
He attended Trinity College at Cambridge University, earning a bachelor's degree in law in 1931.VICE-ADMIRAL Sir Vincent Murray-Forbes sat at his desk in the operations building overlooking Liverpool harbor. Indeed, during World War II, the British navy actively recruited people with yachting or boating experience. During his youth, he took up sailing as a form of escape from what he saw as a repressive home life, and his sailing skills would prepare him for his later career in the British navy. In his early years, he was sent to boarding school, where he was mercilessly bullied.


His father was an eminent surgeon his mother ran the household with a strictness that Monsarrat came to resent. Monsarrat was born on March 22, 1910, in Liverpool, England, where he grew up in comfortable circumstances. The Cruel Sea is available in a 1969 edition published by Alfred A. While many novels written during the war were patriotic novels intended to boost morale and support for the war among citizens, The Cruel Sea was a major work during the postwar period when many writers were giving greater emphasis to the cruelty and horror of war. The popularity of The Cruel Sea and the reputation of Monsarrat were enhanced by a 1953 film adaptation of the novel, which brought the story to a wider audience. The Cruel Sea, though, was perhaps his most popular novel and the one book from the author's body of work that is still widely read. Monsarrat was a prolific author who wrote more than three dozen books over his career.

(These figures for the size of the ships refer to the amount of water the ship displaces.) These sailors faced as much danger from the cruel sea as they did from German submarines. In particular, Monsarrat, who based the novel on his own wartime experience, wanted to convey the point of view of sailors on small ships such as corvettes (small, fast, lightly armed warships of less than a thousand tons) and frigates (generally larger than corvettes but less than two thousand tons) that were used primarily as escorts for convoys of supply ships and in antisubmarine warfare. The novel is set during World War II and depicts the six-year-long Battle of the Atlantic from the point of view of sailors in Great Britain's navy, who faced constant threats from German submarines.

The Cruel Sea is a novel written in 1951 by British author Nicholas Monsarrat.
