Tag Archives: war at sea

Movies About War at Sea” Greyhound.”

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In 1939, Germany won the “Battle of Poland.”  In early 1940 Germany won the “Battle of France.”[1]  A German invasion of Britain required control of the air over the English Channel.  The British won the “Battle of Britain.”[2]  Then began the “Battle of the Atlantic.”  Britain imported much of its food and raw materials; it would have to send forces to its far-flung battle fronts by sea; no Britain as a base, no cross-Channel attack in 1944 or any other year.  To stay in the war, Britain had to control the shipping lanes of the world.  Hitler ordered his navy to strangle Britain through submarine warfare.  The critical phase of the “Battle of the Atlantic” ran from 1940 to 1943.  All the while, Britain’s survival hung by a thread.[3] 

  At first, the Royal Navy had only the help of the small navies of the Commonwealth countries and a few Polish and Free French ships.  After Pearl Harbor, the United States Navy joined the fight.  “Greyhound” (dir. Aaron Schneider, 2020) provides an absorbing account of the problems of convoy escorts during the critical stage of the “Battle of the Atlantic.”[4]  The movie tracks a 37-ship convoy bound for Britain.[5]  What do we learn? 

First, on either end of the voyage, the convoy is also protected by aircraft, armed with depth charges and searching a much greater area than can the escort vessels.  In between is the “Mid-Atlantic Gap” when the convoy is out of range of air cover.[6]  Then the convoy has only the escort vessels.  The German U-boats loved this “Black Hole.”

Second, modern science helped arm the escort vessels.  “High Frequency Direction Finding” (HFDF or “Huff-Duff”) could locate the source of the long-distance radio messages used by the U-boats to communicate with their bases.  ASDIC (now called Sonar for Sound Navigation and Ranging) allowed the escort vessels to locate U-boats at closer range.  Attacks on submarines used depth charges whose water-pressure sensitive triggers caused them to explode at pre-set depths. 

Third, the U-boats still had advantages.  On the one hand, ASDIC could tell location, but not depth and depth charges had to explode within 20 feet to damage a submarine; when on the surface they had a high speed through the water and a very low silhouette that made them hard to see.  Surface night attacks were common.  Get a ship burning and it illuminated other targets.  On the other hand, the Germans subs took up a picket line across likely convoy routes, then converged on sighted convoys to attack in “wolf packs” that could swarm the escort vessels. 

Fourth, Captain Ernest Krause (Tom Hanks), the commander of the U.S.S. “Keeling,” represents the whole US war-effort in the early period after Pearl Harbor.  The Americans would exert an ever-increasing weight in the Anglo-American alliance as time went by, but the British had been at war for two years already.  Krause relies on his long years of service in a highly-trained and unforgiving Navy and upon an imposing personal sense of duty to cross his own “mid-Atlantic gap.” 

Fifth, words like “success” and “victory” had only a relative meaning.  Six of the merchant ships and one of the escort vessels are sunk by the Germans, and the “Keeling” is damaged.  Still, 31 merchantmen and three escorts survive.  It was a “tonnage war” and much more got through than was lost.  As Krause, exhausted by 52 straight hours on the bridge managing the complex battle trudges toward his cabin, he hears the crews of the merchant ships cheering. 

[1] An umbrella term for conquering Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, and driving the British Expeditionary force off the Continent at Dunkirk.  

[2] See “The Battle of Britain” (dir. Guy Hamilton, 1969).  It is historically accurate and the flying scenes are thrilling.  Based on Derek Wood and Derek Dempster, The Narrow Margin.  The Battle Of Britain (1969) (youtube.com) 

[3] There are a host of good books on this subject, but one might start with Samuel Eliot Morison, The Battle of the Atlantic, September 1939—May 1943 (1947), a volume in Professor/Admiral Morison’s Official History of U.S. Naval Operations in World War II.  Morison knew the sea and how to write readable history. 

[4] Other Good-to-Great movies on this subject include: “San Demetrio London” (dir. Charles Frend, 1943); “The Enemy Below” (dir. Dick Powell, 1957) The Enemy Below 1957 (youtube.com); “The Cruel Sea” (dir. Charles Frend, 1953); and, from the German side, “Das Boot” (dir. Wolfgang Peterson, 1981).   There’s a documentary as well: “U-Boats vs. Allies” U-Boats vs Allies – WWII: Witness to War – S01 EP3 – History Documentary (youtube.com) 

[5] East-bound convoys had an “HX” designation (originally for leaving Halifax, Nova Scotia). 

[6] Both the RAF and the USAAF prioritized strategic bombing of Germany in allocating long-range aircraft, stinting convoy protection.  Eire remained resolutely neutral and denied Britain the use of ports and airfields in Western Ireland that would have greatly eased the situation.  Had Britain fallen to Hitler,… 

Movies About War at Sea Brown on Resolution.

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“As so often with [C. S.] Forester’s novels, the action takes place against a background of carefully researched historical fact.”[1]  Leaving aside his “Horatio Hornblower” saga, there are four novels by C. S. Forester[2] about naval warfare in the World Wars.  Three have been made into good movies.  One, inexplicably, has not.  The first of them is Brown on Resolution.

            Historically, great sea battles between enemy fleets were a comparative rarity.[3]  More often, the fleets were either blockading enemy ports or being blockaded in port.  If what you’re after is exciting portrayals of human character and military drama, then put your money on lone ships or small squadrons engaged in cruiser warfare or special assignments.  Such was Forester’s knowledge and talent, that he could portray both ends of the spectrum with great skill.[4] 

In 1929, Forester published a novel called Brown on Resolution.  It is set within the historical context of the cruise of the German Far Eastern Squadron at the start of the First World War.  Two cruisers and three light cruisers set out to commit as much “mischief”—in the words of their commander–as they could before being destroyed.  The battles of Coronel (a German victory) and the Falklands (a British victory) followed. 

One cruiser, the “Emden,” had been detached to cruise on its own.  Over the course of two months in the Indian Ocean, it sank more than twenty merchant ships, a French destroyer, and a Russian cruiser.  Then the “Emden” ran for the Pacific with the British hot on its heels.  The British caught up with the “Emden” at Cocos Island and shot it to bits. 

Forester imagines a lone German ship, the “Zeithen,” standing in for the “Emden.”  After sinking a British warship, the German cruiser picks up a few survivors.  Then it seeks an isolated port in which to repair battle damage.  With the “Zeithen” holed up at Resolution Island in the Galapagos, one of the British prisoners, Albert Brown, escapes from the ship armed with a German rifle and ammunition.  He delays the German effort to complete repairs, all the while eluding German search parties.  Brown succeeds in delaying the Germans for a few days.  Brown is killed by a shot from the departing Germans, who emerge from harbor to find British warships licking their chops.  The kicker is that Brown is the illegitimate son of the British commander.

The book was turned into a movie twice, once in 1935 (“Brown on Resolution,” dir. Walter Forde) and then in 1953 (“Sailor of the King,” dir. Roy Boulting).[5]  You can watch the latter at Bing Videos 

            In real life, the captain of the “Emden” had detached men under his First Lieutenant, to destroy a radio station on a neighboring island.  They survived the battle, seized a local schooner, and made a 1,700 mile voyage to meet up with a German supply ship in the Indian Ocean.  Thence, Arabia and overland to Germany.  Yes, there’s a movie: Bing Videos  In German, alas. 

[1] Brown on Resolution – Wikipedia 

[2] On whom, see: C. S. Forester – Wikipedia  JMO, but Hornblower and the Hotspur is the best of a crowded field. 

[3] Salamis, Lepanto, the scattering of the Spanish Armada, Trafalgar, Jutland, Midway. 

[4] Again JMO, but Patrick O’Brian’s wonderful “Aubrey/Maturin” novels are about all sorts of things other than war at sea, a subject about which the author knew little. 

[5] After the Second World War, a bunch of British studios made movies with greater or lesser American stars as part of the cast.  Probably they thought that this would help them in the American market.  What to do about Americans playing British characters?  Pretend that the character is a Canadian!  Brilliant, so long as everyone is willing to believe that Canadians speak with American accents.  Can’t have been good for British-Canadian relations, eh? 

Movies about War at Sea The Cruel Sea.

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            All war is a vast enterprise.[1]  The two World Wars were fought all over the globe and affected almost all peoples, regardless of whether their own countries joined the fighting.  Representing in art such gigantic passages of history poses all sorts of challenges. 

            A common solution is to focus attention on a small group of people involved in some kind of significant action.  Audiences need characters who are interesting to them, people with whom they can identify or sympathize.  For example, the “Day of Days” episode of “Band of Brothers” is far more compelling than “The Longest Day.” 

            Movies about war at sea can meet this need: even the largest ship is still a single unit; crews are small groups of [until recently] men from varied backgrounds and with varied temperaments who must learn to work together to survive and triumph.  “The Cruel Sea” (dir. Charles Frend,1953) offers an excellent example. 

Nicholas Monsarrat (1910-1979) started out as a journalist with a love of sailing; served in the Royal Navy during the Second World War as an officer on some of the “little ships” (corvettes, frigates) that guarded convoys of merchant ships in the Atlantic; and then became a writer after the war.  His novel The Cruel Sea (1951) accurately summarized his own war experience.  It became a hit and was turned into a movie. 

Charles Frend (1909-1977) graduated from Oxford and went right into the movie business.  He spent ten years editing other directors’ movies before he got the chance to direct himself.[2]  Since this opportunity came with the outbreak of the Second World War, Frend’s early experience included a couple of propaganda-for-the-Good-Cause movies.  One of these was the sea story “San Demetrio London” (1943).[3]  After the war, he made the British-stiff-upper-lip classic “Scott of the Antarctic” (1948).  Put the two movies together and Frend became the natural choice to direct “The Cruel Sea.”  He was an ordinary director, not a great director, but sometimes ordinary people can still achieve extraordinary things.[4] 

Thucydides tells us that “war is a stern teacher; in depriving [people] of the power of easily satisfying their daily wants, it brings most people’s minds down to the level of their actual circumstances.”  So it is with the sailors in this story.  Much of the service–herding merchant ships back and forth across the Atlantic–is monotonous and unglamorous.  The men are away from home for months at a time, sometimes returning to find that loved ones have been lost to them through war, accident, or loneliness.  At sea there is constant strain.  The North Atlantic is vast and violent, and men must stand their watches in all weather and at all hours.  The U-boats—the “hump-backed death below”–are hidden and deadly, and one of the ships is lost with most of the hands when torpedoed.   Some men crumble under stress.  Lieutenant Lockhart—Monsarrat—emerges from the war stronger, self-disciplined, self-confident, and with a deep respect for the sailors and the Navy personified by his wartime commander, Captain Erickson.

You can—and should–watch the movie at  Bing Videos 

[1] See: cliche definition – Search (bing.com) 

[2] The learning-by-doing approach to becoming a director preceded the film school approach without worse movies getting made.  Just saying. 

[3] San Demetrio London – Wikipedia  It’s sort of the reverse of the backstory to Conrad’s Lord Jim. 

[4] Which is what both “The Cruel Sea” and Britain’s story in the Second World War are all about.