Nicholas Monsarrat

Lieutenant Commander Nicholas Monsarrat served as a convoy escort officer in the Battle of the Atlantic, an experience that inspired his acclaimed novel "The Cruel Sea" — one of the greatest war novels ever written. Based in Liverpool for much of the war, Monsarrat commanded corvettes that protected Atlantic convoys.His vivid, unflinching depiction of convoy life — the freezing watches, the depth charge attacks, the horror of seeing torpedoed ships sink — drew directly from his own service. The novel remains the definitive literary account of the longest continuous campaign of WW2.