Rising above much wartime fiction, the book’s in-your-face realism still makes it today one of the great classics of naval warfare. And although the book is a work of fiction, it comes very near to non-fiction in long sequences that explain the challenges and the terrors of the Battle of the Atlantic. The central character, Lockhart, had a similar background and was clearly based on the author. Monsarrat had himself been a journalist before the war and became a Royal Naval Reserve Officer because of his interest in sailing. He had sailed with crews whose moving human stories are reflected in the characters in The Cruel Sea.

He had served on corvettes and on a frigate in the Atlantic for four years rising through the ranks. The Cruel Sea is a novel but it is based very much on Monsarrat’s own wartime experiences. At times the description of sailing through rough seas is strong enough to make the reader almost feel seasick. The book captures the rituals of life at sea and goes into the heart of the action. It tells the story of HMS Compass Rose, a corvette, and HMS Saltash, a frigate, and the crews who sailed them from 1939 to 1945. It focuses on the relationship between Captain George Ericson and a reserve officer who becomes his Number One, Keith Lockhart. Monsarrat described it as the story ‘of one ocean, two ships, and about one hundred and fifty men.’ In a gritty, realistic style the book conveys the joys and the tragedies, the cruelty and the horror of the Battle of Atlantic. In 1951 Nicholas Monsarrat published his fourth book on the naval war, The Cruel Sea. The face of Jack Hawkins looks out from the 1953 poster for The Cruel Sea. Taylor Downing reviews a WWII naval epic based closely on Nicholas Monsarrat’s famous novel.

Author of the novel the cruel sea