Down The Hatch

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We Joined The Navy and We Saw The Sea have firmly established John Winton as one of our leading humorists. His new novel plunges us into the mysterious and often hilarious life of submariners. When H.M.S. Seahorse, the Navy's newest, fastest and most expensive submarine left the builders' yard there were naturally some fierce arguments inside the Submarine Service about who was to be her first captain and consternation when a newcomer was appointed. Described by Admiral Submarines as 'some passed-over bum whom nobody's ever heard of,' he was Lieutenant Commander Robert Bollinger Badger, D.S.C., R.N., otherwise known as The Artful Bodger. But The Bodger is undismayed. With the most variegated ship's company that ever put to sea he sets to work to give Seahorse a worthy reputation - all the way from the famous merchant city of Oozemouth, where they show the flag until they drop, to the Equator, where they carry out an original series of geophysical experiments. During the international fleet exercise "Lucky Alphonse," they grapple with the frigate captain Black Sebastian, the renegade submariner who has become the arch-fiend of anti-submarine tactics, and visit the South American republic of SanGuana d'Annuncion where The Bodger and Gotobed make motor-racing history. "This country," said the Commander-in- Chief, Rockall and Malin Approaches, after exercise "Lucky Alphonse," "is no better equipped to defeat a determined submarine attack than it is to beat off a swarm of locusts." When one of the submarines is H.M.S. Seahorse, the Admiral has a point.