They come on the stage in twos and threes: some are early, some are late, some, like this pretty ship, are doomed. She is brand new the time is November 1939 her name is HMS Compass Rose.Lastly, the men, the hundred and fifty men.

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. First, the ocean, the steep Atlantic stream. Above all, it is a true story because that is the only kind worth telling. 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. Nicholas Monsarrat wrote: '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.

Author of the novel the cruel sea