The Cruel Sea

Lieutenant-Commander George Ericson, played by Jack Hawkins, a British Merchant Navy officer in the Royal Naval Reserve, opens with a quiet, yet firm voice-over that frames the coming conflict and the personal costs of war.

In late 1939, as war erupts, Ericson is recalled to the Royal Navy and given command of HMS Compass Rose, a newly built Flower-class corvette destined for convoy escort Duty across the perilous North Atlantic. His sub-lieutenants, Lockhart Donald Sinden and Ferraby John Stratton, are both freshly minted and lacking sea-time, while the ship’s new first lieutenant, James Bennett Stanley Baker, is an abrasive martinet who tests the crew’s cohesion from the start.

Despite these rough beginnings, the ship’s company matures quickly, turning raw potential into a steady, capable fighting unit. The early foe is not the enemy at sea but the weather itself; the mighty Atlantic roars, and German submarines prove reluctant to stray far from their home waters. Yet as the Fall of France opens new access for the Axis, German U-boats gain the ability to threaten convoys anywhere in the Atlantic, and brutal seas become the convoy’s most persistent ally in endurance. Italy joins the war on the side of the Axis, and Franco’s Spain allows U-boats to use its harbors, broadening the peril even further.

The first lieutenant is taken ashore by illness, and the junior officers gain steadier footing as Compass Rose crosses the Atlantic again and again, escorting convoys through storms and spray, through fatigue and fear. They witness the sinking of numerous merchant ships and the tragic losses suffered by the men who sail these vital routes. A defining moment arrives when Ericson chooses to launch a depth-charge attack, fully aware that the blast may also claim merchant seamen in the water nearby.

After nearly three years of arduous service, the corvette is finally torpedoed; most of the crew perish, and Ericson, with a handful of survivors—among them Lockhart and Ferraby—climb into liferafts and are rescued only the next day. For his leadership under fire, Ericson rises to command and, alongside his promoted “Number One,” takes the helm of a new Castle-class frigate, HMS Saltash Castle. With this larger escort, he again leads anti-submarine operations, guiding a steady convoy-protection routine that remains essential even as the war grinds on.

As the conflict barrels toward its end, the pair work together through the Arctic stages of the war, pursuing and ultimately sinking another U-boat—marked as U-53—giving Saltash Castle its lone kill. When Germany finally surrenders, the ship returns to harbor to guard a collection of submarines that have laid down their arms, signaling a hard-won, long-awaited peace for the crews who kept the supply lines open and the war-torn world moving.

Last Updated: October 07, 2025 at 09:08