100 Books Like HMS Saracen

For me, this is the epitome of the genre.

Monsarrat’s compelling 1951 novel follows the harrowing experiences of Royal Navy officers aboard a corvette battling German U-boats in the Atlantic. Drawing from the author’s own wartime service, the story presents an unflinching account of naval life – its camaraderie, hardship, and sacrifice. Central to the narrative is Lieutenant Commander George Ericson and his young officers, whose resilience is tested by the sea’s brutality and the demands of war.

Monsarrat’s prose is spare yet evocative, capturing both the heroism and the psychological toll of naval warfare with striking authenticity and emotional depth. 

This book is a gritty, realistic fiction novel about a WWII German U-boat captain and crew facing immense challenges from the elements and the enemy while attempting to sink as many allied merchant ships as possible before running out of torpedoes or being destroyed. I particularly appreciated a view of war from “the other side” and details of life aboard a cramped submarine in wartime. The book is a timeless exploration of the privations faced by seamen who dare to wage war at sea. The tragic ending mirrors reality and adds irony and pathos to the story. I found this to be a page-turner that was very hard to put down once started.      

Although this is a novel about a warship and the convoys, the Artic Convoys to North Russia were very real. Winston Churchill said the artic convoy mission was, "The most dangerous journey in the world." I personally sailed with men who had sailed in these convoys taking food, fuel, and weapons to Russia. I sailed with seamen whose ships had been torpedoed by U-Boats, some men had been torpedoed more than once.

I was only 3 years old when the war ended but I have sailed to the Artic and to Vladivostok in the North Pacific, and I have worked on deep sea trawlers fishing off the north coast of Iceland and I can tell you that working at sea, even in peacetime, can be a very dangerous occupation. In wartime life at sea must have been terrifying at times. Now in the comfort of my central-heated house, I pay… show more.

Marryat is known as the “Father or Naval Fiction” who established a genre that still flourishes. In 1806, at fourteen, he joined the Royal Navy as a midshipman. In the next nine years he saw service—and battle—against the French and American navies, at one stage under the command of the legendary frigate captain Thomas Cochrane. Marryat retired as a captain in 1830 to devote himself to writing. This novel is based on his own early years in the navy. It’s light in tone and very readable but there’s no sentimentality when he deals with losses and injury. One suspects that it reflects the gallows' humour that carried the navy through those long years. I’ve always loved it!

I loved this one because it documented every engagement at sea during WWII. Each listing specifies the operational mission, Commanding officers, and exact order of battle of every ship, saving hours of research and allowing me to get right to my story.

All you have to do is flip to any date, and there it is. You will see what is happening in every sea. I dropped Kirov into the soup, and there was my story. I could see what ships were near, which might encounter the Russian Battlecruiser first, and how the Royal Navy might have reacted with the assets in their exact historical positions on any given day.

This book is simply a must-have for any writer of naval fiction in this period.

During the Battle of the Atlantic, it was the Merchant Seamen of many nations that kept the flow of supplies running across the Atlantic despite attacks from ship, submarine, and aircraft, together with all the normal hazards of storm and sea.

Civilians from diverse backgrounds, multi-ethnic, multi-national, and multi-faith they came together as crews to fight their ships through. This is a sympathetic study that takes us into their world to understand why and how, by dogged determination, they withstood the constant dangers to bring their cargo home.

Professor Lambert is the doyen of present-day naval historians.

In this book he tells the story of an incomparably great strategist and historian, Julian Corbett, whose pre-war views on naval strategy were well constructed and sought by men such as Admiral Jacky Fisher, the founder of the modern navy. Unfortunately, Corbett’s ideas were catastrophically ignored in 1914 but shaped Britain’s success in the Second World War and beyond.

After almost 80 years you might think that there was nothing new to say about the Battle of the Atlantic.  This volume shows the scholarship remains vigorous and ongoing. 

It highlights the multi-faceted nature and complexity of the Atlantic campaign the understanding of which goes well beyond traditional images of U-Boats hunting convoys in the mid-Atlantic. The team of scholars writing for this study provides fresh perspective on the Battle and the struggle for control of Britain’s sealines of communication between 1939 and 1945

The author, Ludovic Kennedy, was a very junior officer aboard one of the Royal Navy destroyers in the thick of the hunt for Bismarck, which lends a palpable “I was there” immediacy to his account of one of the most dramatic episodes in the naval war on the North Atlantic in World War II.  His presentation is well-balanced, and his writing style makes for an easy but thoroughly engaging read, while the vignettes of shipboard life and the naval service, in general, are by turns fascinating, gripping, and sometimes tragic.

This book relates the recollections of the men of the Levant Schooner Flotilla, The Sacred Company, and the Aegean Raiding Forces. The author was a young officer in the Royal Naval Reserve who commanded a flotilla of raiding caiques on undercover operations in the Greek Islands.

These men were involved in naval operations in WWII. A mixed bag of volunteers, their task was to carry out Allied raiding parties in enemy-held territory. In total secrecy, under the cover of darkness, they navigated the seas, scuttled enemy boats, and blew up enemy ammunition.