I watched the Cruel Sea last week. I have read the book many times and given the Brexiteer’s shite about about what we, or more accurately our parents went through in WW2 wondered how the film stood up to the test of time. The book was written in 1951 and the film made in 1953; it ought to have been contemporaneous.
Film technology has moved on immensely and somehow the actual film itself is too clean, it fails to bring home the fact that the main enemy is the Sea not the enemy submarines. It is quite short for today and fails to tell the story of the ordinary sailors, although the book itself focuses more on the Officers than the other ranks.
The accents of the officers was all so “cut glass”. Was that true or just a reflection of the acting profession? I was shocked at the scene of the bombing of Birkenhead as the crew return home to find their homes gone; the whole of the conversation between the crew and the civil defence team is held in the same cut glass accent without a hint of scouse. I can’t believe that would be true!
Another storyline which was massively under-emphasised was the story of infidelity of Morrel’s wife. I suppose that the censorship code inhibited the telling of the story but it made me think and check. I was sure that levels of adultery increased massively due to both opportunity and the economic freedom that work brought to women. I found this From Chapter 13: The Girls They Left Behind from “Love, Sex and War” by John Costello
The wartime divorce phenomenon afflicted British servicemen to the same increasing degree. The number of adultery petitions filed after 1942 rose by a hundred per cent each year above the 1939-42 average. The final twelve months of the war also saw a spectacular eightfold jump in the number of husbands who were suing for divorce on the grounds of adultery. By 1945, two out of every three petitions were being filed by men, whereas until 1940 female petitions had been in the majority.
ooOOOoo
The featured image is cropped from a graphic on this page, advertising the book as an audiofile. I have cropped it and justify my use as “fair use”.
I returned to thinking about the Battle of the Atlantic as we i.e. remember the 75th Anniversary of VE Day. There remains one Corvette left in existence, FMCS Sackvilleand that acts as a museum and is located in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
In another conversation, I was reminded how in Band of Brothers, they managed to tell the stories of the Officers, NCOs and enlisted men, their progress and growth and to some extent the moral dilemmas they confronted, but the Cruel Sea is 90 minutes long and Band of Brothers was/is a multi-part (10) series, they had more time.
I went to watch the cruel sea on HMS Belfast; the show consisted of the film followed by two selections from the Imperial War museums film archive. There was a question and answer session, chaired by James Taylor and Charlotte Ross.
Ross introduced two short films following the main picture, one being a propaganda film about Convoy protection made by the Canadian government during the Second World War and the other an acted documentary detailing the life of one seaman who had been torpedoed 4 times and survived, highlighting the role of the merchant navy, which the film and book do not because it is telling a different story.
Ross suggested that while the film contained humour it was about stoicism and collectivism, although I’m not so sure. She pointed out that the book was written in 1951, the film made in 1953. The book is clearly informed by Montserat, the Author’s life, as he served on East Coast convoys. Ross argued that the return of the Tories to government in 1951 led to a cultural policy of de-emphasising the collective and democratic nature of WW2, minimizing the idea of a People’s War and reasserting the values of individualism, heroism and class deference.
Since the previous contributors had reminisced on their experiences, when asked to speak I made these points,
I had never tied the dates of the book and film to the return of the Tory government and their efforts after Labour’s attempts to build “a land fit for heroes” to return to the class and patriarchal power structures of the pre-war period. This makes the “Wavy Navy” scene more important as it is a declaration that it would be the volunteers and conscripts that won the war/battle. The background noise of victory was one for the whole nation, not that of the officer class, many of whom, particularly in the Army, had been let go or passed over.
The second point I made is that the film excludes large parts of the book dealing with life on the second ship, HMS Saltash [Castle]. These include the lectures on the political future, which is another window on the “land fit for heroes”, although the text is laced with contempt for the sailors and the Saltash also visits the US for repairs.
The third point I made is about the portrayal of women in the film. There are three, the Coxwain’s sister who lived in the Wirral, Elaine Morrell, John Morrell’s adulterous wife and Julie Hallam, a who works as WRNS officer in Western Approaches command.
I didn’t labour the point but looking at this with 21st century wisdom, I can see they are the homemaker, and harbingers of the 20th and 21st century. In my review, I researched the exploding female-initiated divorces in the mid ‘40s and today would consider Elaine Morrel, an economically independent woman working in what we would call the ‘creative industries’, a free choosing agent. The decisions she takes are, today, very understandable, but not approved of through the eyes of the fifties and the collective loyalty of warriors.
On 2nd Officer Hallam, it was only recently, that I learnt at western approaches command war gamed convoy defence and it was a Wren, Jean Laidlaw, or a team of Wrens, who developed and proved what came to be the successful defensive strategy for convoy warfare. Again, I find the silence about this an example of a late 20th century conspiracy of silence.
The portrayal of the women and the cut glass accents in the Liverpool docks scenes make much more sense in the light of the right’s attempts to rebuild the prewar class structure. Reinforcing this narrative, I note that none of the women were factory workers.
There’s probably a thesis or essay about the roles of the women in the Cruel Sea, but I am probably not the person to write it.
The film ends with the surrender of the U-boats and the concluding conversation between Erikson and Lockhart on the choices for the pair, between the concentration on winning the war, and making a peace. The latter required having something to live for. In the film, the final speech maybe the best summary of the story the film was telling, the choice of living for a new peace and in the film, but not the book, we can assume that Lockhart will return to Liverpool to find Julie Hallam. Not telling the story of her death gives Lockhart a future; he needn’t remain a warrior.