He loved the sea, though not blindly: it was the cynical, self-contemptuous love of a man for a mistress whom he distrusts profoundly but cannot do without. But this isn't just a war story. In a surprisingly subtle way, The Cruel Sea also chronicles the often abrasive process by which classes, previously unknown to each other, were thrown together onboard ship and had to learn to rub along - and how the earned respect, in the long term, led to the future Welfare State and the social equity and cooperation of the 50's and 60's. Primarily concerned with life at sea, this doesn't completely ignore the home front, but sees it primarily in terms of the impact home lives have on the men at war. As a female reader I never felt excluded from this narrative, made up as it is of overwhelmingly masculine characters, and wasn't hit with technical sea-faring terms or the names of different types of ship body parts... Instead it focuses on the characters, and the intense pressures they're under. The novel, published in 1951, was an immediate success and it has never been out of print since. It brings home the realities of the longest battle in the second world war, the Battle for the Atlantic, but it does so not through harrowing depiction of the horrors involved, but through its detailed depiction the people involved, people we come to care about, to admire, and to mourn. -- BBC Radio4x

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 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. This book focuses on humans that are thrown into war from their peacetime lives. Accountants, bankers, journalists, cargo ship captains, pension seeking peacetime sailors, are all placed in a war that they, as individuals, had very little to do with its inception. From there, the changes in the characters are illustrated through the most extreme of circumstances and the ever-accumulating risk associated with time. Decisions are made and sacrifices are suffered. The enemy becomes transformed from humans with differing points of view into mere objects of resistance: worthy of a hatred that can only be bestowed upon the most inhuman of threats. And the defenders are transformed into machines that are virtually unaware of the hatred that they display. The Cruel Sea was recommended to me (h/t Bevan) after I finished reading Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny. Part of the reason I loved The Caine Mutiny was its sense of authenticity. In its minutely detailed depiction of life aboard a rusting old minesweeper, I felt like Wouk had created something real. That is certainly the case here. Monsarrat served in the Royal Navy during World War II, and has a grasp of all the granular details of life aboard ship. The particularity is mesmerizing. This is nautical fiction stripped of the romance and glamour normally associated with the genre, to reveal a plot that is gritty and real. The appalling weather is as much the enemy as the circling German U-boats. It has all the elements that show what war is actually like - the boredom, the exhaustion, the relentlessness and the errors made in equal measure. Some officers are brave, others as bullies; some are dedicated, while others neglect their duty. The journey of the ship’s commanding officer, Ericson, being remorselessly ground down with fatigue and war weariness is particularly poignant.

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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. WHAT'S NEWS IN THE MOVIE WORLD". Sunday Times. Perth: National Library of Australia. 28 November 1954. p.39. Archived from the original on 29 March 2021 . Retrieved 10 July 2012. 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. The Royal Navy is now finally gaining the upper hand over the U-boats and Saltash adds to the growing number of kills due to Ericson's determination and patience. Today's economic participants are perpetually at sea and failure may very well be a sort of virtual death. Our livelihood, which is often synonymous with life itself, can be stolen by seemingly inhuman forces, which are easily hated. Our home ports are but a fleeting reprieve, sometimes despised for the temporary shelter that they represent. And we are constantly cast adrift, at sea, at war, again and again.

This novel brings those men to life. It feels so real, you can almost feel the cold winds of the North Atlantic, almost feel the exhaustion, almost feel the drudgery and misery of convoy escort duty. HMS Dipper" and "HMS Winger" were fictional Kingfisher-class corvettes in the stories East Coast Corvette (1943) and Corvette Command (1944), (republished with H M Corvette as Three Corvettes in 1945). The last quarter of the book takes on a different character, as if Monsarrat found himself under pressure to keep his book within a specific length. The novel, based on the author's experience of serving in corvettes and frigates in the North Atlantic in the Second World War, gives a matter-of-fact but moving portrayal of ordinary men learning to fight and survive in a violent, exhausting battle against the elements and a ruthless enemy. The Cruel Sea_1953 | Britmovie | Home of British Films". Archived from the original on 7 September 2010 . Retrieved 30 October 2010.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.