The Cruel Sea

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the time for sensibility was past, gentleness was outdated, and feeling need not come again till the unfeeling job was over." p. 106.

I found the book even better than the film. More depth, more emotional intensity, more to really get your teeth into. They rose, and lay wherever they were on the battlefield, waiting for the victors to claim their victory. I suppose you were slipping ashore the whole time.” He took an enormous gulp of whisky, coughed, and only just held on to it. His eyes moved unsteadily round to Morell and Ferraby. “And as for you married men—married — ” He lost the thread of what he was going to say, but unfortunately started again. “You had a wonderful time. Don’t tell me.” Daylight,” said Morell suddenly, breaking the oppressive silence on the bridge. “Two more hours to wait.” Monsarrat notes before the action begins that this is a "long" book. Given that it is fewer than 500p it hardly seems so, but it is three times the length of a more typical novel of its day...and there is no bloating or padding here. It's a compelling tale from the outset and all the way through to the end, which covers the entire period of the war as the Royal Navy attempts to keep the vital supply lines of Merchant Navy traffic protected from the depredations of the German U-boats.Resigning his wartime commission during 1946, Monsarrat entered the diplomatic service. He was posted at first to Johannesburg, South Africa and then, in 1953, to Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. [5] He began writing full-time during 1959, settling first on Guernsey, in the Channel Islands, and later on the Maltese island of Gozo. [6] Ranks [ edit ]

So reading a book about large ships in sub-zero temperatures, two thousand miles from the nearest land and three thousand fathoms from the sea bed, written over 60 years ago- for all sorts of reasons, wasn't pushing itself massively in front of my nose to be read. Thanks, coxswain,”he said when he had finished it. “I needed that.”He raised his binoculars again, confirmed that Compass Rose was still in station, and relaxed slightly. “What’s it like below?” It’s impossible to choose the best. The Cruel Sea, however, deserves to stand among the best. It deserves an audience.HMS Flower" and "HMS Compass Rose" were fictional Flower-class corvettes in the short story H M Corvette (1942) and the novel The Cruel Sea (1951)

The Cruel Sea is a 1951 novel by Nicholas Monsarrat. It follows the lives of a group of Royal Navy sailors fighting the Battle of the Atlantic during the Second World War. It contains seven chapters, each describing a year during the war. Over half a century later, the historian Paul Kennedy still considered Monsarrat's fictionalisation of his experiences as the best and most authentic guide to the mentality of the wartime escort commander. [2] Film and radio adaptations [ edit ]It’s too easy,”said Ericson broodingly, voicing their thoughts. “All it’s got to do is to fly round and round us, sending out some kind of homing signal, and every U-boat within a hundred miles just steers straight for us.”He eyed the sky, innocent and cloudless. “I wish it would blow up a bit. This sort of weather doesn’t give us a chance.” Both ships were based in Plymouth, with Plymouth Sound standing in for the River Mersey. The scenes of the ships at sea were filmed in the English Channel just out of sight of land. These coastal waters and a summer shooting schedule meant that the sea was generally too calm to effectively portray conditions on the Atlantic in winter, so the ships were taken to the Portland Race. Although only a couple of miles offshore, a number of conflicting tidal streams and a sandbank provide predictable, albeit often dangerous, large waves and a disturbed sea. Ships usually deliberately avoid the Portland Race but Compass Rose was taken straight through during the peak of the tide to get the required shots.