
I'm aware that in saying I liked this, I'm risking the wrath of many readers, given that this is an account of life in the RN in the 1950s that would, I imagine, simply not find a publisher today. If your political correctness sympathies are well developed, then this is not for you, unless you wish to revel in the pleasure of indignation, or you have an interest in the changing attitudes of the sexes towards each other.
And yet, for me it was more than 'ok'.
My father was in the Navy, and my sister, who sent me the copy of 'We Saw the Sea' that I've just read, said he loved John Winton. She also wrote to me that she was 'shocked, shocked!' It would perhaps, however, be too easy to see this unabashed record of life in the Navy (although, presumably, at least a little fictionalised) as displaying red-blooded young, and not-so-young, men as drinking too much, womanising too much, creating incidents in foreign ports, and regarding Johnny Foreigner as funny. Certainly, some of the attitudes to women that are voiced by men in their cups or in the company of other men are likely to offend.
On the other hand, quite often the youngsters will know when they've had enough to drink and go back to their ship without incident, or a Lt Commander will deal very sensitively and knowingly with a younger officer who is less able than others to manage his journal. In particular, it is clear 'The Bodger' is, as well as a hard drinker, a good officer. He conducts Damage Control Incident exercises conscientiously and is forthright as well as pragmatic in trying to improve living conditions on board HMS Carousel.His devil-may-care manner is just that: when push comes to shove, he will be the one others turn to. Remarkably, in spite of the high jinks of the officers and the ratings, the Carousel, having once been deemed a hopeless ship, enjoys a distinguished 2 year commission in the Far East, largely because they manage to pull off a terrific diplomatic coup in 'Dhon Phon' (though it was largely owing to an inability of the local interpreter to understand what the Carousel's Captain was saying).
It is this kind of gung-ho good fortune, however, that left me wondering, like the Germans at the end of that 'Fawlty Towers' episode, 'How did they ever win?' I don't imagine my father ever did anything that would have endangered the safety of his family, his ship, the Navy or the realm, and I have no idea what it must be like to be away from your family for up to two years as he was during the Korean War and a Second World War on Atlantic, Arctic and Mediterranean convoys. I was 18 months old when he and I first set eyes on each other, an occasion I do not remember. I do, however, recall my mother relating a story about a young Army officer in Singapore (which is pretty much the first place I remember) who made an interesting confession to her while he was on R and R after a stint in Malaya fighting communist insurgents. He had been lauded for wounding and capturing an important communist leader. In his cups, he said it had been pure luck: he had been hoping it was a wild pig for his platoon's dinner. Such is the stuff of history.
I think my mother laughed a lot because the truth as she knew it was often so very much stranger than fiction, and she was so relieved that she and my father were still alive and had a family and that there was the prospect of peace. No wonder they had the ability to party, like the Carousel's mess dinner before setting sail for home, till kingdom come.
I acknowledge that this is a novel that, for a reader today, may well raise eyebrows and hackles. However, I can imagine my father rather ruefully sighing with The Bodger at the end of the novel when The Bodger says: 'I've had a good run. I would do it again if I had the chance. But the Navy's changed radically since I joined. There's probably a future in it for the people joining it now, but for those of us who knew it years ago it's changed out of all recognition. We haven't got enough fanatics in the Navy now. People who don't give a damn about brass hats or pensions or married quarters or anything else, but who just do it for the sheer love of it. Nowadays they're getting people who've chosen the Navy when they might have chosen banking or stockbroking or local government, whatever that may be.'
Perhaps the day of the amateur, apparently irresponsible but in fact absolutely serious, is over.
And yet, for me it was more than 'ok'.
My father was in the Navy, and my sister, who sent me the copy of 'We Saw the Sea' that I've just read, said he loved John Winton. She also wrote to me that she was 'shocked, shocked!' It would perhaps, however, be too easy to see this unabashed record of life in the Navy (although, presumably, at least a little fictionalised) as displaying red-blooded young, and not-so-young, men as drinking too much, womanising too much, creating incidents in foreign ports, and regarding Johnny Foreigner as funny. Certainly, some of the attitudes to women that are voiced by men in their cups or in the company of other men are likely to offend.
On the other hand, quite often the youngsters will know when they've had enough to drink and go back to their ship without incident, or a Lt Commander will deal very sensitively and knowingly with a younger officer who is less able than others to manage his journal. In particular, it is clear 'The Bodger' is, as well as a hard drinker, a good officer. He conducts Damage Control Incident exercises conscientiously and is forthright as well as pragmatic in trying to improve living conditions on board HMS Carousel.His devil-may-care manner is just that: when push comes to shove, he will be the one others turn to. Remarkably, in spite of the high jinks of the officers and the ratings, the Carousel, having once been deemed a hopeless ship, enjoys a distinguished 2 year commission in the Far East, largely because they manage to pull off a terrific diplomatic coup in 'Dhon Phon' (though it was largely owing to an inability of the local interpreter to understand what the Carousel's Captain was saying).
It is this kind of gung-ho good fortune, however, that left me wondering, like the Germans at the end of that 'Fawlty Towers' episode, 'How did they ever win?' I don't imagine my father ever did anything that would have endangered the safety of his family, his ship, the Navy or the realm, and I have no idea what it must be like to be away from your family for up to two years as he was during the Korean War and a Second World War on Atlantic, Arctic and Mediterranean convoys. I was 18 months old when he and I first set eyes on each other, an occasion I do not remember. I do, however, recall my mother relating a story about a young Army officer in Singapore (which is pretty much the first place I remember) who made an interesting confession to her while he was on R and R after a stint in Malaya fighting communist insurgents. He had been lauded for wounding and capturing an important communist leader. In his cups, he said it had been pure luck: he had been hoping it was a wild pig for his platoon's dinner. Such is the stuff of history.
I think my mother laughed a lot because the truth as she knew it was often so very much stranger than fiction, and she was so relieved that she and my father were still alive and had a family and that there was the prospect of peace. No wonder they had the ability to party, like the Carousel's mess dinner before setting sail for home, till kingdom come.
I acknowledge that this is a novel that, for a reader today, may well raise eyebrows and hackles. However, I can imagine my father rather ruefully sighing with The Bodger at the end of the novel when The Bodger says: 'I've had a good run. I would do it again if I had the chance. But the Navy's changed radically since I joined. There's probably a future in it for the people joining it now, but for those of us who knew it years ago it's changed out of all recognition. We haven't got enough fanatics in the Navy now. People who don't give a damn about brass hats or pensions or married quarters or anything else, but who just do it for the sheer love of it. Nowadays they're getting people who've chosen the Navy when they might have chosen banking or stockbroking or local government, whatever that may be.'
Perhaps the day of the amateur, apparently irresponsible but in fact absolutely serious, is over.
February 23, 2024
Winton seemed to be suffering from depression when he wrote this. It has a general air of melancholy, and his characters are all aging remarkably quickly. At the end, his hero the Artful Bodger even says he’s retiring from the Navy.
Fortunately, Winton recovered in time for his next book, Down The Hatch, in which the Bodger is still in the Navy after all, he’s been given command of a splendid new submarine (much to his surprise), the old characters have all been discarded in favour of a new bunch, and it’s the happiest book of the series.
Fortunately, Winton recovered in time for his next book, Down The Hatch, in which the Bodger is still in the Navy after all, he’s been given command of a splendid new submarine (much to his surprise), the old characters have all been discarded in favour of a new bunch, and it’s the happiest book of the series.
December 10, 2014
Royal Navy. 1950s. The men are "chaps" and the women are either wives or "totties".
Posted to Hong Kong. They travel out on a liner and meet a card cheat. They test some new kind of weapon. They go to Japan. They go to a Japanese brothel.
That's it—up to about page 150—I lost interest after that. It's not that the book is badly written, it's certainly not, it's just that I put it aside for a couple of days and when I picked it up again, I realised I didn't really care and had better things to do.
Posted to Hong Kong. They travel out on a liner and meet a card cheat. They test some new kind of weapon. They go to Japan. They go to a Japanese brothel.
That's it—up to about page 150—I lost interest after that. It's not that the book is badly written, it's certainly not, it's just that I put it aside for a couple of days and when I picked it up again, I realised I didn't really care and had better things to do.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews