The Official Rag: Jack, Pusser and the Printed Navy
Every large organisation has its own way of telling its story. The Royal Navy was no different. During the 1970s, that story arrived regularly in the form of Navy News, the Service newspaper that reported deployments, ceremonies, promotions and the many official activities of the Fleet.
To someone outside the Service, it looked very much like any other newspaper. To those serving aboard ships, it occupied a rather different place.
Among many sailors, Navy News was regarded with a mixture of interest, amusement and healthy scepticism. It was not considered an independent newspaper in the way a civilian publication might be understood. It was seen as part of Pusser: the official voice of the Royal Navy and an expression of how the Service wished to present itself.
This did not mean that sailors ignored it. Quite the opposite. It was widely read, discussed and passed around. A copy might appear aboard ship, and families ashore often followed it closely as well. In fact, many relatives probably knew more about what the Fleet was doing than the sailors themselves, simply because official publications arrived at home regularly.
There was always a certain amusement in comparing the printed version of naval life with the reality experienced on board.
Navy News naturally concentrated on deployments, ceremonies, achievements and the successful completion of exercises. It recorded the events that the Royal Navy wished the wider public to see. That was its purpose.
The lower deck, however, remembered different things.
Sailors had their own priorities. A successful exercise might be remembered less for the official achievement and more for the unexpected problem afterwards. A port visit might be remembered less for the civic reception and more for the run ashore. A deployment might be remembered less for the official report and more for the small incidents that never appeared in print.
That difference was not unusual. Every organisation has an official account and a personal one. Both can be accurate because they are describing different experiences.
One of the most popular features of Navy News among sailors was not a report from a deployment or an official announcement, but the cartoon character "Jack". Like Andy Capp in civilian newspapers, Jack provided a humorous view of naval life and was immediately recognisable to those serving.
Perhaps that was because humour often succeeded where official descriptions did not. Sailors recognised their own experiences more readily in a joke than in a formal article.
The lower deck was perfectly capable of appreciating the effort made by Navy News, even while treating it with a degree of affectionate suspicion. It was, after all, Pusser's newspaper. Everyone knew that.
That did not make it worthless. It simply meant that sailors read it in their own way.
The distinction matters because the Royal Navy of the 1970s existed in two worlds at once. There was the Navy presented to the public: professional, capable and successful. There was also the Navy experienced daily by those serving in it: a world of maintenance, watches, missed trains, messdeck humour and endless practical problems.
Both were real.
The official Navy recorded what it had achieved. The sailors remembered how it had felt to achieve it.
Between the two existed the gap where much of naval culture lived. It was found in the jokes, the rumours, the stories and the shared understanding that developed among those who lived and worked together at sea.
Navy News told the Royal Navy's story to the outside world. The lower deck told its own stories amongst itself.
Both versions formed part of the history.
RN-E-132: When the Missile Stayed Behind
Primary source: RN-006
RN-E-131
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