Mister Roberts is a 1946 novel by Thomas Heggen, based on his experiences in the South West Pacific theatre during World War II.

Lieutenant (junior grade) Roberts defends his crew against the petty tyranny of the ship's commanding officer, while submitting transfer requests on a daily basis.

Nearly all action takes place on a US Navy auxiliary cargo ship, the USS Reluctant, which sails, as written in the 1948 play adapted from the novel, "from Apathy to Tedium, with occasional side trips to Monotony and Ennui."

To his distress, he was assigned first to a tanker in the Atlantic and then to the USS Reluctant, AK-601, a general cargo freighter ferrying supplies to backwater Pacific bases.

One chapter shows what can happen when a crew that hasn't had a liberty in more than a year is anchored off an island that has a naval hospital with nurses and no shades on their windows.

Yet another recounts what happens when the Reluctant is sent with a load of cargo to the port of Elysium and Captain Morton grants liberty to half the crew.

[citation needed] Unlike the character in the book, he was not killed in action, but continued as a career Naval officer until retirement, and lived until early 1998.

[10] In December 2011, honoring the 65th anniversary of the book's publication, James C. Roberts, cousin of the friend for whom Heggen named his leading man, wrote a long article for the Navy Times about the background, history and significance of the novel.