Sea Patrol

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Sea Patrol is an Australian television series that aired between 2007 and 2011. It focused on the crew of the HMAS Hammersley. The first three seasons had their own Jigsaw Puzzle Plot that is slowly revealed over the course of the season, though each episode was more focused on giving one or two crew members their day in the limelight. The fourth season ditched the Jigsaw Puzzle Plot and just focused on the characters. The fifth season went back to the Jigsaw Puzzle Plot of the first three seasons.

The series has been aired in many countries. In the USA it can be found advertised on Amazon Prime though unfortunately unavailable for watching at the present time (Amazon does change-ups in its video line-up like that).

Tropes used in Sea Patrol include:
  • Acceptable Feminine Goals: Played with Bomber and Bird who are the chefs of the ship and the assigned medics...who never let the men push them around and are handy with the guns. Averted with Kate and Nav who can both navigate the ship and lead the men who respect and are loyal to them.
  • Accidental Kidnapping: Occasional plot, when it involves the crew it's normally Kate.
  • Action Girl: Kate and Bomber qualify, Nikki rarely sees action but never lets anyone down and Bird can be generously described as too young and inexperienced to be one.
  • All Work vs. All Play: Kate and Mike.
  • Alone with the Psycho: Red Sky.
  • Amateur Sleuth: The crew when they get involved with crimes and the Jigsaw Puzzle Plot.
  • Arson, Murder, and Lifesaving: The crew, especially Mike, do this on occasion
  • Attack! Attack! Attack!: Mike has this problem one in a while. The job gets done but it's clear that the crew rarely agree with him when it happens.
  • Awesome Aussie:
  • Authority Equals Asskicking: Normally Kate but when Mike is given the rare chance he proves that his reputation isn't just talk and Nikki isn't a pushover.
  • Badass Crew
  • Band of Siblings
  • Betty and Veronica: Kate and Dr Ursula Morrell/Mike and Rick Gallagher/Jim Roth and Mike/ Mike and Dutchy (own choice for which fit)
  • Big Bad:
    • Season 1: Rick Gallagher
    • Season 2: Ray Walsman
    • Season 3: Campbell Fulton,
  • Big Eater: Charge mostly though he occasionally fights 2Dads for the muffins.
  • The Big Guy: Buffer, Dutchy replaces him in season 4.
  • Bilingual Bonus: In one episode the crew were attending a event at an French embassy and when Spider asked for a beer the French waiter pretended not to know English and said, "I'm proud of my bum when I see your face". Bomber came to his rescue and told the guy "Don't mess with me, w***!", and got his beer and one for herself. She then told Spider that she could just speak high-school French.
  • Boarding Party: Since they enforcing Australian law this happens once an episode. Rarely does it go smoothly...
  • Boisterous Bruiser: Buffer
  • Brains and Brawn: On the outside the officers and NCO but the officers can hold their own in a fight and many of the NCO (particularly ET, Charge, Swaine and 2Dads) clearly could out do them in their fields.
  • Brainy Brunette: Nikki
  • Camp Cook: RO when Bomber is away. Anything she has done wrong is instantly forgiven.
  • The Chains of Commanding: Mike and Kate suffer from this when something goes wrong and there's time think about it occasionally.
  • Chickification: Averted. While the women do have moments of weakness it's justified and usually they recuse themselves or hold off till help comes.
  • Command Roster:
  • Cool Boat: 'HMS Hammersley' Some occasional boats that are pirated.
  • Curse: The ship suffers one in the first season when Thor, their mascot, is stolen while they're in port. As a result:
    • There are strange knocking noises in the walls.
    • Had to swallow their pride and leave their mascot in the Kingston's arms even though they've put Thor in pink hotpants and waving it right under their noses.
    • The refrigerator stops working.
    • A boarding mission goes badly.
    • Relationships go though a bad patch. (ET, Buffer and Nikki's most notably).
    • The generator room catches fire.
    • Changes bad eye is affect by the fire.
    • ET gets some bad news.
    • Mike and the Hammersley part in understanding the jigsaw plot hits a hard stumbling block.
  • Curse Escape Clause: Which involves getting back their mascot, stealing the other ship's mascot (of the crew that stole theirs) and Buffer dressing up as Neptune to give a offering to appease the sea.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Name a character, though RO and Buffer are, arguably, the most prominent examples.
  • Death by Childbirth: An Chinese illegal immigrant dies on 'Hammersley' however there were clear reasons for this and the baby survive.
  • Disposable Sex Worker: Poor women looking for a better life are force to be this and are the centre of an episode in the 3 season.
  • Damsel in Distress: Bird
  • Double Standard: Two-Dads arranges to pair off a drunken RO with a cross-dresser without RO knowing about it until he accidentally feels the parts while dancing. Two-dads thinks this is somehow a funny practical joke but if something similar was done to a female it would be sexual harassment.
    • Averted in another episode. RO is Mickeyed on shore leave. This is not funny at all.
  • Dropped a Bridget On Him: Poor RO...2Dads is a naughty boy.
  • The Drunken Sailor: Of course there's shore leave but while Buffer and 2Dads took on two dangerous men and won poor RO 'needs' to stay away from the booze. The poor golf cart...
  • Eagleland Osmosis: Averted in the show. Considerable danger of being played straight behind the Fourth Wall. The characters are in the Royal Australian Navy but they are not only doing duties from time to time which in the US would be done by the Coast Guard (typical of Navies for centuries) but are also acting as if they were primarily a Law Enforcement body. In fact they are part of the Royal Australian Navy Patrol Force, attached to the Maritime Border Command. Look in the Wikipedia under Coast Guard for an explanation and spend a year figuring it out. And take comfort that other countries get bureaucratic headaches.
  • Embarrassing Tattoo: Buffer on a night out decides to get another tattoo and forces Spider to come along and get one himself. Buffer (who's definitely drunk) goes to sleep in the chair while his tattoo is being done. The next day Bomber is tending to the slightly infected tattoo and it becomes clear that it isn't the tattoo Buffer wanted. Bomber corners Spider who admits that he didn't get one then realizes that he messed with Buffer's choice. It turns out that he changed it to a heart with XO in it. And the first person Buffer shows it to is the XO...Spider is very lucky not to be maimed let alone alive when Buffer is finished with him.
  • Evil Poacher: In Under the Radar a foreign boat trespasses on the Australian fisheries looking for shark fin and only shark fin, because of the high price it commands from those who like shark fin soup. But they do not seem to have any intention of harvesting the meat, the leather, or the teeth. They just slice off the fins and drop the shark back in for some other critter to eat.
    • Downplayed: most "FFVs" (Foreign Fishing Vessels) are crewed by people looking for a desperate job, in miserable, unsanitary conditions and must have been doing awful back home to sign on for such a thing.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Most of the nicknames, Chefo is the chef, though he's also the assistant medic, CO is the Commanding Officer, Swaine is the coxswain, etc.
  • Everything's Better with Monkeys: 2Dads thinks so...
  • Father Neptune: Charge qualifies.
  • Friendly Rivalry: With anyone not from Hammersley
  • Green-Eyed Monster: Interestingly, not much of a problem in ET and Nav's relationship (mostly by Nav accepting that he is an incurable flirt and he makes sure she knows she number one). However when Mike or Kate show interest in someone else they are clearly upset and snark at each other, though they keep it mostly out of the crew's way ... well, Kate does.
    • Bomber after two seasons of being the only girl in the ranks finds herself pushed aside when young Bird turns up.
  • Going Down with the Ship: Poor Swaine nearly has this fate after a bad run in with some diamond smugglers.
  • Good with Numbers: Kate and Nikki are qualified navigators. Charge, ET, 2Dads, Swaine and RO would have to be good at maths to do their jobs. Mike is implied to be but there isn't much reason for his to show it.
  • Gunboat Diplomacy: Less often than you might think although Hammersley is a boat and has, well, guns on board. Most of its missions deal with normal crime. International politics does have a part, notably in the second season.
  • Happily Married: Swaine
  • Hero Worshipper: 2Dads has some of this to Dutchy in series 4.
  • Hey, It's That Guy!: It's an Australian show this was always going to come up.
    • Dominic is 2Dads.
    • ET played a doctor for the last two seasons of ER.
    • RO was in the remake of The Tomorrow People.
    • Evan Jones is Kate's boyfriend during season 2, and will make a reappearance in season five.
    • And a lot of the cast played characters on Neighbours.
  • Hot Scientist: Dr Ursula Morrell
  • Idiot Ball: Ship could be renamed this especially in the early seasons
  • Informed Flaw: A few crop up now and then.
  • Interservice Rivalry: A few times when an army man appears or once when the crew found weapons stolen from an army base but there is a problem with the FEDs every now and again, while the crew isn't blameless there are one or two moments when the plot wouldn't have happened if the FEDs had just warned 'Hammersley' something would happening in the area.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: RO, 2Dads, Mike and Dutchy are the most glaring.
  • Known Only By Their Nickname: Besides Mike, and to a lesser extent Kate, the whole cast is almost exclusively refereed to by their nicknames.
    • Also Bird which is her surname.
  • Killed Off for Real: ET, Swaine
  • Love Martyr: While he does love her, and it's not a one way street, some of the things Mike pulls on Kate feel like this though it's subverted by Kate knowing this and not being happy with it and she calls him out when it gets too far.
  • Makes Sense in Context: Some of the nicknames such as 2Dads which is because his surname is a double barrel Kosov-Meyer. Bomber is traditionally given to people with the surname Brown in the navy, sources differ on the origin.
  • Malicious Slander: 2Dads spreads a rumour about Kate and Buffer being in a secret relationship after a (deservedly) harsh dressing down. Mike nearly physically throws him off the boat and Kate and Buffer make him retrieve pearls that a thief had swallowed.
  • Mission Control: NavCom
  • Mistaken for Gay: Ryan
  • Mistaken for Pregnant: Kate. Although to be fair she did have a tummy bug and showed the classical signs of pregnancy so Swaine giving her the pregnancy test (to rule it out) and RO seeing the test and her behaviour makes it understandable that it happened.
  • Nautical Folklore: Wonderful stuff to scare the new guy.
  • Never My Fault: RO suffers from this to some extent. Everyone lets him know when he doing though
  • New Meat/Ensign Newbie: Spider and Bird though Spider found himself coming in for more than Bird because he wasn't a she and pretty. Both are very gullible though, to everyone's delight.
  • Non Sequitur Thud: During the course of her duties, the XO of HMAS Hammersley was surreptitiously dosed with Rohypnol by a fisherman/murderer. After Hammersley saves the day, the Captain came down to her cabin to check on her condition; she didn't wake up when he arrived, and he was greeted with "I don't believe in pre-marital soy sauce!"
  • Not Me This Time: 2Dads increasingly suffers this as the series goes on. He does deserve it sometimes though.
  • Open Secret: ET and Nikki's relationship ends up being this. While everyone is more or less a shipper on deck no one wants them to leave and so they keep quite about it. Mike and Kate are so good that [[it comes as a bit of a surprise when they show that they know about it.
  • Pastimes Prove Personality: Flynn reads The Odyssey, which is about a clever sea captain.
    • RO likes bonsai which is quiet and meticulous.
    • ET keeps a pet fish. Nav later keeps it to remind her of him.
  • Practical Joke: In Heaven Born Captains Spider loses a promotion for stealing a French Flag at a diplomatic party.
    • Well it's kind of fair. Her Britainic Majesty's Navy must have dozens of French flags, shouldn't Her Australian Majesty's Navy keep up? Of course those were acquired under differing circumstances.
  • Put on a Bus: Chefo between seasons 1 and 2, and Nav, Spider and Buffer between season 3 and 4, and Bomber between seasons 4 and 5, tough at least Bomber going away was referenced in the season 4 finale.
    • Justified in that people in the Navy change boats regularly, just in the course of their careers.
  • Quicksand Sucks: 2Dads falls into a pit in Season Four, even briefly falling beneath the surface.
  • Reality Is Unrealistic: Characters leaving the show at the end of most seasons without explanation, which happens on real boats all the time.
  • Real Life Writes the Plot: The characters were only Put on a Bus because the actors didn't want to come back to the show.
  • Real Women Never Wear Dresses: Averted the women are as feminine as they would be and wear dresses off the ship, eye the candy eye men and have realistic conversations between themselves.
  • Screaming Birth: This happens in the penultimate episode of the first season. She give plenty of abuse to the father as well.
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Money: Ray Walsman
  • Sea Mine: In the first season a mine washes up on a beach after a cyclone. While it is unstable, the only real danger comes from a pair of Too Dumb to Live preteen boys who find the mine, don't report it straightaway. One even runs towards it when the bomb disposal unit are about to destroy it to save a tortoise.
  • Sea Stories:
  • Secret Relationship: ET and Nikki Mike and Kate and Bomber and 2Dads in season 4.
  • Sergeant Rock: Buffer and Duchy are the navy version
  • Sex Slave:See above.
  • Sex Tourism: Or sex boat.
  • Taking the Heat: 2Dads in an incident with a baby crocodile.
  • Team Dad: Split between Mike, Charge and Swaine. Mike is the authority figure, Charge the fun caring one and Swaine the sort of big brother.
  • Team Mom: Kate and Bomber. Kate as the authority figure and Bomber as a sister.
  • Terrified of Germs: RO
  • Tomboy and Girly Girl: Bird to the other ladies of Hammerley.
    • Zig-zagged between the other ladies when paired with each other. Bomber despite being the cheif generally comes off as the Tomboy however.
  • Traumatic C-Section: Though the mother was dead Swaine is haunted by doing this.
  • True Companions: Very strong crew and even when new troublemakers **cough**2Dads**cough** get into trouble they are saved.
  • Unresolved Sexual Tension: Kate and Mike. Bomber and RO. Bomber and 2Dads.
  • Uptight Loves Wild: A mild example with Mike and Kate. He more laid back, happy to socialise and inclined to take risks while Kate is more withdrawn, keeps her distant with the crew and by the book.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: RO and 2Dads.
  • Welcome Episode: The Pilot has Kate and Spider's first day on Hammersley, Spider has only been in the navy for four weeks.
  • Where Are They Now? Epilogue
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Buffer, Spider and Bomber end up stuck on a boat with about 10 deadly snakes at one point.
  • Will They or Won't They?: Mike and Kate. ET and Nikki ET and Nikki do but before it is finalised and fully out in the open he is murdered. Mike and Kate finally get together at the start of the fourth series when he is promoted off the Hammersley but he is back at the end of the second episode and their relationship is put on hold for the rest of the season to Kate's increasing fustration. She breaks it off in the fifth season and goes out with old flame Jim but they get together in the final episode.
  • Working with the Ex: Mike and Kate in the first season.
  • Wounded Gazelle Gambit: A woman in series one sent Maydays all episode. She caused a lot of problems before she held ET at gun point.
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