MacLean short cuts by telling us what his characters are like, and concentrates on intensity of atmosphere and incident. As maybe you have guessed MacLean was aiming for intensity of atmosphere.Īs a novel, it does not break the ice, there is hardly any characterisation, nor is there much plot. No spoiler as we are told this almost immediately - we know from the start that there is a war on, also that the Arctic in winter is exceptionally cold, that the crew are exhausted having been escorting convoys for so long that there are more or less dead on their feet, indeed they are so weakened by chronic lack of sleep and living off corned beef sandwiches that TB is rampant. We are told that this ship is pretty exceptional, but it becomes clear that for all its engine power and armaments that it is effectively a set of potential death traps riveted together and capable of floating. The novel tells the story of the flag ship escorting an Arctic convoy to Murmansk during the second world war. He not only won the money but was invited to write a book and Ulysses was the result in 1955.
HMS Ulysses was Alister MacLean's first novel, later he would be famous for such tales as Where Eagles Dare, The Guns of Navarone, and various others, but anyhow before all that after a stint in the Royal Navy during the war he became a school teacher and was labouring away at that trade when he entered a short story writing competition with the then very considerable prize of One hundred pounds. It is an incredibly moving record of the horrors of war, not the glory. The characters are true to life in conditions where human beings are asked to exhibit personal emotional strength and bravery, a readiness to face everything thrown at them in the most terrifying and heart-stopping conditions with a unity that overcomes all that face them every day and every night too. His dramatic descriptions are very powerful. The dreadful daily conditions are appalling for the men who suffer aboard her and they are physically and emotionally stretched far beyond their human limits. These convoy runs were fraught with constant danger from the atrocious weather conditions at sea but also from the risk of destruction by Germany’s U-Boats. HMS Ulysses is a frigate which is part of the arctic convoy runs during World War II to Murmansk. This is the author's first book and he has written many more excellent sea stories too, but this one stands out for me much in the way of the novel "The Cruel Sea" I first read this brilliant heart-stopping book years ago many times over and recently bought it again.
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