The best novels about the reality of war at sea by writers who’ve survived it

Nicholas Monserrat was a freelance journalist before WW2. A Royal Navy volunteer reservist, he had extensive convoy-escort experience in the war and he ended in command of a frigate hunting U-Boats. This, Monserrat’s best novel, conveys the full horror of the Battle of the Atlantic. But it’s also a paean to fortitude—the dogged courage that carried ordinary men through cold, fatigue, constant danger, and intermittent terror, not just for months, but for years on end. The sense of realism, based on personal experience, is overwhelming. I read it first as a boy, and several times since, and I’ve always found it inspirational, a reminder never to yield to self-pity and to stick to a task, regardless of difficulty. It may be the best novel ever written about war at sea.

The inspiration for the classic movie of the name, this can be seen as the German counterpart of The Cruel Sea. The author was a war correspondent who went on U-Boat patrol in the Battle of the Atlantic. It’s chilling in its portrayal of the brutal realities of anti-convoy operations and the terror of attack from above. Most notable for me is its portrayal of the crew—not unlike those of the ships they’re attempting to sink. There may be dedicated Nazis among them but the majority are decent, courageous, men who see themselves as fighting for their county. The nightmare of being a good man serving a bad cause is an implicit, and disturbing, theme throughout.

MacLean served in the Royal Navy in WW2 on cruisers and destroyers in the Atlantic, Arctic, Mediterranean, and Far East. This book, his first and best, conveys in stark detail the challenges of escorting a large convoy through the Arctic to supply the Soviet Union with war supplies. HMS Ulysses is a light cruiser whose crew has been pushed to the limit of endurance on previous such convoys and must now commence another. Relentless attacks by German air, surface, and submarine forces are complemented by storm, ice, merciless cold, and the crew’s unending fatigue. The convoy is decimated but it ploughs on towards a finale that I find still moving and inspirational six decades after first reading it. It’s a reminder of the power of the human spirit to endure against all odds and never yield. 

I met Douglas Reeman only once but I owe him a debt since he inspired me on that occasion to start writing seriously. He served as a Royal Navy officer in WW2 and saw extensive service in destroyers and motor torpedo boats. He survived a sinking, during which he was injured, and was wounded again off Normandy. He wrote many novels about war at sea—those of WW1 and WW2 under his own name, and as “Alexander Kent” about the Age of Fighting Sail. They’re all splendidly exciting reads in which fortitude, duty, and loyalty—to one’s ship, crew, and country—and the brutal realities of war are portrayed with a great feel of realism. He claimed HMS Saracen as his favourite—and, when read, it’s easy to see why!

Marryat is known as the “Father or Naval Fiction” who established a genre that still flourishes. In 1806, at fourteen, he joined the Royal Navy as a midshipman. In the next nine years he saw service—and battle—against the French and American navies, at one stage under the command of the legendary frigate captain Thomas Cochrane. Marryat retired as a captain in 1830 to devote himself to writing. This novel is based on his own early years in the navy. It’s light in tone and very readable but there’s no sentimentality when he deals with losses and injury. One suspects that it reflects the gallows' humour that carried the navy through those long years. I’ve always loved it!