Book recommendations?

[Beniamin]

Are there any good books written by crewmen about their experience in the navy?

[yperman]

Taffrail Dorling's books maybe? He was an officer and not a rating  but he did have   first hand experience. They are written in an Edwardian style and I suspect are partly fiction or are at least "sanitised". I don't think he mentions the living conditions of the ratings and marines or their experience of action.

[aim]

There are lots of little bits in:

Arthur, Max. 1996. The True Glory. The Royal Navy: 1914-1939. Hodder & Stoughton, xii + 292pp.

Hope this helps,

aim

[seaJane]

There are relevant chapters in biographies and autobiographies of Henry Allingham and Claude Choules - nothing out of the ordinary stylewise, but of note for their being the longest-lived GW naval veterans.

I don't know whether Max Arthur's collection Lost Voices of the Royal Navy duplicates the title mentioned above, or not.

 This previous thread may also be of interest: 

 

 

[RNCVR]

Theis book is very very good & covers a long time span, 1870-1982.  Lots of interesting information, a lot of it relating to the lower deck of the RN. 

I purchased my copy at the  RN Museum when we visited there back in 2006.

[RNCVR]

 

Another very good book concerning the lower deck -

 

Synopsis:

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 McKee has scoured sailors' unpublished diaries, letters, memoirs, and oral interviews to uncover the lives and secret thoughts of British men of the lower deck.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.

[seaJane]

47 minutes ago, RNCVR said:

Another very good book concerning the lower deck -

 

That does look very interesting! Who painted the cover portrait?

[RNCVR]

I dont know @seaJane I no longer have the book Sober Men & True as I have sold off virtually all of my library.

[seaJane]

5 hours ago, RNCVR said:

sold off virtually all of my library

Braver than I am!

Google Lens has assisted: it is by Eric Kennington, of Leading Seaman Walker of HMS Eclipse, for which   https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Eclipse_(H08) (am pleased and intrigued to find that one of my.favourite poets, Charles Causley, was a Coder aboard her:  'HMS Eclipse Approaches Freetown'). 

Wrong war, so I stop there.

[Felix C]

Peter Liddle and his The sailor's war, 1914-18

 

 

[wallace2]

"A Stoker's Log" by Henry Vincent gives a well written observation of a Royal Navy Stoker in FWW.

After training he served on the West and South African Station before joining a new build cruiser based in the North Sea. 

[Nigel1898]

The Complete Scrimgeour by Alexander Scrimgeour. Not a rating but a midshipman. This is his diary from Dartmouth to Jutland 1913-1916.

[KizmeRD]

3 hours ago, Nigel1898 said:

The Complete Scrimgeour by Alexander Scrimgeour. Not a rating but a midshipman. This is his diary from Dartmouth to Jutland 1913-1916.

Certainly a detailed and eloquent account of naval life from the perspective of a highly opinionated yet very junior officer. It’s apparent enough from reading the diary entries that he must have been somewhat frustrated and unhappy with his lot in life, and was also a tad homesick and lovelorn at the time of writing.
The book is both informative and colourful - its frequently quite critical of the navy in general, and his fellow officers (sometimes humorously so) and got edited for publishing, after his untimely death, by his grieving Father. 
MB

Edited 23 October , 2023 by KizmeRD

[MikeyH]

Citizen Sailors by Glyn Prysor, is an excellent book on the navy in the second war.

Mike.

[Felix C]

Commission in Chinese Waters. Life on the Lower Deck by Peter Jackson.

Immediate post war cruise in one of the Flower sloops. 

Interesting.