"In peacetime Lieutenant Commander Clinton T. Nash had been in charge of a Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Beane office in the Midwest.

Lieutenant JG Ross Pendleton, an egotistic radio producer, suggests that Burroughs could visit the natives on adjacent Gug-Gug island.

"[5] Despite his great ability, his boring personality prevents his getting any favorable publicity, and he has been ridiculed by war correspondent Gordon Ripwell of the Chicago Gazette, who boasts of a readership of two and one half million.

The Admiral becomes a popular figure, with the nickname of "Bow Wow Boatwright," assuring the Navy the benefit of his genius for the rest of the war.

"[6] Griffin's only ambition is to be the Navy's "boudoir liaison"[7] in Sydney, Australia, where (he has been told) most of the men are away on military service, leaving many lonely women.

When he and his roommate Ensign Siegel poke through ships' rosters looking for news of old friends, they encounter the name of Farragut Jones, Boatswain's Mate Second Class on the APA USS Ankletooth.

Lieutenant (jg) Pendleton, though married, is a womanizer with a penchant for the Navy nurses on Tulura, driving them off to remote beaches at night for seduction.

Enraged by the violation of Navy regulations (and the social impropriety), Nash is nonetheless persuaded by Siegel to avoid disciplinary action against Garrett, warning of adverse stories written by correspondents on Tulura (mainly Gordon Ripwell) sympathetic to the enlisted man.

Boatswain's Mate Second Class Farragut Jones arrives on Tulura en route to the United States, for a tour from New York to Washington to Hollywood.

Chaperoned by Lieutenant Noah Pratt, Jones has a successful tour of the United States, and stays on in Hollywood as a technical adviser for Navy movies.

Led secretly by Yeoman Garrett, distributing outraged missives written using Public Relations mimeograph equipment, the enlisted men protest by cancelling their war bond allotments.

When Naval Intelligence investigates and the correspondents begin writing stories sympathetic to the enlisted men, Commander Nash fears adverse consequences for Public Relations Headquarters.

The effort is a complete disaster by mid-afternoon of the first day when six of the inexperienced officers become casualties to work injuries, including the exec, who falls head first into a wheelbarrow of wet cement.

Debbi Aldrich, the "aloof, tantalizing and beautiful"[12] correspondent for the women's magazine Madame, hits Tulura, where she creates a major upheaval.

Using her wiles on Admiral Boatwright's assistant, Debbi arranges assignment to a warship going into combat, the heavy cruiser USS Seattle, escorted by Tyson, who has yearned for sea duty.

The crew of the Seattle, noting the half-inch of bra, asks Debbi for a pair of her lacy black panties to fly as a pennant during the bombardment of the Japanese-held island of Nanto Shima.

Lieutenant Woodrow Wilson Shoemaker, a lean, pale "thinking man with a sense of history"[13] and formerly an editorial writer, is in charge of the Historical Section of the Public Relations branch.

Lieutenant (jg) Pendleton sees it as a quick opportunity to return to Radio City Music Hall to produce a new soap opera about a "hotpants"[14] Navy nurse suspiciously similar to Ensign Alice Thomas.

Ensign Siegel bets him a month's liquor rations that in a cross section of views on Tulura, Shoemaker's would be the only apocalyptic concerns.

Instead of writing out his resignation as an editorial writer, however, a chastened Shoemaker decides to sleep all day, unaware that Siegel has been affected, helping him to make a crucial decision about his own post-war life.

Ensign Tyson wanders the club with his tennis racket swatting higher-ranked officers on the buttocks while yelling, "Mind your rudder!"

'"[16]Don't Go Near the Water was the best-selling work of fiction of 1956 in the United States, finishing ahead of The Last Hurrah, Peyton Place, and Andersonville, the other three novels to reach "Number One" on The New York Times Best Seller list for that year.

In 1957, the book was adapted into film by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as Don't Go Near the Water, starring Glenn Ford, Gia Scala, Earl Holliman, Anne Francis, Keenan Wynn, Russ Tamblyn and Eva Gabor.