Death: 8th August 1979Location: Cremated, ashes scattered into The Solent (the strait that separates the Isle of Wight from the mainland of England)
Cause of death: Cancer
Photo taken by: Arriva436
Buy books by Nicholas Monsarrat
British novelist known for his sea stories, particularly The Cruel Sea (1951).
He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, with the intention of practicing law, but he turned to writing and supported himself as a freelance writer for newspapers whilst writing novels.
Though a pacifist, Monsarrat served in World War II, first as a member of an ambulance brigade and then as a member of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR). His lifelong love of sailing made him a capable naval officer, and he served with distinction in a series of small warships assigned to escort convoys and protect them from enemy attack. Monsarrat ended the war as commander of a frigate, and drew on his wartime experience in his postwar sea stories.
The Cruel Sea (1951), Monsarrat's first postwar novel, is widely regarded as his finest work, and is the only one of his novels that is still widely read. Based on his own wartime service, it followed the young naval officer Keith Lockhart through a series of postings in corvettes and frigates. It was one of the first novels to depict life aboard the vital, but unglamorous, "small ships" of World War II—ships for which the sea was as much a threat as the Germans.
When he died his ashes were scattered at sea with full Military honours from a Royal Navy destroyer, HMS Scylla (F71), into the Solent off of the coast of Portsmouth.
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