HMS Ulysses (novel)

HMS Ulysses

First edition
Author	Alistair MacLean
Illustrator	John Rose[1]
Language	English
Publisher	Collins
Publication date	1955
Publication place	United Kingdom
Media type	Print (Hardcover)
Pages	357 pp (1994 paperback)
Followed by	The Guns of Navarone

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 U-class destroyer of the same name.

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 HMS Glowworm and HMS Jervis Bay, an armed merchant cruiser, sacrificed themselves by engaging larger opponents.

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.^[2]

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.^[2]

HMS Ulysses is similar to the real Dido-class cruisers, MacLean had served in HMS Royalist 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 C-class cruiser 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 V and W-class destroyers. HMS Portpatrick, a Town-class destroyer, another obsolete World War I design. HMS Baliol, a Type 1 Hunt-class destroyer 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 Kingfisher-class sloop, nicknamed Huntley and Palmer due to her boxy superstructure resembling a biscuit tin.

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.^[2]

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 and Nicholas Monsarrat's The Cruel Sea.^[3]

The same background of the World War II Murmansk convoys, 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 World War II German navy, the Kriegsmarine.

The use of ship names derived from classical mythology is a well-established practice of the Royal Navy. However, commentator Bill Baley^[4] suggests that the choice of Ulysses might have been less than accidental. "Unlike in Joyce's famous book, there are here no specific scenes clearly reminiscent of specific ones in Homer's Odyssey; but overall, it was Homer's Ulysses who gave Western culture the enduring template of a long and harrowing sea voyage where peril waits at every moment and of which few of the crew would survive to see the end."

Soviet novelist Valentin Pikul chose a quotation from the novel as an epigraph to his Requiem for Convoy PQ-17.

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.^[5] 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.^[6]

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.

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.^[7] But the Manga has never been published as the Tankōbon.^[8]

• Arctic convoys of World War II
• Convoy PQ 17, an Arctic convoy almost destroyed by the Germans in 1942
• JW 58, the convoy MacLean sailed with on Operation Tungsten
• The Captain (novel) with the same background

• Book review at AlistairMacLean.com