Free The Cruel Sea (1951) by Nicholas Monsarrat Page A

Home Fleet and then to a notable shore appointment: the rest of the ribbons signified that he had managed to stay alive a long time in various odd parts of the globe. Too long, indeed, for his present peace of mind: the year 1918, when he was captain in command of a destroyer flotilla, had been the peak of his fighting days, and now this new war had come too late for him to start them all over again. For though he had managed to defer his overdue retirement, it had not been for the reason that he had hoped.
    They would not send him back to sea. ‘Not repeat not too old’, he wrote in firm capitals on the signal pad in front of him, and then, as firmly, scored it out again. But the defiant scrawl represented something which could not be scored out. Three months earlier, after intensive wangling, he had very nearly brought off the sea appointment that he craved for; but fifty-nine years could not be gainsaid, and the Sea Lord who was his personal friend had had to pass him by. Instead – ‘A most responsible job,’ they reassured him: ‘a very important one, where your experience will be vital.’ So the only sphere where he really wanted to use that experience – afloat – was finally closed to him: the best answer they could give him was Ardnacraish, destined to be the training base for every new escort in the Western Approaches command. It was important – damned important – but it wasn’t what he wanted; and now he looked at Ardnacraish and, with his eyes still turned back to that seagoing appointment, he cursed it roundly.
    Ardnacraish might have returned the compliment, though with less justice: what the Admiral had done to it had had the overriding sanction of war. But certainly there had been changes . . . If you took a small Scottish fishing village of two hundred inhabitants in the remote Highlands, with one inn, three shops, a slipway, and a small landlocked harbour: if you decided that it had to be turned into a naval training base, and transported there everything necessary for its establishment – huts, storerooms, sleeping quarters, gear and equipment of every sort: if you set up a signal tower and a radio station, laid a defence boom, deepened the harbour, and put down a line of mooring buoys: if you drafted in a maintenance and training staff of seventy officers and men, and organised an additional floating population of two or three hundred sailors at a time from visiting ships – if you did all this, you got a certain result. It would probably be the result you wanted: but you could hardly expect a sweet unspoiled Highland village to be a residual part of it.
    Ardnacraish had been lovely: it would be lovely again, when the alien visitation was over; but now it was a place for a job, a utilitarian necessity, and as such it was patchwork, ugly, and unrecognisable.
    But it was his responsibility . . . The Admiral looked out of the window at the harbour, across an intervening line of corrugated-iron roofs which housed the asdic and signal departments. There was, as usual, a brisk wind blowing: he could hear it rattling the ill-fitting doors of the other offices in the building, and he could see it ruffling its way across the harbour and sending small vicious waves slapping against the mooring buoys. There were no ships in, at the moment, except the oiler and the tug attached to the base: the last one had left two days previously, and they were waiting for the next arrival, due that afternoon. She was to be a brand-new type, and the first of her class: a corvette – theatrical name, but an honoured one in naval history. He had her training programme ready for her, and she would start straight away.
    It was a stiff programme, though an experimental one still, since convoys themselves were as yet in the embryo stage, and one hardly knew what the escorts would have to contend with. But there were certain things which all ships had to do and to be, whatever job they were intended for: as a fundamental