The Cruel Sea

IN 1952, Ealing Studios boss Michael Balcon acquired the film rights to The Cruel Sea, Nicholas Monsarrat's grimly realistic 1951 novel about Royal Navy convoys operating in U-boat-infested waters during the Battle of the Atlantic (1939-45).

- Charles Frend

It sold so well that the publisher Cassell later issued an expurgated cadet edition for younger readers.

Balcon assigned directorial duties to Charles Frend, one of his most trusted associates. Frend was a notable exponent of documentary-influenced feature films, including The Foreman Went to France (1942) and San Demetrio, London (1944), which were characteristic of many Ealing wartime productions, and similar elements were present in The Cruel Sea. These films, together with Frend's Scott of the Antarctic (1948), would, as Robert Murphy has written in Ealing Revisited, 'best represent Balcon's plans for Ealing to make ambitious films celebrating Britain and the British character'

The craggy-featured, gravelly-voiced Jack Hawkins was immediately recognized as the perfect fit for the lead role of Capt Ericson, the gruff commander of the corvette HMS Compass Rose and, upon his elevation, the frigate HMS Saltash Castle. Donald Sinden, in his first film appearance, was cast as young reserve officer Lt Lockhart, who becomes Ericson’s ‘Number One’, a former freelance journalist with an enthusiasm for sailing.