ALL AT SEA

The writer Nicholas Monsarrat, whose popularity came to the fore in the decades after the Second World War, was one of those people fortunate enough to have been born with film star good looks. Indeed, a suitably Hollywood-style photo of him, smiling, standing firm and looking directly at the camera, was duly chosen to adorn a commemorative plaque which marked his birth - in 1910 - and birthplace, in Rodney Street, Liverpool.
Monsarrat had a somewhat unusual career. Educated at Winchester, and Trinity, Cambridge, he might well have entered Law were it not for the fact that it was writing that actually attracted him like a magnet. A pacifist, he served first as a member of an ambulance brigade and then, as War loomed, joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. He actually ended the War as the commander of a frigate.
Before this last commission, however, Monsarrat also served and learned his naval trade as a First Lieutenant on three different corvettes.
And there is that Rodney Street image again. This time used as a three-quarter page frontispiece in his fascinating contribution to War-time (it was first published in 1945) 'faction.' These were his notes, in effect, for the sea drama he was planning to write after the conflict was done and dusted. In his introduction, Monsarrat actually apologises for the fact that the book, Three Corvettes, 'is not a masterpiece.' Which may be true, but that does not detract from its quality.
What it is, I feel, is an honest collection of notes and jottings and reminiscences about the War at sea, written with a touch of humanity and a wry smile, a faithful record of the daily routine and trivia, nuggets of information which were to prove so important to him later on. In other words, he was seeding his writing imagination.
You will doubtless have heard of some of the books Nicholas Monsarrat produced during his post-War writing career: The Tribe That Lost Its Head, The Ship That Died of Shame, and in 1951 the novel - and subsequent film - that made him a national figure, The Cruel Sea. A year later, he published another popular novel which turned out to be somewhat controversial at the time, The Story of Esther Costello.   
I watched the film version of The Cruel Sea again recently and it was still, in its black-and-white sort of way, every bit as gritty and sea salt-laden as I remembered it. And Jack Hawkins was every bit  as good a strongman as John Wayne, in a wonderfully English sort of way.
In later life, Nicholas Monsarrat served his country again by entering the diplomatic service, this time being posted to South Africa and then Canada. Later still, he settled in the Channel Islands and, finally, Malta. He died in 1979.
Three Corvettes survives, however; and in my particular case serves as a reminder of an increasingly bygone period, an echo of another age; bought for a pound in a charity shop.
(Three Corvettes, by Nicholas Monsarrat. Cassell & Co, 1953)