The Cruel Sea

[Jace11]

Watching it now on C4 in the uk. Those Flower Corvettes look quite big in reality and those ASDIC wheels look like hard work to turn.

I've never seen it before, and things have just taken a turn for the worse.

[Ginger Beer]

One of the best British war films ever made...if not THE best. If you've got 'Das Boot', you need 'The Cruel Sea' on the shelf next to it.

They were lucky that at the time they decided to film it, an ex-Greek navy Flower class corvette, RHS Kriezis ( formerly HMS Coreopsis ), was on its way to Britain to be scrapped, and she played the part of HMS Compass Rose.

[Ula Jolly]

Mild damnation, TWO films I need to see then!

[blackdog_kt]

I'm new to this forum since i made a comeback to SHIII recently. Nice stuff to read on slow hours at work :up:

Here's my contribution on the Greek Flower class corvettes and some other historical data.

I'm not 100% sure,but i think there was another Hellenic Navy Flower class corvette by the name of Tombazis. At least one of these ships took part in the allied fleet for the D-Day landings.
If my memory serves me right, both names were taken from navy figures acive in the revolution for Greek independence from the Ottoman empire.

What these guys would do was similar in a sense to submarine warfare,relying heavily on stealth. A crew of about 10 would pack a boat full of highly flammable material,and tow it with another rowboat next to an enemy ship during the night. When all was set and the "bomb-boat" was fastened to the enemy ship,they lit the fuses, escaped on the second boat and waited for the fireworks.

Using this method,a group of sailors managed to burn down the Ottoman flagship moored in the port of Hios island,when its crew was busy celebrating a muslim holiday. Leading that operation was the most succesful in the field,a guy by the name of Kanaris. Some centuries later, a descendant of his would be a prominent figure in the WWII German navy,going by the name of von Kanaris.