Why did Mr Roberts love this crew?

Yes I was. I served on the USS Caine a DMS under Lt. Commander Phillip Queeq. BTW I ate the strawberries!

Obviously, the person who wrote the first post in this thread ("Never been in the Navy have ya? ") hasn't been in the Navy, or at least had no routine contact with enlisted personnel aboard ship on deployment for any significant amount of time. While not encompassing every aspect of Navy life, and of necessity giving way to a certain degree of exaggeration, this still remains the most realistic movie about what it was actually like to be on a Navy vessel as a member of the crew, in peace or war, that has ever been made. There are far too many Navy veterans who have enjoyed this for that very reason to dispute the point. The notion of a Navy crew that are a bunch of saluting machines or who conform to other unrealistic stereotypes such as the touchy-feely characters you might see on some incarnation of "Star Trek" is pure fantasy. If such manifestations of pure imagination are what you seek you will indeed be disappointed by MISTER ROBERTS.

Moreover, the reviewer seems to have missed the central plot point that the ship had a won an award for moving more cargo than any other vessel in the larger command to which it belonged. Obviously, this did not occur because the crew was slacking. Rather, they made a greater effort in their backbreaking, essentially physical (and yes, terribly boring) jobs than any other similarly situated ship, and did so even though they were not shown any appreciation by their effective lord and master, the captain, but were instead meted out an overwhelming series of otherwise minor punishments for trivial offenses whose main characteristic was nothing more than that they hurt his overly sensitive feelings. Rather than being a bunch of whiners, and as any experienced seagoing officer or senior petty officer should know, that the commanding officer did not have more serious disciplinary cases than he did is something to be wondered at.

Indeed, being trapped aboard ship for over a year without a chance to go ashore for the kind of recreation any American college student (at virtually any time in history) might enjoy any (or even every) night of the week, it is amazing that they didn't wreak more havoc than they did when they finally got liberty. The reviewer evidently does not know his history in this regard, or perhaps in his own career was he never belonged to an ordinary college fraternity. The kinds of things that went on during the abortive Elysium port visit were by no means unheard of during the war; the only thing that is untoward about them in this movie is the dramatic license taken in lumping them all together in a single night in relation to single ship. And certainly, similarly outrageous though nowhere-as-well-earned stunts have been pulled by college students of all generations -- boys of the same age range and with the same amount of testosterone, although probably of rather less maturity, than the sailors in the movie.

The fellow who couldn't find his battle station is a classic that should be familiar to nearly everyone who ever went to sea on a naval ship. That one of these guys might have a mind that works rather differently than that of a rocket scientist and, having not been at battle stations since the previous YEAR (pay close attention to the dialog) as might not be unheard of on a ship of this type, it would be remarkable if he were were in fact the only one who couldn't find his battle station. (I still remember the order that went out around 1980 or so in the Atlantic Fleet Submarine Force that submarine tenders, another type of non-combatant support ship, get under way at least once every three months, lest they forget how -- until then they has been handling that issue by temporarily detaching their officers periodically to combatant ships so they would not forget everything they were supposed to know about ship-handling.)

In sum, it gets old reading inaccurate and pontifical commentary about Navy movies written by people who have no way of knowing what they are talking about because they never bothered to get first-hand knowledge by actually making the personal sacrifices involved in joining the service and going to sea. Nevertheless, they now pretend to pronounce authoritatively on the subject, sitting before their keyboards in a Clancyesque fugue spewing the most imaginative fiction smugly presented as fact. It is regrettable that, having made the personal decision to avoid Naval service in preference to an easier and more comfortable lifestyle, they do not keep their essentially uninformed opinions about such matters to themselves.

I was on two different ships and saw many of the smae kind of characters as in this movie. I started out as a deck seaman, doing the sam echippignsanding and painting the men had to do and it is mind numbingly tedious, boring and essentially pointless busy work. Even the most well adjusted guy would inevitably snap, especially after being sutck on the ship for one year without any liberty. The actions the men take on liberty is actually tame compared to some of the stuff I saw and partook in when I was in the Middle East. Most officers tend to have some sympathy for the men undder them, whether it's pity or some kind of paternal protectiveness and an overbearing , basically evil captain abusing his crew to the point of exhaustion would make any sane, rational person upset. This , coupled with the fact that the officers were also stuck on board helped to establish a kind of Stockholm Syndrome amongst the crew. MOst of the crew wer efresh out of high school , if they even fnished high school and were still basically adolescents. The pranks, fights and all the other shenanigans were a way for the guys to blow off steam, a much needed outlet for guys who had no idea when the next time they would see liberty would be. While this movie has it's cornier moments, it is still one of the best examples of what goes in during wartime. Boredom can be a killer, believe me . MASH also used to show guys doing anyhting to shake the doldrums when they were in the midst of a lull.

I spent four years as a Cadet before shipping in the U.S. Merchant Fleet, and the bond I developed with my classmates on the school's training ship, despite their bad behavior (at times), whining, womanizing and sporadic irritating habits in the living spaces was something I have never experience before or since. We became family.

His love for his men is no different.

Roberts loved his crew because it's just the kind of guy he was. It's that simple. He'd have loved any crew he had. I think his "love" of the crew was increased by his sympathy for them, as well as the obvious esteem and affection they openly showed him in return. He knew the captain was being an unfair, dictatorial little ass, but couldn't do anything about it.

Here's to the health of Cardinal Puff.