|
HMS Ulysses (novel)
''HMS Ulysses'' was the debut novel by Scottish author Alistair MacLean. Originally published in 1955, it was also released by Fontana Books in 1960. MacLean's experiences in the Royal Navy during World War II provided the background and the Arctic convoys to Murmansk provided the basis for the story, which was written at a publisher's request after he'd won a short-story competition the previous year. Some editions carry a prefatory note disavowing any connection between the fictional cruiser HMS ''Ulysses'' and the of the same name. Plot The novel features HMS ''Ulysses'', a light cruiser that is well armed and among the fastest ships in the world. Her crew is pushed well beyond the limits of endurance and the book starts in the aftermath of a mutiny. ''Ulysses'' puts to sea again to escort FR-77, a vital convoy heading for Murmansk. They are beset by numerous challenges: an unusually fierce Arctic storm, German ships and U-boats, as well as air attacks. All slowly reduce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alistair MacLean
Alistair Stuart MacLean ( gd, Alasdair MacGill-Eain; 21 April 1922 – 2 February 1987) was a 20th-century Scottish novelist who wrote popular thrillers and adventure stories. Many of his novels have been adapted to film, most notably '' The Guns of Navarone'' (1957) and ''Ice Station Zebra'' (1963). In the late 1960s, encouraged by film producer Elliott Kastner, MacLean began to write original screenplays, concurrently with an accompanying novel. The most successful was the first of these, the 1968 film ''Where Eagles Dare'', which was also a bestselling novel. MacLean also published two novels under the pseudonym Ian Stuart. His books are estimated to have sold over 150 million copies, making him one of the best-selling fiction authors of all time. According to one obituary, "he never lost his love for the sea, his talent for portraying good Brits against bad Germans, or his penchant for high melodrama. Critics deplored his cardboard characters and vapid females, but readers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Armed Merchant Cruiser
An armed merchantman is a merchant ship equipped with guns, usually for defensive purposes, either by design or after the fact. In the days of sail, piracy and privateers, many merchantmen would be routinely armed, especially those engaging in long distance and high value trade. In more modern times, auxiliary cruisers were used offensively as merchant raiders to disrupt trade chiefly during both World War I and World War II, particularly by Germany. While armed merchantmen are clearly inferior to purpose-built warships, sometimes they have scored successes in combat against them. Examples include East Indiamen mimicking ships of the line and chasing off regular French warships in the Battle of Pulo Aura in 1804, and the sinking the Australian light cruiser in their battle in 1941, although ''Kormoran'' was also destroyed and had to be scuttled. Pre-20th century East Indiamen of various European countries were heavily armed for their long journeys to the Far East. In part ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arctic Convoys Of World War II
The Arctic convoys of World War II were oceangoing convoys which sailed from the United Kingdom, Iceland, and North America to northern ports in the Soviet Union – primarily Arkhangelsk (Archangel) and Murmansk in Russia. There were 78 convoys between August 1941 and May 1945, sailing via several seas of the Atlantic and Arctic oceans, with two gaps with no sailings between July and September 1942, and March and November 1943. About 1,400 merchant ships delivered essential supplies to the Soviet Union under the Anglo-Soviet agreement and US Lend-Lease program, escorted by ships of the Royal Navy, Royal Canadian Navy, and the U.S. Navy. Eighty-five merchant vessels and 16 Royal Navy warships (two cruisers, six destroyers, eight other escort ships) were lost. Nazi Germany's '' Kriegsmarine'' lost a number of vessels including one battleship, three destroyers, 30 U-boats, and many aircraft. The convoys demonstrated the Allies' commitment to helping the Soviet Union, prior to the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Cruel Sea (book)
''The Cruel Sea'' is a 1951 novel by Nicholas Monsarrat. It follows the lives of a group of Royal Navy sailors fighting the Battle of the Atlantic during the Second World War. It contains seven chapters, each describing a year during the war. The novel, based on the author's experience of serving in corvettes and frigates in the North Atlantic in the Second World War, gives a matter-of-fact but moving portrayal of ordinary men learning to fight and survive in a violent, exhausting battle against the elements and a ruthless enemy. Plot summary The action commences in 1939. Lieutenant-Commander George Ericson, a Merchant Navy and Royal Naval Reserve officer, is recalled to the Royal Navy and given command of the fictitious HMS ''Compass Rose'', newly built to escort convoys. His officers are mostly new to the Navy, especially the two new sub-lieutenants, Lockhart and Ferraby. Only Ericson and the petty officers are in any way experienced. Despite these initial disadvantages, th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nicholas Monsarrat
Lieutenant Commander Nicholas John Turney Monsarrat FRSL RNVR (22 March 19108 August 1979) was a British novelist known for his sea stories, particularly '' The Cruel Sea'' (1951) and ''Three Corvettes'' (1942–45), but perhaps known best internationally for his novels, ''The Tribe That Lost Its Head'' and its sequel, ''Richer Than All His Tribe''. Early life Monsarrat was born on Rodney Street in Liverpool, Lancashire, to parents Keith Waldegrave Monsarrat FRCS (among the most eminent surgeons of his time) and Marguerite Turney. Monsarrat was educated at Winchester College and Trinity College, Cambridge. In his autobiography, he wrote that the 1931 Invergordon Naval Mutiny influenced his interest in politics and social and economic issues after college. He had intended to practise law, but decided to pursue working as an author instead. He moved to London and wrote as a freelancer for newspapers. He wrote four novels and a play in the space of five years (1934–1939) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Caine Mutiny
''The Caine Mutiny'' is a 1951 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Herman Wouk. The novel grew out of Wouk's personal experiences aboard two destroyer-minesweepers in the Pacific Theater in World War II. Among its themes, it deals with the moral and ethical decisions made at sea by ship captains and other officers. The mutiny of the title is legalistic, not violent, and takes place during Typhoon Cobra, in December 1944. The court-martial that results provides the dramatic climax to the plot. Plot summary The story is told through the eyes of Willis Seward "Willie" Keith, an affluent but callow young graduate of Princeton University. Following a mediocre living as a nightclub piano player, he signs up for midshipman school at Columbia University with the United States Navy to avoid being drafted into the United States Army during World War II. He endures inner conflicts over his relationship with his domineering mother and with May Wynn, a beautiful red-haired nightclub singer, t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herman Wouk
Herman Wouk ( ; May 27, 1915 – May 17, 2019) was an American author best known for historical fiction such as ''The Caine Mutiny'' (1951) for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. His other major works include ''The Winds of War'' and ''War and Remembrance'', historical novels about World War II, and non-fiction such as ''This Is My God'', an explanation of Judaism from a Modern Orthodox perspective, written for Jewish and non-Jewish audiences. His books have been translated into 27 languages. ''The Washington Post'' called Wouk, who cherished his privacy, "the reclusive dean of American historical novelists". Historians, novelists, publishers, and critics who gathered at the Library of Congress in 1995 to mark Wouk's 80th birthday described him as an American Tolstoy. Early life Wouk was born in the Bronx, the second of three children born to Esther (née Levine) and Abraham Isaac Wouk, Russian Jewish immigrants from what is today Belarus. His father toiled for many ye ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Superstructure
A superstructure is an upward extension of an existing structure above a baseline. This term is applied to various kinds of physical structures such as buildings, bridges, or ships. Aboard ships and large boats On water craft, the superstructure consists of the parts of the ship or a boat, including sailboats, fishing boats, passenger ships, and submarines, that project above her main deck. This does not usually include its masts or any armament turrets. Note that in modern times, turrets do not always carry naval artillery, but they can also carry missile launchers and/or antisubmarine warfare weapons. The size of a watercraft's superstructure can have many implications in the performance of ships and boats, since these structures can alter their structural rigidity, their displacements, and/or stability. These can be detrimental to any vessel's performance if they are taken into consideration incorrectly. The height and the weight of superstructure on board a ship or a bo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sloop-of-war
In the 18th century and most of the 19th, a sloop-of-war in the Royal Navy was a warship with a single gun deck that carried up to eighteen guns. The rating system covered all vessels with 20 guns and above; thus, the term ''sloop-of-war'' encompassed all the unrated combat vessels, including the very small gun-brigs and cutters. In technical terms, even the more specialised bomb vessels and fireships were classed as sloops-of-war, and in practice these were employed in the sloop role when not carrying out their specialised functions. In World War I and World War II, the Royal Navy reused the term "sloop" for specialised convoy-defence vessels, including the of World War I and the highly successful of World War II, with anti-aircraft and anti-submarine capability. They performed similar duties to the American destroyer escort class ships, and also performed similar duties to the smaller corvettes of the Royal Navy. Rigging A sloop-of-war was quite different from a civilian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Destroyer
In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast, manoeuvrable, long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against powerful short range attackers. They were originally developed in 1885 by Fernando Villaamil for the Spanish NavySmith, Charles Edgar: ''A short history of naval and marine engineering.'' Babcock & Wilcox, ltd. at the University Press, 1937, page 263 as a defense against torpedo boats, and by the time of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, these "torpedo boat destroyers" (TBDs) were "large, swift, and powerfully armed torpedo boats designed to destroy other torpedo boats". Although the term "destroyer" had been used interchangeably with "TBD" and "torpedo boat destroyer" by navies since 1892, the term "torpedo boat destroyer" had been generally shortened to simply "destroyer" by nearly all navies by the First World War. Before World War II, destroyers were light vessels with little endurance for unattended o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
S And T-class Destroyer
The S and T class was a class of sixteen destroyers of the Royal Navy launched in 1942–1943. They were built as two flotillas, known as the 5th and 6th Emergency Flotilla, and they served as fleet and convoy escorts in World War II. Design features The S class introduced the CP (central pivot) Mark XXII mounting for the QF Mark IX 4.7 in guns. This new mounting had a shield with a sharply raked front, to allow increased elevation (to 55 degrees), contrasting noticeably with the vertical front of the previous CP Mark XVIII, and easily differentiated the S class onwards from their immediate predecessors. ''Savage'' was the exception in this respect, being fitted with four 4.5 in guns; a twin mounting forward and two singles aft. These ships used the Fuze Keeping Clock HA Fire Control Computer. The quadruple mounting Mark VII for the QF 2-pounder pom-poms was replaced by the twin mounting Mark IV for the 40 mm Bofors gun. Known as the " Hazemeyer" (or "Haslemer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flight Deck
The flight deck of an aircraft carrier is the surface from which its aircraft take off and land, essentially a miniature airfield at sea. On smaller naval ships which do not have aviation as a primary mission, the landing area for helicopters and other VTOL aircraft is also referred to as the flight deck. The official U.S. Navy term for these vessels is "air-capable ships". Flight decks have been in use upon ships since 1910, the American pilot Eugene Ely being the first individual to take off from a warship. Initially consisting of wooden ramps built over the forecastle of capital ships, a number of battlecruisers, including the British and , the American and , and the Japanese Akagi and battleship Kaga, were converted to aircraft carriers during the interwar period. The first aircraft carrier to feature a full-length flight deck, akin to the configuration of the modern vessels, was the converted liner . The armoured flight deck was another innovation pioneered by the Ro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
