The Cruel Sea part 3

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.