HMS Ulysses (novel)

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 as the flagship of 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 the convoy from 32 ships to only five. Ulysses is sunk in a failed attempt to ram a German cruiser after all her other weapons had been destroyed. This echoes events in which British G-class destroyer and , an armed merchant cruiser, sacrificed themselves by engaging larger opponents. ==Background==

Alistair Maclean had written a short story, which was published to acclaim. A literary agent asked him to write a novel and Maclean originally refused, believing there was no future in it. However his boat business failed so he decided to write a novel. The book was based on real life convoys Maclean had participated in when a sailor aboard HMS Royalist. Maclean later described his writing process: I drew a cross square, lines down representing the characters, lines across representing chapters 1-15. Most of the characters died, in fact only one survived the book, but when I came to the end the graph looked somewhat lopsided, there were too many people dying in the first, fifth and tenth chapters so I had to rewrite it, giving an even dying space throughout. I suppose it sounds cold blooded and calculated, but that's the way I did it. ==Ships featured in HMS Ulysses==

HMS Ulysses is similar to the real cruisers, MacLean had served in of that class. The Ulysses was repeatedly sent on Arctic convoys without rest. Commander Brooks describes it as the "only ship in the Home Fleet equipped for carrier command". HMS Duke of Cumberland is a King George V-class battleship. A boarding party of Royal Marines from Duke of Cumberland was sent to put down a stokers' "mutiny" on Ulysses before the beginning of the book. Lieutenant Nicholls complains that the Duke of Cumberland is useless and never deployed to escort convoys. HMS Stirling is an obsolete World War I-era of the Ceres sub-group (referred to as Cardiff Class in the novel). Stirling is virtually untouched during most of the novel, until the final act where Stirling is repeatedly attacked by dive bombers . HMS Defender, Invader, Wrestler and Blue Ranger, are smaller American-built escort carriers converted from merchant ships (Avenger or Attacker-classes). Accidents and enemy attacks conspire to remove all the carriers from service before the convoy is even halfway to Russia. Defender in particular is rendered inoperable due to a freak accident: the flight deck is partially torn off during a heavy storm. Smaller escorts included HMS Sirrus, an S-class destroyer, the most newly built warship in the escort group. HMS Vectra and HMS Viking, World War I-vintage s. HMS Portpatrick, a , another obsolete World War I design. HMS Baliol, a Type 1 described as "diminutive" and completely unseaworthy for the harsh weather of the North Atlantic. Furthermore, there is HMS Nairn, a River-class frigate, HMS Eager, a fleet minesweeper, and HMS Gannet, a sloop, nicknamed Huntley and Palmer due to her boxy superstructure resembling a biscuit tin. ==Background==

Maclean was a school teacher whose short story The Dileas had won a short story competition in the Glasgow Herald. It was read by the wife of Ian Chapman, an executive at publisher William Collins, who encouraged her husband to read it. Chapman admired the story, calling it "a marvellously moving and evocative piece of writing". He met with Maclean and encouraged him to write a novel based on the author's experience on a convoy to Murmansk. Maclean started writing it in September 1954 and finished it by December. Chapman was impressed ("he had written a novel (or as he would prefer to call it, anti-war novel) with devastating effect") and sent it to his superiors who agreed to publish offering a £1,000 advance. ==Reception==

The book sold a quarter of a million copies in hardback in Britain in the first six months of publication. It went on to sell millions more. Chapman called it "a publishing phenomenon". ==Literary significance and criticism==

The novel received good critical notices, with a number of reviewers putting it in the same class as two other 1950s classic tales of World War II at sea, Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny (set in the Pacific) and Nicholas Monsarrat's The Cruel Sea (set in the Atlantic). ==Allusions==

The same background of the Arctic convoys of World War II, with the combination of extreme belligerent action and inhospitable nature pushing protagonists to the edge of endurance and beyond, appears in Dutch novelist Jan de Hartog's The Captain (1967). Comparisons may also be drawn with Wolfgang Ott's 1957 novel Sharks and Little Fish, written from the viewpoint of a sailor who serves on surface ships and submarines of the Kriegsmarine. The use of ship names derived from classical mythology is a well-established practice of the Royal Navy. Bill Baley suggests that the choice of Ulysses might have been deliberate, Soviet novelist Valentin Pikul chose a quotation from the novel as an epigraph to his Requiem for Convoy PQ-17. ==Film, TV and theatrical adaptations==

Abandoned film projects Film rights were bought by Robert Clark of Associated British Picture Corporation in the 1950s for £30,000. He arranged for a script to be written by R. C. Sherriff, who had just adapted The Dambusters for Associated British; because of the amount of naval detail included, it proved troublesome for Sherriff. However, ABPC never made the film. Another proposed film version was announced by the Rank Organisation at the Cannes Film Festival in 1980 but then was abandoned when Rank pulled out of filmmaking. HMS Ulysses has never been filmed but it was adapted by Nick McCarty for a BBC Radio 4 play of the same name which was first aired on 14 June 1997 in the Classic Play series. It starred Sir Derek Jacobi as Captain Vallery and Sir Donald Sinden as Admiral Starr. ==Comic adaptation==

Japanese Manga HMS Ulysses was highly acclaimed and popular in Japan. The book was serialized in Weekly Shōnen Sunday as Japanese Manga arranged by Kai Takizawa and illustrated by Taiyou Noguchi in 1970. But the Manga has never been published as the Tankōbon. ==See also==