All at Sea

One man’s voyage through life


It’s the late 1960s – a decade of Mods and Rockers; Beats and Hippies and full of peace and love. Aged seventeen, John Cooke ventures out on the roads, hitch-hiking around the UK. On the South Coast, he gets caught up with the romance of the sea and foregoes his freedom when he signs away more than nine years of his life by joining the Royal Navy. It is only after signing on the dotted line that he realises he’s made a monumental mistake; and there is no legitimate way out.


John recounts his adventures as an adolescent who sails to the Far East; visiting Cape Town, Singapore, Sydney and Perth along the way. His voyage through the tempestuous sea of life was interspersed with time spent in Military Corrective Training Centres as well as in the Royal Navy Detention Quarters.


But this epic journey is only the beginning for John on his road to discovery...