> NB The author of the novel on which the The Cruel Sea is based, Nicholas Monsarrat, wrote a moving account of his own service - Three Corvettes - which is one of the few books that has reduced me to tears. Funnily enough I happened to read the book while flying over the North Atlantic...

Alistair MacLean's HMS Ulysses is another of those. I read it as a teenager and a couple of scenes are as sharp in my mind as the day I read it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Ulysses_(novel)

That is a fantastic book indeed. It's on the Combat Studies Institute reading list, and rightly so.