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Summary: War in the North Atlantic
Review: This is an exciting and yet very poignant novel of naval warfare which took place in the North Atlantic during World War II. It focuses primarily on two English naval officers whose job it was to escort--with first an inadequate corvette and then a frigate--the numerous convoys that went back and forth across the Atlantic throughout the course of the war. It was a difficult job to begin with and got worse: by 1941 Allied shipping was being destroyed by German U-Boats at an alarming rate. During one memorable journey, eleven of the 21 ships they were sent to escort were sunk. This was an enormous toll, both in supplies and in lives lost. What this great book does is give us a first hand view of the action, and also the effect that it had on these men, and the lives of those around them. To be sure there is blood and gore here, but it is not sensationalized or glorified. It is simply recorded in a straightforward manner, and is all the more chilling because of it. What is really emphasized is the psychological effect. We get a clear picture of their exhaustion, their fear, their terror, and their frustration in their inability to deal effectively (at least early on), with an unseen and deadly enemy. They are at sea for months at a time and incapable of dealing with family problems on shore: philandering wives, sick mothers, far-away sons and loved ones. Their homes and villages are being bombed. They begin to feel hatred--not only of the enemy, but of the ship itself, and all that it represents: exhaustion, terror, helplessness, and death. The captain must make terrible decisions at a moment's notice. After one attack, he steams towards where he believes a U-boat to be, an area which also happens to be occupied by English survivors of an earlier wreck. He decides he must drop his depth charges, knowing for certain that these sailors will die. Later, he agonizes over whether there was a U-boat there to begin with. We get a sense of the dangerous nature of the sea itself. There is no place to go during wild Atlantic storms, and sometimes they last for days. Everything in the ship is tossed around. There is no hot food. Sleep is impossible when you are routinely thrown out of your bunk. Everybody is banged and bruised and sometimes severely injured by suddenly being heaved against a bulkhead. Of course there is also the terror of being swept overboard entirely. The only saving grace was that, during a storm, the U-boats didn't attack. The book covers this aspect of the war, and covers it thoroughly, from 1939, which is chapter one, to 1945, which is chapter seven. It is written from the perspective of adult men and women we learn to know well and come to care about deeply. We are saddened when they are wounded, or killed. And the termination of the love affair between the first mate and his "Wren" was nothing less than heart-wrenching. This is a great novel, and belongs on the shelf with perhaps the half-dozen or so of the greatest novels of World War II.
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Summary: Gripping Story of Men Calmly Going About Danger
Review: This is a naval story set during World War II. That should put off no one. Monserrat is a trul fine writer, who grips any reader so well with his detailed story about intelligent, able, men going about a horrific duty, taking every precaution available, grittily making plans to cope in the midst of danger, but knowing that their risks are great, and catastrophe frequent. It is truly a wonderful book - a wonderful mix of characters (and the author is as interested in character as plot). I would truly and strongly recommend it to anyone.
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Summary: Timeless Classic from the Fifties
Review: Monsarrat's prose gives a description of events, feelings, and thoughts in great detail. One of my favorite parts was when he describes Barnard's thoughts on Russian convoys... more than just a novel, The Cruel Sea gives a historical context within which the story falls - it's obvious that he was very thorough with his research. There are historical references that documentaries can't capture or depict as vividly as the book does - the novel is that good.
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Summary: A true masterpiece of war time realism
Review: A realistic tale of the Second World War at sea This war time drama is played out through the desperate struggle of one man, his crew and their ship. We follow the expliots of a Royal Navy corvette HMS Compass Rose, as she carries out her duty in protecting the vulnerable convoys from the hunting packs of U-boats in the North Atlantic. All the experiences of the war at sea are there, in the faces of the men, the arduous conditions of the rough seas and in the horrors of war like the poor wretched survivors they pluck from the sea, choking and covered in oil. However, the most memorable scene, and one of which is surely equal to any other in cinematic history, has to be when Captain Ericson (Jack Hawkins) is forced to decide whether or not to attack a U-boat or save a group of British survivors that struggle in the water directly above his intended target. After 1942 this dilemma was turned into a blunt order when the Admiralty instructed anti-submarine vessels to make every attempt to destroy a U-boat thus carrying out their sole duty of protecting the convoy. At that time U-boats were believed to be diving close to the sinking ship so that their presence in the area would be harder to detect by the ship's Asdic radar. This often resulted in survivors losing their lives or being seriously injured from an indiscriminate depth charge attack. In the book by Herbert Gordon Male 'In All Respects Ready For Sea,' there is a true story of such an attack and the author gives such an account. My father served on a anti-submarrine armed trawler during the war and his experiences were of special interest to the film's main star Jack Hawkins whom he met and became friends with during the completion of the film. My father felt that this film was an important one as it told a real story of the men and their sacrifice during the history of the Battle of the Atlantic. Today it is as honest a film as it was then and shows the effects of war on the ordinary men who fought it. Only a few films have since dared to portray the personal and true realities of war with out the usual and expected thrilling pyrotechnics of the big screen action film.
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Summary: Totally involving reading from first page to last.
Review: The late Nicholas Monsarrat's The Cruel Sea (originally published in 1951) is a powerful and riveting novel of maritime endurance and daring set in the North Atlantic during World War II. Carefully scripted and written, the reader is drawn into this story of the British ships Compass Rose and Saltash, and their desperate cat-and-mouse game on the high seas with Nazi U-boats. This fine trade paperback edition from Burford Books will introduce a whole new generation of action/adventure enthusiasts to a truly skilled and engaging writer whose ability to involve the reader from first page to last is rarely equaled and never surpassed.
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Summary: I Am What I Am.
Review: This book literally changed my life. In the eleventh grade in Greenville, South Carolina, i had an English teacher who designated Thursday as "Free Reading Day" and encouraged the entire class to read anything they wanted to (well, within limits -- "Playboy" would have been Right Out, i'm sure.) -- and, in case you had nothing of your own, she laid out an assortment of magazines and books on a table at the front of the room. On that table, one Thursday, was a copy of "The Cruel Sea". Since i've always been at least a bit interested in sea stories, and it looked interesting, i picked it up. From the first i was hooked solidly. In the next three or so years, i reread it twice at least, possibly more than that. And then i joined the Navy -- and i am sure that it was because of what i read in this book, and what i sensed behind it, in what Monsarrat -- who, like his viewpoint character, Lockhart, was there from the beginning, working his way up to command his own ship before the end of the war -- didn't so much say as assume about the sea and the Navy -- *any* Navy. Monsarrat presents us here with a brotherhood of the sea, corny as that idea may sound. Sailors, more than the other Armed Forces, tend to regard other sailors -- even enemy sailors -- as brothers in arms, and, as Monsarrat says, the only true enemy is the cruel sea itself. As he shows us here, the sailor who was your enemy five minutes ago, who was trying to kill you as you tried to kill him, is merely another survivor to be rescued from the cruel sea once you've sunk his ship. And, even more so, as Monsarrat portrays it, there is a kind of brotherhood that binds sailors in the same Navy together in very mcuh a family manner -- you may not like your cousin, but you want to know what's happening to him and, when all is said and done, he IS your relative. The best summation of this sort of attitude (which i felt to some extent myself during my time in the US Navy) comes when Ericson, the Captain, is touring his new ship as she stands under construction in a Glasgow shipyard; he meets one of his future officers, and mentions the name of his previous ship, which was lost with over three-quarters of her crew, and realises that "He's heard about 'Compass Rose', he probably remembers the exact details--that she went down in seven minutes, that we lost eighty men out of ninety-one. He knows all about it, like everyone else in the Navy, whether they're in destroyers in the Mediterranean or attached to the base at Scapa Flow: it's part of the linked feeling, part of the fact of family bereavement. Thousands of sailors felt personally sad when they read about her loss; Johnson was one of them, though he'd never been within a thousand miles of 'Compass Rose' and had never heard her name before." To be part of a band of brothers like that is a proud thing, and Monsarrat captures it perfectly. He also captures the terrified boredom of being in enemy territory with nothing happening as you wait for the enemy to make the first move, and the shock, confusion and horror of combat (particularly sea combat, in which the battlefield itself is the deadly, patient enemy of both sides). And he captures the glories and rewards of life at sea, the beauty of a glorious clear dawn at sea, the stars and the moon and the wake at night and so much more. This is the book that made a sailor out of me. It will tell you what it is to be a sailor.
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Summary: A truly great novel about WW11
Review: This novel has stayed with me for 45 years, and I still find myself recommending it to people that they read it if they want to read a book that tells us all about the war at sea.It was highly entertaining while making sure we recognized the sheer lunacy and horror of war. I wonder if it is still recommended in school-I consider it one of the great ones.
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Summary: One of England's finest naval WWII novels
Review: 37 years ago in high school English class we were challenged to read The Cruel Sea. I have never forgotten the flaming seas, the U-boats hiding under floating survivors, the cruel consequences of war, the noble Captain, the obnoxious crewman with his mouth of insults I had to ask my mother what they meant. A young girl, age 16, never read a war story, loved this book and never forgot it.
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Summary: The greatest naval book to come out of WWII
Review: I had the pleasure of reading this novel some years ago. What can be added to the previous 5 stars reviews? I can only double them. the scene where the men are in the flaming sea has stayed with me, a horror I can't forget. If you haven't read this book and you see it - RUN don't walk to get it. You will not be sorry.
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Summary: Danger, excitement and romance: it's got it all!
Review: This movie I've watched perhaps 15 times. I was in the US Navy and never saw action like this. One comes to actually hate the First Leftenant and his "snorkers, good-oh" and the leading lady she was, well, lovely and graceful and good. Virtue is big in this movie. The drive of its heroes is endless. The black and white gives the mood and the sound of the blaring horns gives the expediency. I have the book but can't seem to "wade" my way through it. This movie is thrilling and satisfying.
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