With the Fall of France, French ports become available to the Germans and U-boats can attack convoys anywhere in the Atlantic – making bad weather the convoys' greatest advantage. At first their worst enemy is the weather, since German submarines lack the range to attack shipping far into the Atlantic.

The new first lieutenant, James Bennett ( Stanley Baker), is an abusive martinet.ĭespite these initial disadvantages, the ship's company gains hard experience and becomes an effective fighting unit. His sub-lieutenants, Lockhart and Ferraby, are both newly commissioned and without experience at sea. In late 1939, just as war breaks out, Ericson is recalled to the Royal Navy and given command of HMS Compass Rose, a newly built Flower-class corvette intended for convoy escort duties. The only villain is the sea, the cruel sea, that man has made more cruel. The men are the heroes the heroines are the ships. This is a story of the Battle of the Atlantic, the story of an ocean, two ships, and a handful of men. It is based on the best-selling 1951 novel of the same name by former naval officer Nicholas Monsarrat, though the screenplay by Eric Ambler omits some of the novel's grimmest moments.Ī voice-over by Lieutenant-Commander George Ericson ( Jack Hawkins), a British Merchant Navy officer in the Royal Naval Reserve, declares:

The film portrays the conditions in which the Battle of the Atlantic was fought between the Royal Navy and Germany's U-boats, seen from the viewpoint of the British naval officers and seamen who served in convoy escorts. Made by Ealing Studios seven years after the end of the Second World War, it was directed by Charles Frend and produced by Leslie Norman. The Cruel Sea is a 1953 British war film starring Jack Hawkins, Donald Sinden, Denholm Elliott, Stanley Baker, Liam Redmond, Virginia McKenna and Moira Lister.

The cruel sea novel