Posted on 03/28/2014 9:50:24 PM PDT by rlmorel
Opening in the autumn of 1939 just as the Battle of the Atlantic begins, Lieutenant-Commander George Ericson, a British Merchant Navy and Royal Naval Reserve officer, is recalled to the Royal Navy and given command of HMS Compass Rose, a newly built Flower class corvette intended for convoy escort duties. His sub-lieutenants, Lockhart and Ferraby, are both newly commissioned and without experience at sea.
The new first lieutenant, James Bennett (Stanley Baker), is an abusive martinet. Despite these initial disadvantages, the ship's company gains hard experience and becomes an effective fighting unit. At first their worst enemy is the weather...
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
Yes! And, of course, “Trading Places”!
Heh, I stongly suspect that at any time from the Roman Army to today, you would hear “&@$€£¥%#!!! (INSERT SERVICE HERE)
I was in the Publix (supermarket) checkout line last Monday evening and realized I couldn't have named a single person on the tabloid covers if their name hadn't been printed there. I was uncertain which person a few of the names referred to.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
Bead, “those little planes, WW1 vintage” were Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombes. They were designed during the 1930s and obsolete in 1939, but continued on being used by the Royal Navy because the got the job done. And also the Italians and Germans didn’t have aircraft carriers with fighters to escort and defend their ships.
One of several sites where you can get info about the Swordfish: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairey_Swordfish
To all: Yes, I read the book in high school, several times and it led me to Horatio Hornblower series. There is a second book similar to “The Cruel Sea” and nearly as good, is “HMS Marlborough Will Enter Harbour.”
And don’t forget that Picard called his executive officer, Commander William Riker, “Number One,” it is an old Royal Navy expression/designation
Ken, I agree with you 200%. This is a definite ‘must read’ war novel. Story of the men who sailed and fought in the little ships of the fleet.
Both we and the British were unprepared in many ways, and had to fight early on with weapons that were inferior to the demands, as we found out with Torpedo Squadron 8 at the Battle of Midway.
Those guys had a lot of guts.
One of my favorite movies is, in many ways, “The Caine Mutiny”, and in that movie, the scene where the officers are celebrating after Queeg self-destructed at the Court Martial.
The lawyer comes in, three sheets to the wind, and dresses them down because, in the end, they were responsible in many respects for what happened, more so than Queeg.
He was a guy serving through peacetime with crappy equipment, and took that same equipment up into the North Atlantic on convoy duty in an undeclared shooting war, while these guys were still snot-faced college boys cheering the football team. He cracked, as a lot of good men did, because they had “a bellyful” and couldn’t take any more.
The comments of the captain in this movie brought that to mind for me. It’s the bloody war.
I agree. In the movie, it was Jose Ferrer who played the lawyer who defended the junior officers and then verbally lashed them for their lack of support/understanding/action in producing Quegg’s breakdown while in command.
The Cruel Sea (1953)
http://stagevu.com/video/erjlggygbygt
Many of Alistair MacClean's WW II thrillers were made into successful, big-budget films..."Where Eagles Dare" "The Guns of Navarone."
His first novel, "HMS Ulysses",is IMHO, in many ways his best work. MacClean served in the RN the first years of the war. He did a few Murmansk convoys (which had atrocious casualty rates) and his ship was part of the successful hunt for the Tirpitz. He based "HMS Ulysses" on his own experiences, as well as the story of Convoy PQ-17, where 24 of the 35 ships bound for Murmansk were sunk, a horrendous toll.
If you can find it, well worth the read..It's superb.
Ken,
Good Heavens, YES! HMS Ulysses, I’m kicking myself for forgetting that one. It is excellent, but I must admit, that The Cruel Sea is my favorite of the 3. and it was never made into a movie, drat
I love the Caine Mutiny -- the book is even better than the movie -- and you nailed my favorite scene. When Jose Ferrer hoists a toast to "the real author of the Caine Mutiny." He tosses the champagne into the face of Fred MacMurray, and tells him, "If you want to do something about it, I'll be outside. I'm a lot drunker than you are, so it oughtta be a fair fight."
I get goose bumps every time.
You are so right, though, that the Queegs of the day were heroes in their own right, holding the post when nothing was going on, and then to be dissed by snotty superior "intellects" like Lt. Keefer (MacMurray) was contemptible.
Never thought of comparing the two movies, but you're right.
I also love, love love "Bridge on the River Kwai." Of course it has Jack Hawkins! But the mindset and rationale of Col. Nicholson (Guinness) in some ways reminds me of the "win at all costs" Republicans acting to endorse and place in power an agent of the corrupt use of amoral government, in order to "defeat" the enemy that is an agent of the same.
Army brat in Japan 1956-58.
We saw friends off from Yokohama on a grey passenger ship called the General E.D. Patrick. Tiny staterooms, brass portholes, & warnings in the passages for kids to beware of steel doors that could slam in heavy seas.
Ticker tape sendoff from dockside to ship. I actually thought all that tape would prevent the ship from casting off.
They were the Edwin D. Patrick and the Mason M. Patrick (also known as the Mickey Mouse.) We were on both ships on a run to Yokohama or back to Seattle.
Along with the W. A. Mann, we also sailed on the Wm O. Darby and the G. M Randall. Five ships and six trips across the Pacific.
All but the last voyage was Seattle-Yokohama or Yokohama-Seattle.
One of these girls was reported to have broken in half at her moorings but was raised, welded together and resumed troop and dependent transportation during the Korean campaign.
I remember the bands played and we threw streamers down to the folks on the dock. The paper streamers parted and the band marched off as we pulled away via local tugs. It seems like a lifetime ago...
Thank you for the recommendations...I will absolutely read all three. I have never read any of them, and have always thought myself well read on Naval affairs, but...I guess I can’t be, if I have missed these books!
Thanks ken5050, I am going to get them all reserved in my library network (which is quite good, covering half of our state) when I get home from work tonight!
There are a few things I really appreciated about “The Caine Mutiny” and reinforced by what I saw in this movie:
1.) Command is a lonely thing, especially at sea. You can’t really be friends with many people, and you have to insulate a lot of other people from the agony and deliberations of the decisions you have to make. It doesn’t mean you can’t consult with others...they just can’t share in the worst parts of making those decisions, and you can’t put it on them.
2.) Both movies (”The Cruel Sea” and “The Caine Mutiny”) are primarily about leadership. In “The Cruel Sea”, it is the loneliness of it, and how even your XO can’t really share parts of it. In “The Caine Mutiny”, it is about working inside a chain of command, and how you have to act the same and do your job to the best of your ability whether your CO is an absolute jerk and nutcase, or a lovable guy. In the military, you NEVER get to choose, that is your lot once you are in it. And, in the case of “The Caine Mutiny”, it is as much about supporting those above you as it is supporting the people below you. It ALSO is about keeping in mind that, no matter how bad a CO might seem to be, as sure as God made little green apples, there is surely a CO out there who is FAR worse.
I guess all of this is true to a degree in civilian life, except in civilian life, you can walk away from it, the choice is yours.
I can’t imagine it.
I was on a carrier, which, no matter how rough the sea got, was not likely to have much happen to it, the worst likely being walking into a bulkhead or spilling your coffee. Below decks, that is...above decks, you can definitely go over the side (sometimes with the help of some focused jet exhaust) which is probably a LOT worse than going over on a frigate, since you have that long fall to the water that probably makes it more like hitting a sidewalk from 20 feet than falling ten feet into the water.
In any case, the water is then the worst enemy you have, assuming you aren’t in the South Pacific somewhere. When we were up above the Arctic Circle in Nov/Dec, they told us if you go over the side, the clock starts ticking pretty quick for you, and unless there is a helo already in the air, you probably haven’t got much of a chance.
I remember standing up there and looking down at that dark black/blue ocean from the flight deck, and thinking how cold it would be to go in there. It was very sobering.
Watching that movie last night, I thought the most gripping part was when the HMS Compass Rose was sunk. That was the most gripping ship sinking scene I have seen in cinema (Titanic special effects and the Propeller Guy not withstanding)
The part of that scene that got me was the captain standing over the voice tube, listening to the screams of the trapped, soon to be dead-at-the-bottom-of-the-ocean men, screaming out the last moments of their lives for him to vividly hear. It literally made me shudder. And later, when the Captain had a flashback on his new ship, one had to wonder: How does a man go back out to sea after that? I have often wondered the same thing about the USMC veterans of the South Pacific. After going through a nightmare like Tarawa or Peleliu, how on earth could you gird yourself to do another landing on another island? It boggles the mind. It would be one thing if you were ignorant, but...if you had already done it...
A cruel sea, indeed.
My pleasure. Do let me know what you thought of it..
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