Writer Andrew Knighton kindly brings us some insights into writing his latest Commando, No. 5815, Shadow on the Sea, drawn by Jaume Forns, with a cover by Neil Roberts, on sale in all good newsagents now…
The North Atlantic, 1941. Captain Thomas Bright and the crew of HMS Dandelion are tasked with escorting merchant ships harried by German U-boats! Help comes in the unlikely form of Shadow, the new ship’s cat, whose keen eyes and hearing could make the difference in fighting the unseen enemy!
SPOILERS AHEAD: READ THE COMIC BEFORE YOU READ THIS
See Also: New Year, New Commando Comics – featuring the return of Warlord’s Sergeant Rayker
As a cat person, it was only a matter of time before I tried to make a cat the star of a Commando comic. But don’t worry, it’s not all cuteness and purrs, as a ships’ cat gets caught in the dangerous work of the Atlantic convoys in A Shadow on the Sea.
Confessions of a Cat Person
Writing an issue of Commando about a cat might seem like an odd choice, but cats have played an important role on ships throughout history. They keep down the rats that eat everything from ropes to rubber seals, helping to keep sailors afloat. And just like cats on land, they provide comfort, companionship, and entertainment in difficult circumstances. Historian and transport journalist John Bull has written some good posts about this, including a whole Bluesky thread about the evidence for how cat poo was dealt with on historical ships. But this story isn’t about improvised litter trays; after all, there’s a war to be fought.
Long-time readers of my Commando stories might have noticed my tendency to slip animals in when I can. It’s ranged from a casual goat in the background of a Napoleonic skirmish to the introduction of Scruff the dog as Cadman’s latest sidekick. They add visual variety to the page and help show the personalities of human characters, based on how they interact with animals. As a cat lover, reading about ships’ cats really caught my imagination, but I needed something more to make a Commando story, a distinctive angle on war and the people fighting it.
This led me to think about something else I wanted to explore – the escort ships protecting convoys from U-boats during the Second World War. This was dangerous, gruelling, unglamorous work that can be hard to dramatise, and as a result often gets overlooked. I wanted to give those ships and their crews the attention they deserve.
Aside from John Bull’s posts about cats, the other main source of inspiration for this story was Nicholas Monsarrat’s novel The Cruel Sea. Inspired by Monsarrat’s real experiences on the submarine-hunting ships of World War Two, it’s rich with details about life on those ships as well as the terrible dangers the crews faced. And if you’re looking for something else to bring this period to life, Tom Hanks film The Greyhound, based on the book The Good Shepherd by C.S. Forrester, gives a sense of the scale of the ships and the vastness of the challenge they faced.
Details…
If you’ve not read the comic yet, now’s the time to bookmark this page for later. I’m about to get into spoiler territory, as I explore some of the details.
Think of this as a commentary track, for a comic instead of a film. I’m not going to go into every page, but there are some details that might add to our appreciation of the story, and give some insight into the thinking behind one of these scripts…
Page 3
A small cat lost in the vastness of the sea – how could that not tug at your heartstrings?
I based Shadow on my own cat Spooky, though Shadow is a much better ratter.
Also on this page we get a sense of the stakes for this story. Whole crews could be lost in minutes during the convoy battles, and that’s the risk the characters face throughout this comic.
Page 4
There’s at least one account of a cat surviving the sinking of its ship only to join another crew, so it seemed a natural way of introducing Shadow to the crew of the Dandelion.
For those interested in the details, the Dandelion is a flower-class corvette. These small ships served around the globe during World War Two but were particularly important as mine hunters and convoy escorts in the Atlantic. They weren’t all named after flowers, but I spend a lot of time weeding dandelions out of my garden so it was the first thing that sprang to mind when thinking about the flower class.
Captain Bright’s name was chosen for the contrast with Shadow. Everyone else on the crew just got names picked at random from whatever I looked at as I was typing. Sometimes a name is loaded with power and significance, sometimes it’s just my friend’s husband who I saw on Facebook while I was creating characters.
Page 6
My dad’s family worked in and around the Sheffield steel mills, which is why I thought of that when looking for a background for an engineer. In the mid-20th century, Sheffield was still a major steel centre and a natural place for Stratton to have learned the skills an artificer would need to keep an escort ship moving.
Page 7
In most Commando stories, you can see the face of the enemy and hear what they say. In a story like this, where you only see a submarine, it’s harder to personalise them. Naming your machine after a sword and painting a symbol on it is a better fit for World War One fighter aces than U-boat crews, but it seemed like a good way to make the ship memorable, distinctive, and menacing.
Schlägers were used in mensur, a German style of fencing that’s very different from the fencing seen in Britain, with a focus on endurance and the courage to stand your ground rather than on manoeuvrability. It’s the reason why a surprisingly large number of German officers in the World Wars had facial scars.
Page 9
This is where we introduce one of the most important tools in the submarine hunter’s arsenal – ASDIC. One of the first effective submarine detection tools, it was more limited than modern sonar but gave the Atlantic crews a vital chance to hear threats coming.
Page 12
Watching the torpedoes slide past close by was inspired by a similar scene in The Greyhound.
Moments like this must have been nerve racking for the crews, knowing that torpedoes were incoming and able to do almost nothing except wait to see if they hit.
Page 19
In this story, Shadow mostly acts as an early warning system by spotting trouble across the sea, but there are accounts of ships’ crews taking their warnings from cats in other ways. Cats are often sensitive to changes in the weather, and a cat with the zoomies could be an early warning of a change in pressure that would bring worse weather.
Page 25
It might not be a fist fight or a shootout, but Shadow’s rat hunting gave me a way of putting more immediate action onto the page, between the more distant and anonymous battle between ship and submarine.
And again, a cat’s sensitivity to his surroundings proves useful.
Page 26
Cats sleeping on and in gun barrels was taken from real life. Guns get warm when they’re fired and cats have a real knack for finding warm places. As far as I’m aware, this never led to a cat being shot at anyone.
Page 32
One of the things that comes across in The Cruel Sea is the incredible difficulty of dealing with U-boats. However hard the sub hunters tried, there were times when the enemy slipped through and ships were lost.
These were terrifying moments for the crews of the sinking ships. Even if they made it to lifeboats, there was a risk that other ships wouldn’t spot them and that they’d be left adrift to die of thirst or exposure.
Page 42
In war, kill counts are often uncertain or exaggerated because it’s hard to be sure of what happened and people want to celebrate their successes. The nature of anti-submarine warfare made it particularly tough to tell whether they’d succeeded, as a defeated enemy and an escaping one would both disappear beneath the waves. Oil and wreckage could be indicators of a hit, and crews had to try to work out whether what they saw indicated a kill, damage, or a decoy. If the darkness or the weather stopped them looking for debris, they might never know whether they’d scored a hit, and therefore whether they were safe.
This time, though, they get to celebrate a win.
Page 50
It feels insane to me that emergency repairs on 20th century metal ships were still done with mallets and lumps of wood, but it’s the reality of damage control down to the modern day.
Page 51
One of the reasons why I put in the fake damage earlier was to set up this moment. We know that U-boats can spot that sound and that it indicates vulnerable prey. The tables have been turned.
Page 58
Is it realistic for the Schläger to stop and make a radio call at this exact point? I don’t know, but I wanted an excuse for the ships to face each other in the final confrontation, for things to feel more direct and personal.
Sometimes, you have to bend reality a little for the sake of a story.
Page 65
And in the end, the survivors find a safe home, whether it’s the convoy heading for Liverpool or Shadow settling into his new ship.
Let’s face it, he’s going to be there forever now. Once a cat inserts themselves into your life, who has the heart to say no?
I’m really pleased that the folks at Commando indulged me with this cat-themed tale. My furry research assistant also says that he approves.
Andrew Knighton
• New Year, New Commando Comics – featuring the return of Warlord’s Sergeant Rayker
• Commando Comics is online at commandocomics.com | DC Thomson – Subscriptions | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Commando Comics on AmazonUK | Commando Comics on Magzter
Andrew Knighton is an author of short stories, comics, and novellas. His novel, The Executioner’s Blade, a fantasy murder mystery set in a city under siege, is available now. As a freelance writer, he’s ghostwritten over forty novels in other people’s names, as well as articles, history books, and video scripts. He lives in Yorkshire with an academic and a cat, growing vegetables and dreaming about a brighter future. You can find more of his work and social media links at andrewknighton.com
Further Reading
Compiled by John Freeman
Animals at War
• National Museums Liverpool: Ships’ cats
Discover the tales of maritime feline friends
Cats have been clawing their way into wartime history for a long time, and the Royal Navy encouraged their employment until 1975. But none of those cats could boast of having a Dickin Medal, the highest British honour awarded for animal displays of bravery in battle. As of 2018, only one cat has ever earned the prestigious prize: Simon, who served aboard HMS Amethyst.
The BBC also features Simon here in this article. “Remembered: Simon the rat-catching hero navy cat”, published in 2023.
Simon is buried at Ilford Animal Cemetery, run by the PDSA, along with other recipients of the Dickin Medal. At the beginning of World War Two, over 400,000 pets were killed in Britain in just one week, because of fears of food shortages, and, for some, to spare them the suffering of bombing raids. It’s estimated some 750,000 pets were killed for these reasons during the war. As many as 500,000 were buried in a meadow provided by Battersea Dogs & Cats Home (who managed to feed and care for 145,000 dogs during the course of the war), that became part of this animal cemetery.
Historian Hilda Kean published a book about the event called The Great Cat and Dog Massacre in 2017.
The Story of Simon the Cat
Shortly after this article was first published, our attention was drawn to several articles about Simon of HMS Amethyst on the fantastic Purr ‘n’ Fur, a web site all about cats. Launched in 2003, the site, the work of Patrick Roberts, includes a general feature, Cats in Wartime, and several pages about Simon.
Despite the age of Purr ‘n’ Fur – almost as old as downthetubes! – we can heartily recommend a visit by any cat lovers. The main “Simon the Cat” page is here; Patrick’s “Quest for Simon” page, his research into the tale, is here; the feature on Ian Griffiths, with young Simon pictures, is here. Finally, there’s an article on the PDSA Animal Cemetery at Ilford, final resting place of twelve Dickin Medal recipients.
Although the website is no longer being expanded, you can follow Purr ‘n’ Fur on Facebook, which continues to publish cat related news!
• War History Online: Cats Served As Mascots, Pest Control… Oh, and Gas Detectors
The focus of this item is on World War One, but offers an incredible overview of felines at war – whether they liked it or not
A collection of Royal Navy ship mascot postcards, mainly from World War One and the 1920s
• The Important Role of Cats in World War One and World War Two by Rachel Wells
Cats have always had roles on ships, which was no different in the wars. At sea, cats have often been seen as lucky – sailors believe they keep them safe, but their most important role was to control the rodent population and ensure that the food was safe
Oscar (known by his nickname, Unsinkable Sam, or by the Germanised spelling of his name, Oskar) was a ship’s cat who purportedly served during World War Two with both the Kriegsmarine and the Royal Navy and survived the sinking of three ships.
• Ship’s Cats: In War & Peace by Val Lewis (AmazonUK Affiliate Link)
Of all the domesticated animals, cats seem to cause the strongest feelings of admiration or aversion. However, anyone who likes, or even tolerates them, will enjoy this book. 91 Seagoing felines, some of named breeds and others just “moggies” or alley cats, demonstrate their self-reliance and adaptability to life afloat, along with the valuable work of roden control in ships. In smaller craft, the affectionate companionship of a pet has been important to singlehanded sailors. Perhaps the most celebrated ship’s cat was Able Seaman Simon of HMS Amethyst – he was awarded the Dickin Medal (the animals’ VC) for killing vermin in the ship’s stores.
War at Sea in World War Two
• Encyclopaedia Britannica: The Atlantic and the Mediterranean, 1940–41
• Naval Encyclopaedia: Flower Class Corvettes
• The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat (AmazonUK Affiliate Link)
Based on the author’s own vivid experiences, The Cruel Sea is the nail-biting story of the crew of HMS Compass Rose, a corvette assigned to protect convoys in World War Two. Darting back and forth across the icy North Atlantic, Compass Rose played a deadly cat and mouse game with packs of German U-boats lying in wait beneath the ocean waves.
Packed with tension and vivid descriptions of agonizing U-boat hunts, this tale of the most bitter and chilling campaign of the war tells of ordinary, heroic men who had to face a brutal menace which would strike without warning from the deep…
• The Good Shepherd by C.S. Forrester (AmazonUK Affiliate Link)
1942. America enters the war and an untested officer receives his first wartime command . . .
Ploughing through icy, submarine-infested North Atlantic seas is a convoy of thirty-seven merchant ships, carrying vital Allied supplies.
In charge is Commander Krause, a grizzled but unproven veteran of the US Navy.
Over the next forty-eight hours he will stay on watch aboard the bridge of his destroyer as the convoy is hounded by a murderous wolf pack of German U-boats determined to sink every ship without trace.
• Wikipedia: British ASDIC Systems – List
By 1940, Britain’s Anti-Submarine Detection Investigation Committee (ASDIC) had already been developing its underwater listening equipment for nearly 20 years since its conception in 1920. During World War One, submarines had used a piece of equipment called a hydrophone to listen underwater. The advances of ASDIC were to provide the Royal Navy with a more sensitive and directional system for hunting surface craft. Subsequently, to the detriment of submarines, they also provided ships with an underwater searchlight capability that allowed surface vessels to detect and hunt submarines.
• Painting: ASDIC Hut, His Majesty’s Canadian Ship Drumheller
All Commando images featured © DC Thomson Media
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.
Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.
He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.
Categories: British Comics, Comics, Creating Comics, Features
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