Based on the author's own vivid experiences, The Cruel Sea is the nail-biting story of the crew of HMS Compass Rose, a corvette assigned to protect convoys in World War Two.
Darting back and forth across the icy North Atlantic, Compass Rose played a deadly cat and mouse game with packs of German U-boats lying in wait beneath the ocean waves.
Packed with tension and vivid descriptions of agonizing U-boat hunts, this tale of the most bitter and chilling campaign of the war tells of ordinary, heroic men who had to face a brutal menace which would strike without warning from the deep . . .
Nicholas Monsarrat was born in Liverpool in 1910. At the beginning of the war he joined the RNVR as a sub-lieutenant and attained the rank of Lieutenant-Commander. He died in August 1979 and his ashes were later scattered over the sea.
