Nicholas Monsarrat

Lieutenant Commander Nicholas John Turney Monsarrat FRSL RNVR (22 March 1910 – 8 August 1979) was a British novelist known today for his sea stories, particularly The Cruel Sea (1951) and Three Corvettes (1942–45), but perhaps best known internationally for his novels, The Tribe That Lost Its Head and its sequel, Richer Than All His Tribe.

Monsarrat was born on Rodney Street in Liverpool, Lancashire, to parents Sir Keith Montsarrat, surgeon, and Marguerite Turney Waldegrave. Monsarrat was educated at Winchester and Trinity College, Cambridge. He intended to practise law. The law failed to inspire him, however, and he turned instead to writing, moving to London and supporting himself as a freelance writer for newspapers while writing four novels and a play in the space of five years (1934–1939). He later commented in his autobiography that the 1931 Invergordon Naval Mutiny influenced his interest in politics and social and economic issues after college.

Though a pacifist, Monsarrat served in World War II, first as a member of an ambulance brigade and then as a member of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR). His lifelong love of sailing made him a capable naval officer, and he served with distinction in a series of small warships (corvettes and frigates), assigned to escort convoys and protect them from enemy attack. Monsarrat ended the war as commander of a frigate, and drew on his wartime experience in his postwar sea stories. It has been alleged that during his wartime service, Monsarrat claimed to have seen the ghost ship Flying Dutchman while sailing the Pacific, near the location where the young King George V had seen her in 1881. No mention was made of this in his autobiographies however, and the ship he was supposedly serving on (HMS Jubilee) did not, in fact, exist.

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