As Nicholas Monsarrat’s archive is formally given to Liverpool, Peter Elson reports on honouring one of our most famous sons

IT’S been a long voyage through time and across oceans worthy of the subject himself. At long last, the Nicholas Monsarrat Archive, effectively embracing The Cruel Sea author’s entire working, is safely tied up in his home town.

His widow, Ann Monsarrat, who donated the archive, his son Max Monsarrat and other family members attended the handover at Liverpool Athenaeum.

Ann travelled from her home in Malta, where she lived with Nicholas before his death in 1979, and was accompanied by her brother, Richard Griffiths.

Max and his wife, Rachel, journeyed from France to witness the event and enjoy the celebratory gala dinner.

The chain of events which led to the archive’s transference to Liverpool began more than two years ago.

A long-time friend, Ann telephoned me to say she was moving from the home on the island of Gozo, off Malta, which she shared with Nicholas.

This centuries-old beautiful former farmhouse, with its two courtyards, was proving too large for her.

But there was the matter of her late husband’s archive.

In his will, he stipulated he wanted his books, manuscripts and various personal effects to return to his home city.

Ann was determined to carry this out and told me: “I want it to come back to Liverpool, it’s what Nicholas wanted.

“Although Nicholas lived all over the world, he always regarded Liverpool as his spiritual home.”

Nicholas was born at 11, Rodney Street, Liverpool, in 1910, the son of the eminent surgeon, Keith Monsarrat.

After Cambridge University and an abortive start in a lawyer’s officer, he turned to writing – but with little success.

A keen yachtsman on family holidays in Anglesey, he enlisted in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve at the outbreak of war.

His experiences in the Battle of the Atlantic convoy escort duty provided the raw material for several books, such as Three Corvettes, in 1942-5. This culminated in serving onboard HMS Campanula, based in Albert Dock, which provided the basis for his magnum opus, The Cruel Sea.

This was the definitive novel of the Battle of the Atlantic, carrying a resonance that no amount of official documents and statistics could convey.

After the war, he joined the diplomatic corps and wrote The Cruel Sea while posted to Johannesburg, South Africa.

This was published in 1951 to great critical and huge worldwide acclaim, allowing him to become a full-time writer.

The Monsarrat archive is, indeed, a coup for any institution.

After telling me of her plans to send the archive to Liverpool, Ann needed to know of a suitable repository.

I gave her a list of possible bodies and, as soon as the Athenaeum was mentioned, she was emphatic in her response.

“That’s the place. It’s a part of Liverpool Nicholas would still recognise and his father was a member there,” she says.

Keith Monsarrat was a proprietor (the Athenaeum’s name for members) and when we checked the club’s records it noted he left in 1910.

As this was the year of Nicholas’s birth, we wondered if having an extra mouth to feed in the family forced him to relinquish this luxury?

“I’m so happy the archive has come to the Athenaeum, as Nicholas might well have dined here as a young man or in the war,” says Ann.

It also fits in with the ambitious project to bring HMS Whimbrel Battle of the Atlantic Memorial Warship back from Egypt to be permanently berthed in Liverpool.

This is the only surviving WWII warship similar to the fictional HMS Compass Rose, featured in The Cruel Sea.

HMS Whimbrel would also complement the Western Approaches museum, Derby House, Liverpool, from where the Battle of the Atlantic was directed. Dr John Edmondson, of Liverpool Athenaeum Library, has been cataloguing the archive since its arrival in Liverpool last November.

“This is one of the best and most comprehensively documented archive of any 20th- century writer’s life I have come across,” he says.

“Everything is here, from his notebooks, appointment diaries, letters, tax returns and an amazing collection of first and foreign editions.

“We even have his binoculars, which we believe are the ones he wears in the famous picture of him as a commander on the bridge of his destroyer.”

Some of the objects, including the binoculars, will be on show in the Athenaeum’s new Monsarrat meeting room.

Due to space limitations at the Athenaeum, some material will be stored at the Liverpool Record Office, allowing public access.

This is also highly appropriate as the Record Office owns the missing jewel in the Monsarrat archive crown, the original Cruel Sea manuscript.

Although a private club, the public will be able to visit the archive at the Athenaeum, by appointment.

On an earlier visit, Max added to Ann’s gift by donating the script of his only play, The Visitor, wartime patrol logs, rough books and manuscripts for Three Corvettes.

These were left to him by his mother, Nicholas’s first wife, with whom he lived in Woolton.

“This is a fine way to preserve my father’s work,” says Max.

“I’m delighted that, after all the hurdles in getting the archive back to Liverpool, it has finally arrived.

“This is the city of my father’s birth and the archive’s place here does great honour to both my father and the Athenaeum.”

That it is here is also due to the backing of Athenaeum past president Judge John Roberts and current president Hilary Gatenby.

But the key player in making it physically happen was Athenaeum chief executive Pamela Brown.

Pushing her contacts to the limit, she received free transportation from Cube Relocations Malta, Malta Port Authority, CMA/CGM (UK Shipping) Ltd container line for carriage to Tilbury, Freightliner for rail to Garston Docks and JMD Haulage and storage at Royal Navy HQ Northern England, Liverpool.

This sponsorship was worth £8,000.

For me, it has been a deeply satisfying privilege to play go-between in this literary sea saga.

This has been a journey of many coincidences.

I first came across Ann in the early 1980s, when she was researching a history book.

Latterly, discussing publicity for the archive, I mentioned the film critic Barry Norman, whose father produced the successful film of The Cruel Sea.

“Oh, I used to work with Barry Norman on Fleet Street,” said Ann, as I idly flicked through one of Nicholas’s diaries.

As I glanced down, there was an entry, “Meet Barry Norman 11am Dorchester Hotel”. A spooky coincidence? This started a chain of events which led to Barry making a BBC Radio 4 documentary about the archive, produced by Cecile Wright.

When Ann came to Liverpool for the archive formal hand-over, she stayed at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, at the Pier Head.

We photographed her exactly where she boarded Canadian Pacific liners to sail to the Monsarrat home, then on the St Lawrence River, in the 1960s.

Ann also donated a 1929 portrait of Nicholas and his sister, Felicity, at their Trearddur Bay holiday home, which was painted by Edward Halliday.

Halliday, a successful mid-20th century painter from Liverpool, also painted the Athenaeum’s library murals.

Just coincidence? When I mentioned this to Ann, that it was almost if Nicholas was pulling the strings from above, she laughs heartily.

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” she chuckles.

Also, Pam Brown was able to persuade CMA/CGM container line when, by chance, she was seated next to its chairman at a dinner.

So, after all this time and energy so freely and enthusiastically given by so many people, the archive is finally safely moored.

What makes me so pleased is that this is a project of which Liverpool should be so proud and could not have been replicated elsewhere.

peter.elson