His career as a solicitor encountered a swift end when he decided to leave Liverpool for London, with a half-finished manuscript under his arm and only forty pounds in his pocket. 'Fascinating and compelling.', The New York TimesĪuthor biography: Nicholas Monsarrat was born in Liverpool and educated at Cambridge University, where he studied law. 'One of the best novels that has yet been written about sailors at war.', The Spectator The only heroines are the ships: and the only villain the cruel sea itself.' Reviews: They have women, at least a hundred and fifty women, loving them, or tied to them, or glad to see the last of them as they go to war.

When they are all assembled, they are a company of sailors. They come on the stage in twos and threes: some are early, some are late, some, like this pretty ship, are doomed.

Lastly, the men, the hundred and fifty men. She is brand new the time is November 1939 her name is HMS Compass Rose. She is a corvette, a new type of escort ship, an experiment designed to meet a desperate situation still over the horizon. At the moment she seems far from doomed: she is new, untried, lying in a river that lacks the tang of salt water, waiting for the men to man her. Then the ship, the first of the two, the doomed one. What the map will not tell you is the strength and fury of that ocean, its moods, its violence, its gentle balm, its treachery: what men can do with it, and what it can do with men. The map will tell you what that looks like: three-cornered, three thousand miles across and a thousand fathoms deep, bounded by the European coastline and half of Africa, and the vast American continent on the other side: open at the top, like a champagne glass, and at the bottom, like a municipal rubbish dumper. Above all, it is a true story because that is the only kind worth telling.įirst, the ocean, the steep Atlantic stream. It has a hundred and fifty men because that is a manageable number of people to tell a story about. It has two ships because one was sunk, and had to be replaced. It is a long story because it deals with a long and brutal battle, the worst of any war. 'This is the story - the long and true story - of one ocean, two ships, and about a hundred and fifty men. It covers not just the details of the battle of the Atlantic, but deals with the people who fought it - their domestic triumphs, tragedies, worries and ambitions.

The film was a smash hit when released and both it and the book continue to enjoy undiminished popularity. The highly acclaimed 'Cruel Sea' is one of the all-time great naval and war thrillers.

The cruel sea by nicholas monsarrat