I
have finished reading the Cruel Sea and commenced the third
book in George R R Martin series of Ice and Fire coinciding with the
commencement of the third season of Sky Atlantic dramatisation of the
work as Game of Thrones and the contrast between these works of
fiction is striking.
I
ended the second part of reporting on my reading of Nicholas
Monsarrat's masterpiece with the sense of achievement by the Captain,
Officers and crew of the Compass Rose at having sunk a submarine and
taking its captain and crew prisoners. It made up little for all the
hardship endured by the ship's company and their experience of so
much death,destruction and suffering around them as the German U
boats commenced to hunts in packs and destroy increasing numbers of
the convoy ships and their escorts. Compass Rose had seen its sister
Corvette destroyed.
I
felt it important to end the reporting at the point when the ship had
its greatest success bringing the German crew of the submarine as
prisoners, including the defiant captain who declared their attack
coming unexpectedly from behind was somehow unfair.
By
the time the final parts of the books commenced with a summary of the
war at sea in 1942,what was unfair was the wholesale slaughter of so
many brave merchant men with their precious cargoes sent to the
bottom of the sea. Germany, as the information emerged after the war
ended, had started the year with a fleet of 260 U boats to which it
was adding 20 more every month. It was able to deploy 100 submarines
in the Atlantic at any one time with up to twenty for every convoy.
While
the number of escort ships had increased with Frigates in addition to
Corvettes and the navigation and detection equipment improved the
loses became potentially catastrophic as 94 ships were sunk March
with in May 125 and June 144 that is nearly five a day. Only 42 U
boats sunk in first 7 months of that year and that is one every 4 to
5 days or twenty to twenty five allied ships to every one submarine.
The
book having covered the passage of convoy across the Atlantic from
Liverpool to Newfoundland and back, then switched to the route from
Gibraltar, although there is no reference to life in the territory
where my father remained to provide the services of a parish priest
and keeper of the shrine of Our Lady of Europe as well as assisting
in the administration of the church with the departure of the more
than half the civilian population.
The
story then moves to Scotland and the infamous Arctic route to
Northern Russia. Here the problem was the ice and excessive cold
which meant that crews were constantly attempting to clear the ice
from working parts on deck in extreme unpleasant conditions. Anyone
falling into the sea unless they were instantly removed frozen solid.
Then there was the experience of visiting a Russian Port and the
closed nature of the society to outsiders. The suspicion and tension
was mutual although the importance of Russia maintaining the second
front while the allies prepared to open the second was also
appreciated. It was at this point issues of politics and cultures
surfaced briefly and then again as the story was ending with a
lecture about the origins and course of the war. Given the emphasis
in the radio play on Politics with a capital P including a socialist
viewpoint about the kind of society which could be expected after the
war I was interested to see if this was included in the full original
novel as it was not a subject covered in the film or the cadet
edition of the book.
The
course of the war lecture led to a question about the failure of the
British to prepare for the war. The speaker provided the
contemporary explanation that given what happened in the First World
War it had not been unreasonable for the government to try everything
to prevent another from taking place. In this I would have given my
full support but with one significant exception, the lack of
preparedness. By all means every action necessary to prevent another
so called great war was desirable but at the time every effort should
have also been made to ensure we would effectively deal with Germany
should negotiations fail. Germany which had been secretly rearming
and then took back control of the southern industrial areas was
always in the vanguard in terms of war resources until the USA joined
in and at first their preoccupation remained in the Pacific.
Their
second ship, The Saltash, that of Ericson and Lockhart, also made a
visit to the Unites States where they were regarded as Limeys and
lumped in with the rest of Europe has having been weak and needed the
might of American resources and men to be saved. Many Americans also
presented an idealised version of their wives as mothers and of
their daughters as models of virtue and innocence and which failed
explain why the majority of American servicemen to the UK attempted
to establish relationships with British women and girls whether they
were married or not and the majority of British Naval and merchant
men visiting the USA did the same, leading to many bar room brawls
and public and private retaliations on both sides of the Atlantic.
During
my first years as a social worker I had responsibilities for visiting
a number of single women with children where the father and in some
instances fathers were American Service men who had returned home
without them, although several hundred girls had married and gone to
live in the USA, but again a proportion of these had returned because
the conditions in which they were expected to live and work were far
from what they had been led to believe from years of watching
Hollywood films and the talk of the their partners to be.
Before
what must be regarded as the main event of whole book, the loss of
the Compass Rose by torpedo Monsarrat builds up his narrative of the
reality of the war at sea with descriptions of several incidents. A
life boat arrives in the middle of the convoy appearing with only a
lone steersman, long dead evidently determined to continue on a
journey and this was the forerunner of a group of survivors in the
water roped together only to found as skeletons upon close inspection
and left as they were. And then there was the horror of the oil ship
with the oil afire on board and surrounding sea making any rescue of
the men impossible so there was nothing except watch them perish and
then go on their convoy way
The
sinking of the Compass Rose proved as bad, why should it have been
otherwise, from all the sinkings they had witnessed over the years at
sea. The explosion caused the only way from those below decks to
escape becoming blocked except for where the ocean was pouring in.
Nevertheless my impression is that half the crew managed to get into
the water and on or around the two life rafts although unfortunately
the life boat became snagged and could not be launched, Ericson
leading one of the rafts and Lockhart the other did their best to
keep the men conscious singing and recitations and stories, but
during the night more men slopped into the sea and away from life
leaving only a dozen who survived to be picked up with the dawn as
one of the other escorts came looking.
Later
Lockhart meets Ericson in the bar of a fashionable hotel in London
after the captain had been on a visit to the Admiralty to learn his
future having been promoted and gained a medal for sinking of the
submarine and the capturing of its crew. There is amusing account of
the reactions of his wife and mother in law as they attended the
investiture with the mother in law complaining as ever, this time
about the rush for best seats and why it took so long before Ericson
was paraded in because of the Victoria Cross and other awards for
individual courage and exceptional service. Ericson gained was but
one of many awarded as captain for sinking a submarine over the
course of the war. Lockhart he announced was also to get a stripe
which meant he had become eligible to captain his own Corvette.
Ericson was given a new Frigate as head of a Convoy protection team
with six other ships and he wanted Lockhart as his number one, a role
which Lockhart agreed to take without second thoughts.
The
war, the loss of their ship had took its toll on both. Ericson with
seven ships as well as the convoy to worry about became even more
formal and detached from everyone than before. He confided that had
the incident of the able seaman who stayed back to try and rescue his
marriage occurred now he would have sentenced to confinement without
further inquiry and after thought. Fighting the war, winning it had
become a very professional matter.
Lockhart
had been to see the wife of Morell only to find her entertaining one
of the men in her life and seemingly puzzled by the visit of concern
for her welfare from the husband's senior officer. He had also been
to see the wife of Ferraby who had survived but had become even more
a wreck of a human being than he had already displayed on their most
recent long leave before the sinking. His baby daughter had become a
child by then who understandably had taken time to appreciate her
father before he went back to his post. Lockhart speculated about the
future of such a young woman, and child in the new situation although
she had been the basis from which Ferraby had survived in body if not
in mind and according to the author would spend is life in an
institution.
For
Lockhart the emotion swept over him as he went to a concert at the
National Gallery and he reflected on all the men who had not returned
home and tears fell to an extent he felt obliged to leave. I
understand this experience so well, on the day after my release from
prison and return home, I had gone to central London to see the film
Jazz on a Summers Day and purchased two gramophone records of music I
had hear during my brief stay at Drake Hall Prison, a Beethoven
Piano Sonata, the Moonlight and a Beethoven quartet. I had stood in
the centre of Victoria station watching the rush hour crowds going
back and forth unaware of the kind of experience I had endured,
albeit of my own choice and making and gulf between the kind of world
I thought it ought to be and the world as it was was such that I
understood for the first time it was unbridgeable. The emotion was
raw and uncomplicated. It was only with going to Ruskin and then my
first appointment as a child care officer that the pain of previous
experience became overlaid by the experiences if the then present.
The
two men, Ericson and Lockhart then meet up again on the Clyde to
repeat the process described at the beginning of a book with a new
ship being fitted out and undergoing sea trials before commenced
wartime duty. The crew is twice as big and so are the number of
officers with twice as many plus a young midshipman from Eton. They
even have their own doctor,a surgeon who asks how Lockhart managed
using medical guides in the conditions of the Compass Rose. Lockhart
comments on the men he had killed and is reassured by the new man.
There
is also the ghost of Bennett, “snorkers good oh” when another of
the officers arrives with the same speech and mannerisms. He knows of
Bennett who is something of a hero back home, travelling the lecture
circuit, boasting of his exploits when he took command as the Captain
became incapacitated. The new officer is even more impressed when he
learns the truth that the man is no hero,suggesting the author is
making a comment about the Australian attitude to life as he had
done in relation to the Yanks and the Russians. It was how the
British viewed everyone else, then,
It
is the new midshipman who draws the attention of Lockhart and the
other officers to the presence of an attractive Wren officer at the
Naval Operations centre. Lockhart visits and persuades the young
woman to allow him into the Operations room to learn something of the
recent and present broad state of the war at sea. This leads to
putting in name on the “finishing” party on board the ship when
it is ready to begin work. Because of his duties ensuring that all
the guests are appropriately looked after and engaged. the Admiral
and the staff officers, the ship builders and the captains and their
officers under their command overall leadership of the convoy task
force, he is unable to get close to the woman officer until towards
the end, when she makes it clear she has explained to everyone that
it is Lockhart who has arranged to see her home
Lockhart
begins to rethink his position on forming any relationship during the
wartime, a position which they discuss during their infrequent
meetings over the subsequent months. But it does lead to a picnic
when they are both able to relax out of uniform and then to a weekend
away at a cottage in the wilds provided by a friend and where they
become lovers for the first time and consider a future together. But
this was only one of many things that are not to be as she is killed,
drowned in a packet boat in a storm going from one side of the lock
to the other in a part of the Clyde I came to know well in 1961 when
helping to organise the Holy Loch demonstrations.
The
Saltash was a very different ship to the Compass Rose in terms of
fire power with three big guns, four double pom poms and a dozen
machine guns added to which there was improved automated loading to
enable continuous fire power. But the enemy was also using the dive
bomber and release of airborne torpedoes so with the additional
submarines, the threat remained just as strong.
The
major event of this part of the war is when Ericson is not convinced
that they have sunk a submarine when there is just oil and some
debris which easily have been released to put them off the scent. He
insists on commencing a search of area by area which as it continues
creates doubt among his increasingly weary men. However his
persistence pays and a submarine is identified and sunk although
whether this is the same sub as before cannot be verified.
There
is one final event of noteworthiness when they are asked to stay on
station as the end of the war with Germany is announced and they are
to accompany surrendering U boats in their area. This is a bitter
sweet experience accepting that these men like themselves will now go
back to their former lives and remembering their colleagues who did
not live to see the day.
I
cannot say I enjoyed this book, the film and the radio play, for to
have done so would place the work as one of many works of fiction
using this and other wars to tell a tale which interests and
engages. This is a book of truth about war and the Sea, a cruel sea,
because of it nature and because of war.
Forty
years were to pass before British Naval Forces were to be deployed in
war following the invasion by Argentina of the Falklands Islands and
I suspect most people have no idea of the scale of naval forces that
there deployed with four aircraft carriers whereas at the moment we
have none. There were eight Destroyers with Sheffield and Glasgow
sunk, one other hit by a missile and two by exploding bombs; fifteen
Frigates, later versions of the Saltash with two sunk, one with major
damage and others hit together with half a dozen Submarines with one
sinking the Belgrano and over thirty other naval vessels together
with three cruise liners, eight ferries, a host of tankers and
supply ships, tugs, repairers and support craft. After Falklands
British sea power was to be significantly reduced. In 2016 decisions
will be taken on replacing the four Trident Nuclear Missile carrying
submarines presently in operation. However the British Navy with its
traditions remains an important and powerful presence.
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