The Real Cruel Sea: The Merchant Navy in the Battle of the Atlantic 1939-1943

by Richard Woodman

For the British, the Battle of the Atlantic was a fight for survival, as they depended entirely upon the safe transit of hundreds of convoys of merchant ships laden with food, raw materials and munitions from America to feed the country and to keep the war effort going. The ultimate success of these convoys is much more than the triumph of one side's naval technology over the other, or of the revelations of the enemy's encoded orders assiduously teased out by the brilliant young decrypters at Bletchley Park; it is more too than the simple assertion that victory went to the Allies because they built more ships and therefore shipped more cargoes, than the Germans could sink.

A national decline had left Great Britain desperately vulnerable in 1939, when she had to mobilise her civilian ships and revive the notion of a 'merchant navy'. It was this disparate collection of private vessels which endured the onslaught of the German U-boat offensive until Allied superiority overwhelmed the enemy.

In this important, moving and exciting book, drawing extensively on first-hand sources, acclaimed historian Richard Woodman establishes the importance of the British, and Allied merchant fleets to the war effort, elevating the heroic civilians who manned them to their rightful place in the history of the Second World War.

Genres: History, World War II, Nonfiction, Ebooks

781 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Captain Richard Martin Woodman was an English novelist and naval historian who retired in 1997 from a 37-year nautical career, mainly working for Trinity House, to write full-time.

Reviews

[Betsy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A detailed look at the Battle of the Atlantic from September, 1939, to May, 1943. This book concentrates on the Merchant Navies of Britain and the U.S. If you have read or seen movies about this period, you know how perilous their job was in the effort to keep Britain supplied. The author details the seemingly endless losses which made this phase of the war so dangerous. Fortunately as technology improved for the Allies, it was the U-boats which became the targets. Along with invaluable help from Ultra, the ships of the escorts became the hunters although the battles went on until the end of the war.

[Nathan Trachta · Rating 4 out of 5]

I saw this one a little while back on my recommendation list and was intregued; I'd read the Two Ocean War long ago and I'd been impressed with what Mr. Morison had written and been critical about the war of the Atlatic so why not read something with more detail on it, possibly gain new insight. Boy, did this start something...
I'm going to open by thanking Mr. Woodman for providing the details on so many convoy's and the attacks and attempts to defend them; Bravo Zulu! It amazed me the level of details between ship type, cargoes, number of survivors and how they did. Glueing merchant records to convoy records to naval records and sorting through it was something out of this world. Merging this and telling it from the merchanter's perspective is huge too. The details here I wish I'd had when I was wargaming the convoys using Avalon Hills Submarine long ago!
With the huge plus of the details of the merchanters and their plight are several rubs that knock this tomb; specifically repeatability of the combats (most descriptions almost seem to be cut and paste probably due to the similarity of the combat and the details available to Mr. Woodman), the need for additional details on the Royal and US Navy (they're represented but I felt more could have been put into what they were doing and inovations they were working), and spelling/publishers work. I'm also going to dog it some because maps would have been nice. While I'm familiar with the battlespace and the atlas/globe I wasn't as familiar with everything as Mr. Woodman would describe. Having a map per chapter that showed the path of the convoys being discussed and maybe Wolfpack areas would have made this a sweet book. I'd also have like to have seen an appendix with common ship types that was referenced.
Factoring it together, 4 stars. It's somewhere between 3.5 and 4.5 depending on what you want. Mr. Woodman hits you with lots of material that's done in a steady stecado that almost seems to never end. Information is imparted and you do learn of what the cruel sea did to the merchanters in the North Atlantic.

[Eric_W · Rating 4 out of 5]

The subtle factors behind decisions that are made during wartime are often hidden even though they may have a substantial impact on many lives. Richard Woodman, in The Real Cruel Sea, describes the economic disincentive to form convoys of ships during World War I, even though there was substantial evidence that more ships were saved through this method. Ship owners were against the plan because ever since the introduction of the steam engine, they were no longer at the mercy of the wind and could sail on a regular schedule. Anything that might interfere with regular sailings would have an impact on their profits. Naval aficionados disliked the idea of using naval forces in a defensive manner. It was somehow less manly. But the most scurrilous reason was that investors reaped enormous benefits from having a ship sunk. Since the government requisitioned the ships for war support, it would indemnify the ship investors should the ship be torpedoed. Even with an Excess Profits Tax, Mr. Bonar Law, Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1917 described the substantial profits he made following liquidation of a ship. Meanwhile, the poor seaman had his wages stopped the minute the ship went down.

Follow the money, a Watergate dictum that we might wish to observe as more and more funding goes to Iraq.

In WW II we prided ourselves on our ability to produce ever increasing numbers of ships to replace those that had been sunk. Unfortunately, we all too often forget that irreplaceable people went down with those ships. This book is a reminder.

Corrections: 11/21/10

[Robert Paterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exhaustive account with the details of many sinkings - Some people have complained about this amount of detail, but I think this works. There is a deep structure to the book that unfolds as you go on. This was a war of attrition, and also a war when the lessons learned had to accumulate over time as a result of events. As a picture of how to respond emerged from the detail for those involved, so it does for us.

My other point here is that for the Merchant Navy, this too was a grind. Many were sunk several times and it is clear that no man slept safe until it was all over. Again it is the accumulation of experience that affected the men. I recall talking with a friend of my mother who had been on a Flower class Corvette about how he had not had a proper night's sleep in the two years he sailed on escort duty. This book offers us a feeling for this grind. It's a different kind of courage to keep going under these relentless pressures.

We also learn of the other enemy they faced. The sea itself. The conditions were often terrible and in an open boat beyond imagination.

One last thing, don't sail on a bulk ore carrier. Most of them sunk in 5 minutes or less losing all their crew.

[Helena Schrader · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a comprehensive and meticulous account of the British Merchant Navy in World War Two. It covers everything from maritime and trade policy in the UK to wages and shipping contracts. However, the bulk of this 1200-page book with roughly 200 pages of footnotes is devoted to cataloguing merchant shipping losses. For scholars of the war at sea, it provides documentation of which ships were sunk when and where by which surface raider or U-boat. As such, it is a valuable resource. Yet in the plethora of detail, much of the drama is lost. Unexpected rescues by navy boarding parties and exciting escapes by unarmed merchantmen are depicted with the same dry tone as the lists of tonnages lost or the wage rates of merchant seamen. One could almost say that it dilutes the message with too much detail, and readers interested in "what it was like" would do better reading the original "Cruel Sea" by Nicholas Monsarrat.
Reasons I enjoyed this book:
Informative
Realistic

[Don · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating

My father was a survivor of the sinking of the Hindpool. Made this book very special. To read the stories he told me. Fantastic p

[Andrew Slaven]

An extremely detailed history of the Battle of the Atlantic, well told.

[Brettsinclair70 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Respectful record of Atlantic convoys ending on a sour note

[Simon Beechinor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dear Reader, how would you feel if, as a civilian seaman on a merchant ship, you knew that you'd be placed off-pay from the day you were torpedoed and were forced to take to the lifeboats? This was a fact of life for many civilian seafarers in the early days of WW2. This book reads like the tolling of a bell for those men and the thousands of ships that were, one by one, destroyed by the U-boats of the Kriegsmarine. It is a harrowing read and stands as a testimony to the courage of the thousands of civilians who lived and died in one of the primary battles of WW2.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Real Cruel Sea" is the story of the merchant cargo vessels which kept Great Britain alive and in the fight against the Germans during WWII. When the war began, Britain was ill-prepared for the fight. It's cargo ships were old and nearly undefended. As the German U-boat threat rose through the first years of the war the heroic merchant navy men, under paid and under appreciated, fought and died in the broad and cold Atlantic. This book is about that fight. If you are looking for an inclusive book on the Battle of the Atlantic this is not it. The American merchant navy is only covered when the author can find no way around it. Also, this book is not for the casual reader; the minutiae covered by the author is incredible. He not only details the sinking of a large number of ships (at time it seems he covered every one), he relates the cargo it carried, the captain and some members of the crew, it's point of departure and destination and even what happened to the various survivors. Unless the reader is not up for this level of information I would choose some lighter fare. That being said, if you're truly interested in this subject, the author gives everything one would need to know.

[Ian Pattinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was hard work in places, but very informative with it.

Listing almost every convoy- and every lost merchantman- in the North Atlantic, and some key losses in other theatres, the book brings home the harsh realities of the war at sea. Every sinking, and every tale of survival adrift, is different, and the author tried to show this variety. But at various points, such as the U-boats' Happy Time, the sheer number of losses led to pages of ship and crew names, tonnage and losses which could get overwhelming.

But it would have been a disservice to scrimp on the detail, and would have downplayed just how bad things were at various points. The roll-call of the lost and destroyed served to emphasise the shifts in fortune as the war wore on. Without this, it would have been hard to understand just how close the submarine campaign came to cutting off the British Isles and how it finally took hard won advances in technology, tactics and training- and increasing numbers of escorts- to beat them.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having read Nicholas Monsarrat's novel "The Cruel Sea" decades ago, I found the title of Woodman's book intriguing. The daunting size of the paperback notwithstanding, I gave it a go.

If you are interested in the convoy aspect of the Battle of the Atlantic from the British perspective during World War II, look no further. This immensely detailed and thorough treatment is as good as it gets.

Woodman's empathy for the merchant seamen who manned the ships that kept England in the war is reflected in his observations about the British shipowners who, by and large, treated their employees with a mixture of disdain and contempt. His vivid accounts of survival in the face of enemy action, foul weather and an unforgiving ocean are memorable.

Woodman for the Atlantic, and Lundstrom for the Pacific, set the standard for World War II military history. Detailed and readable, "The Real Cruel Sea" is epic.

[John Gordon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a long, detailed and fascinating account of the war in the Atlantic 1939-43. The research to put this together is astounding with individual U-boats, ships, and torpedoes accounted for. There is a lot of data, enough to bog down many a reader, but thankfully there are many personal anecdotes and stories that give the book a more human feel. Periodic strategic reviews by the author round out an excellent reading experience. I didn't realize just how tight things got for Britain, nor the rapidity of the turning of the tide in May 43. There are so many individual tragedy’s, so many lives were lost in the cold stormy waters of the Atlantic, I am just glad I was not there.

[James Webster · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, finally got to the end of this nearly-700-page monster! I'm sure this would go down very well with the maritime branch of the military history society but, as an interested general reader, there was just too much there. Detail was loving but repetitive in the extreme. ALL the details were there (though the author himself came to a rather abrupt halt in 1943--did he lose the will to live as well?) and if you like to know who owned the most recent ship sunk by a U-boat and who was its captain, then this will suit you. Redeemed a bit in the final judgement by the few passages of general overview but they were, I'm afraid, few and far between.

[Peter Roach · Rating 3 out of 5]

A history book, with the cold hard facts. Must have a been huge task in researching this book. I'm glad that someone sat down and wrote it. This book would only interest those that are intensely interested in this subject, or perhaps those that had a father or grandfather on one of the ships that convoyed in WW2, and wanted to get the facts on what happened.

[Simon Graves · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting but tended to become a long list of ships sunk. Worthy read as a historical record but I don't think it portrayed the personal stories - each of the named ships would be a tragedy in itself. Maybe I'm being harsh and the number of ships lost tends to reduce the individual impact. Definitely worth a read but be aware.

[Dave Lever · Rating 4 out of 5]

A story worth telling and reading. This book is a must for history buffs and people with an interest in maritime affairs.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

An impressive informative work from a top notch writer.