CRUEL SEA, THE 69
the Kuban bridgehead and the Taman Peninsula— the setting of Heinrich’s novel
and Peckinpah’s film. On 17 May 1943, Feldwebel (deputy platoon leader) Schw-
erdfeger was awarded the Ritterkreuz (Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross). In April 1944,
in the breakout from Hube’s Pocket, he was severely wounded—as is Steiner in the
movie— and had Oak Leaves added to his Knight’s Cross on 14 May 1944. At 6'2"
and 48 years old in 1976, James Coburn was both much taller and much older than
his real- life counterpart; Johann Schwerdfeger was of average height and only 28 in
the summer of 1943.
Cruel Sea, The (1953)
Synopsis
The Cruel Sea is a British war film based on the bestselling novel of the same title by
former naval officer Nicholas Monsarrat. Produced by Leslie Norman; directed by
Charles Frend; and starring Jack Hawkins, Donald Sinden, Denholm Elliott, and
Stanley Baker, the film tells the story of the Battle of the Atlantic by focusing on life
aboard two Royal Navy corvettes.
Background
A classic account of WWII’s Battle of the Atlantic from the British perspective, Nich-
olas Monsarrat’s novel, The Cruel Sea (Cassell, 1951), sold over 2 million copies in
two years. Monsarrat knew his subject well. An officer in the Royal Navy through-
out the war, he served on three dif fer ent corvettes and two frigates protecting Allied
shipping from German U- boats in the North Atlantic, kept meticulous notes on
his experiences, and wrote three books on convoy escort duty before penning The
Cruel Sea. Michael Balcon’s Ealing Studios purchased the screen rights shortly after
the book’s publication and hired Eric Ambler, famed espionage novelist and screen-
writer, to adapt The Cruel Sea to the screen. Ambler took Monsarrat’s 416- page
book and by the usual compression and distillation techniques, turned it into a
taut script that avoided jingoism and the “war is hell” clichés that mar lesser war
films. Indeed, the film’s central dramatic premise is the somber notion that every-
one who fought became more dehumanized and morally coarsened as the war
dragged on. Also fortuitous was the hiring of Charles Frend to direct; having made
war time propaganda films and docudramas, Frend was particularly well suited to
the material.
Production
Ealing Studios had the full cooperation of the Admiralty but faced major logistical
prob lems at the outset: how to obtain a Flower- class Royal Navy corvette that would
serve as the story’s fictional HMS Compass Rose (K49). Almost all 231 of these small
(950- ton) anti- submarine escort ships that survived the war (36 were lost in action)
had either been scrapped already or sold off to other navies after the war ended.
Fortunately, one of the film’s technical advisors, Capt. Jack Broome, DSC RN,
located one such ship, The Coreopsis (K32)— a badly disheveled war time loaner to