{"id":4429,"date":"2022-10-07T14:03:42","date_gmt":"2022-10-07T14:03:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/?page_id=4429"},"modified":"2022-10-07T15:12:59","modified_gmt":"2022-10-07T15:12:59","slug":"three-corvettes","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/writing\/book-reviews\/three-corvettes\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Corvettes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Three Corvettes<\/em>, by Nicholas Monsarrat<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nicholas Monsarrat\u2019s The Cruel Sea<\/em> is one of my favourite novels \u2013 sea, war, and generally \u2013 of all time. Much of it was based on his experiences in \u2013 wait for it \u2013 three corvettes during WW2, respectively as an under officer, first officer and captain. He took notes and that is what these essentially are, edited together into a coherent whole. So, as well as a glimpse at ordinary people doing extraordinary things \u2013 he makes much of the fact that his fellow sailors were mostly conscripted in from civvy street, some of them rescued from the horrors of 1930s level of poverty \u2013 it\u2019s interesting to see the original versions of fictionised scenes I know from the later book.<\/p>\n

A theme I remember well from The Cruel Sea<\/em> is his contempt for black marketers riding on the backs of the sacrifices made out in the Atlantic, like dock workers who steal the emergency rations from the lifeboats and sell them on. Monsarrat had seen the cost in men\u2019s lives of getting a single drop of petrol across the Atlantic, so meeting smug civilians back in Blighty who had, for instance, classified their private car as a taxi to get more petrol ration (but had no intention of using it as such), and felt quite pleased with themselves for beating the system, made him almost homicidal with rage. Quite rightly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three Corvettes, by Nicholas Monsarrat Nicholas Monsarrat\u2019s The Cruel Sea is one of my favourite novels \u2013 sea, war, and generally \u2013 of all time. Much of it was based on his experiences in \u2013 wait for it \u2013 three … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":368,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4429","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4429"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4501,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4429\/revisions\/4501"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}