Oh that dreadful gambling sea

This week I’ve been reading Nicholas Monsarrat’s The Cruel Sea. First published in 1951 it’s a semi-autobiographical novel about a British Corvette crew escorting convoys during the Battle of the Atlantic in WWII.

Corvettes were the smallest escorts and they suffered as much from the “cruel sea” as from the German U-boats. As Monsarrat tells it,

For us the Battle of the Atlantic was becoming a private war. If you were in it, you knew all about it. You knew how to keep watch on filthy nights, and how to go without sleep, how to bury the dead, and how to die without wasting anyone’s time.

It’s a very English book from a very different time and well worth reading, not just for the action, but to remind us how much our respective societies have changed. Terrible, terrible things happened and most people — soldiers, sailors, and civilians — kept their feelings to themselves and just got on with it. We could do with more of that kind of restraint these days, don’t you think?

keep that stiff upper lip

If you can’t find a copy of the book, the 1953 film version is quite good, too. It stars Jack Hawkins, Donald Sinden, Denholm Elliot, and a young Stanley Baker (as the crass, cruel officer). If I remember correctly the above film still shows Donald Sinden and Jack Hawkins trying to decide whether to pick up drowning sailors or drop depth charges to catch a U-boat and thus kill their own guys — horrible dilemma but no one cried about it.

Since we’re on the Sea theme and to tie in to the title of today’s post, I leave you with Gregory Alan Isakov favorite, That Sea, The Gambler:

Aren’t you happy to be a land lubber?