Heading home across the cruel sea

Apr 23 2008 by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post

With the help of the Daily Post, the archive of a world famous Liverpool novelist is about to return home. Peter Elson reports

IT IS nearly 30 years since the death of Nicholas Monsarrat, that great Liverpool-born chronicler of the seafaring life and author of The Cruel Sea.

In spite of his passing in 1979, robbing his widow, Ann, of nearly half a lifetime of mar- riage, she is anything but bitter.

“We had the most wonderful time, and I’ve never for a moment regretted marrying Nicholas,” she tells me at her home in Malta.

“I’ve not remarried, simply because I’ve never met anybody to match him. There seemed no point.”

This is an extraordinary testament to the late novelist’s presence, as the reasons for remarriage are many, not least because it is a cold and lonely world out there on your own.

His emotional embrace retains its welcome hold on Ann Monsarrat, in spite of the fact they had no children.

“Nicholas had been married twice before, and already had children. He didn’t want any more and I was agreeable to that.”

Besides their obvious closeness as a couple who were highly attuned to one another, there was their shared interest in his work.

After living a life full of experience, Nicholas was dedicated to reprocessing this through his writing, which became the couple’s metaphorical offspring.

And it is this tangible legacy that is completing the full circle of his life back to Liverpool.

Although his archive of manuscripts, personal documents, letters, books and other effects could raise considerable funds on the open market, Ann is determined that these will return to his home city.

“It’s what Nicholas would have wanted,” declares Ann.

“He wandered the world, but having been born and brought up in Liverpool and served in the city during the war, it was spiritually and emotionally his home.”

Liverpool is the perfect place for the archive. Nicholas was one of the city’s greatest creative sons and graphically chronicled a colossally important time in its history.

Battered by the Blitz during the war, Liverpool was the western world’s most important seaport. It was the eastern end of the supply lifeline, which was constantly under severe threat during the Battle of the Atlantic of 1939-45.

Without the bravery and devotion of Nicholas and thousands of his fellow sailors keeping the convoys safe, Britain and the Allies would have fallen to the Nazi threat.

The man who has preserved the memory of these fraught times and their human sacrifice through his supreme novel-writing talents must be celebrated in his home city.

That is why the Daily Post is backing projects such as saving HMS Whimbrel as the Battle of the Atlantic Memorial ship, the last survivor of the convoy duties Nicholas describes.