I found the book even better than the film. More depth, more emotional intensity, more to really get your teeth into. At the beginning, there was time for all sort of things - making allowances for people, and joking, and treating people like sensitive human beings, and wondering whether they were happy, and whether they - they liked you or not. But now, now the war doesn't seem to be a matter of men any more, it's just weapons and toughness. There's no margin for humanity left - humanity takes up too much room, it gets in the way of things.

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. He added three short subheadings: “EngineRoom Branch: satisfactory.” “Telegraphy and Coding: adequate.” “Signal Branch: excellent.” Then he took a fresh sheet of paper. Ireland comes in for a lambasting; the country is potrayed as contemptible for remaining neutral and benefiting from the vital food and other supplies from North America, guarded by the Royal Navy, whilst at the same time allowing the Nazis to run an espionage base on their territory.

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This had been on my "to read" list for years. The notion of "war at sea" is not one that comes easily to me. I once had an argument with someone whilst rowing on Roath Park Lake. I got scared, because I was in a position of conflict with about 2 feet of water below me. It reminded me of the time, one balmy June day, when the clinker I was rowing in on the very warm Isis river sprung a leak. Two of the scariest moments of my life. The bell of the wireless office rang sharply, breaking the silence, and Leading Signalman Wells, who was standing by the voice-pipe, bent down to it. The book serves to bring to life the historical accounts of the war, but it also opens up parallels that exist in our current lives. In the hear-and-now, stresses are also ever-present and they accumulate with time. We eventually lose our peace-of-mind to a constant and continuing struggle. The Cruel Sea". The Australian Women's Weekly. 20 May 1953. p.37. Archived from the original on 29 March 2021 . Retrieved 22 July 2012– via National Library of Australia.

THE war to which they went had hardly settled down, even in broad outline, to any recognizable pattern. The ending is low-key, and I like this. The book gives readers a glimpse into another aspect of the Second World War. It is a book featuring so-called “fictional characters”, but it draws the true to life reality of the war as it played out for the men stationed on escort ships guarding convoys. I repeat—Monsarrat writes of that which he knows. 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.Daylight,” said Morell suddenly, breaking the oppressive silence on the bridge. “Two more hours to wait.” Secret signal, sir,” said Wells, in not quite his normal inexpressive voice. “The signal boat just brought it aboard.” It’s impossible to choose the best. The Cruel Sea, however, deserves to stand among the best. It deserves an audience.

If my ship were going down, and I had that one last moment to grab a treasured something, my copy of the book, THE CRUEL SEA by Nicholas Monsarrat might well be what I choose. (That is supposing I already had my life vest on.) This book has affected my life deeply since I first came across it as a teenager. It is why I joined the US Navy. (where I ironically ended up in the submarine service.) It formed an invaluable step in teaching me what `duty' meant, and `honor.' It is therefore a bit more difficult for me to judge this motion picture than most. Were it horrid, I should still love it, I suppose. Fortunately it is not horrid. `The Cruel Sea is in fact first rate. The First Lieutenant used an expression which is novel to me,” he began. “I wish you’d explain what it means.”BENNETT, disliking the experience they were all sharing, said so with honest persistence. He was now the most vocal of the wardroom, complaining with an ill-temper colored by a real uneasiness: the rotten ship, the lousy convoy, the bloody awful weather - these were the sinews of an unending dirge that was really grounded in fear. Like the others, he had never seen weather like this, or imagined it possible: he knew enough about ships to see that Compass Rose was going through a desperate ordeal, but not enough to realize that she was built to survive it, and would do so. He doubted their safety, and doubt was translated by a natural process into anger. He had made a fool of himself over working out their position, too — so much so that the Captain, taking the sextant from him, had said: “ Leave it, Number One — I’d rat her do it myself"; it had not helped matters. This is a story of the Battle of the Atlantic, the story of an ocean, two ships, and a handful of men. The men are the heroes; the heroines are the ships. The only villain is the sea, the cruel sea, that man has made more cruel... It was a true captain’s face, a captain in defeat who mourned his ship, and bore alone the monstrous burden of its loss. 10

Now that I’ve got your attention, let me say that The Cruel Sea is not the greatest war novel of all time. In literature and in film, war is sometimes glorified - and it certainly was in the years following the wars in which the action took place. Sometimes, it's deliberately horrified - "The Longest Day", "Saving Private Ryan", "Taegukgi", "All Quiet on the Western Front" and a whole host of other books and films testify to this. The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat is fiction, but it is based on the author’s own WW2 experiences. For four years, he was stationed in the Atlantic, serving on corvettes and on a frigate. This shows. It is clearly evident that the author writes about what he knows and has experienced firsthand. They rose, and lay wherever they were on the battlefield, waiting for the victors to claim their victory.

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Saltash Castle was portrayed by Castle-class corvette HMS Portchester Castle, pennant F362, as in the film. Although she had been paid off in 1947, she was held in reserve until broken up in 1958, and so could be made available for use in the film. Thumim, Janet. "The popular cash and culture in the postwar British cinema industry". Screen. Vol.32, no.3. p.259. Therefore it was an unusual and happy occasion earlier today when Martin walked with me to the Park Ridge Library booksale and I espied a copy of Monsarrat's The Cruel Sea, a novel Dad had had and which I had read sometime in childhood. The title might not have been enough. The author's name meant nothing. But the cover was the very cover of Dad's edition.