Cassell Military Classics: Three Corvettes

Monsarrat's The Cruel Sea is an outstanding novel of Corvettes escorting convoys in the Atlantic during War II, and is perhaps the finest book written about the war at sea. It rings so true because the author had been there and done that--having served in the three corvettes described in the book. So vived is this account of Monsarrat's service that I found it more compelling even than the novel, and hated to see it end. It's too bad Three Corvettes is out of print. Anyone who can get hold of a copy should take advantage of the opportunity.

I just finished this wonderful book. Like most, I suppose, I'd first heard of Monsarrat through "The Cruel Sea". This is a first person account, the text broken into three chapters (originally published separately during the War) accorfding to the particular ship on which Monsarrat served, of his experiences on corvettes in the Royal Navy during World War II. The enormous pleasure given by the book is due: in part simply to the brilliance of the writing - the book is highly gripping whether or not at that moment there is anything "objectively" exciting involving the ship - and in part because the author is extraordinarily funny, insightful, sensitive, warm and smart! What a terribly funny book this is - something I hadn't expected at all - and yet there is much tragedy and much that is simply fascinating. The reader is truly there with the author on these corvettes - always the author has in mind, "What would the reader see, feel, smell, be moved by, if he were here with me right now on the deck of a corvette during the War?" Reading the book makes me terribly sad that Monsarrat has died - I'd love to have met him, seen him in interviews -- his sensitivity and charm and absolutely brilliant humor are just so evident. What a wonderful man. You'd love this book - I did.

This is very good companion reading to Nicholas Monsarrat's longer WWII novel, "The Cruel Sea." A collection of nine stories taking place 1939-45 are excellent examples of realism, not melodrama. The son of a prominent Liverpool physician, and whose younger brother was killed in North Africa serving in Artillery, Monsarrat began the war briefly as a member of a London ambulance brigade before joining the Navy. Readers interested in social history will learn about the Beveridge Report(officially the Social Insurance & Allied Services,1942), censorship by Winston Churchill, wartime profiteering, and leadership psychology. In comparing "Three Corvettes" to his other war novel, "The Cruel Sea": the latter, a bestseller, is a better structured story, but the former, a rivetting first hand account actually written during wartime is better journalism.

"Three Corvettes" is a compilation in one volume of three shorter accounts by author Nicholas Monsarratt of his time at sea with the British Royal Navy during the Second World War. The three accounts, "HMS Corvette", "East Coast Corvette", and "Corvette Command", are arranged chronologically around Monsarratt's progression during 1940-1943 from newly-minted Sub-Lieutenant to battle-hardened Lieutenant in Command of a corvette. The collection constitutes an eye-witness account of the Allied convoys in the Battle of the North Atlantic, a story that Monsarratt would tell in thinly fictionized but more complete fashion in "The Cruel Sea", published well after the war. The three accounts were published in piece-meal fashion during the Second World War, out of Monsarratt's fear that he might not survive the fighting. The accounts reflect wartime censorship with respect to names of ships, tactics, and exact times and places; they are not meant to be a precise history. Monsarratt more than makes up for this lack of historical rigor by his keenly observant eye and equally keen understanding of human nature. "Three Corvettes" is a gripping story of very human sailors struggling to be professionals in a task that was by turns boring and terrifying, requiring the extraordinary endurance to function under harsh conditions of weather and sea and enemy attack. This book is highly recommended to the casual reader seeking an exciting account of the Second World War at sea, and to the historian seeking a authentic taste of the experience of the convoys.

Originally published as "Monsarrat at Sea". It contains all his short stories about the sea: HM Corvette, East Coast Corvette, Corvette Command (all publ. during the war), HMS Marlborough Will Enter Harbor, Ship that Died of Shame, etc. Everything but "The Cruel Sea". Some stories are fiction, others are not, but they're all great tales told with eloquence, wit, style and substance. I read almost no fiction but this is one of my favorite books.