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 U-class destroyer 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 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 (H92) and HMS Jervis Bay, an armed merchant cruiser, sacrificed themselves by engaging larger opponents.

Ships featured in HMS Ulysses
HMS Ulysses is similar to the real Dido-class cruiser cruisers. MacLean had served in HMS Royalist (89) of that class.

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.

Aircraft carriers Defender, Invader, Wrestler and Blue Ranger, are American-built escort carriers. Accidents and enemy attacks conspire to remove all the aircraft 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 sloop, nicknamed Huntley and Palmer due to her boxy superstructure resembling a biscuit tin.

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."

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.

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 and Nicholas Monsarrat's The Cruel Sea.

Allusions/references from other works
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 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."

References to HMS Ulysses in other works
Valentin Pikul chose a quotation from the novel as an epigraph to his Requiem for Convoy PQ-17.

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.

Japanese Manga
HMS Ulysses 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.