Some editions carry a prefatory note disavowing any connection between the fictional cruiser HMS Ulysses and the U-class destroyer of the same name.

They are beset by numerous challenges: an unusually fierce Arctic storm, German ships and U-boats, as well as air attacks.

A boarding party of Royal Marines from Duke of Cumberland was sent to put down a stokers' "mutiny" on Ulysses before the beginning of the book.

HMS Stirling is an obsolete World War I-era C-class cruiser of the Ceres sub-group (referred to as Cardiff Class in the novel).

HMS Defender, Invader, Wrestler and Blue Ranger, are smaller American-built escort carriers converted from merchant ships (Avenger or Attacker-classes).

Defender in particular is rendered inoperable due to a freak accident: the flight deck is partially torn off during a heavy storm.

HMS Baliol, a Type 1 Hunt-class destroyer described as "diminutive" and completely unseaworthy for the harsh weather of the North Atlantic.

[3] The same background of the World War II Murmansk convoys, with the combination of extreme belligerent action and inhospitable nature pushing protagonists to the edge of endurance and beyond, appears in Dutch novelist Jan de Hartog's The Captain (1967).

Comparisons may also be drawn with Wolfgang Ott's 1957 novel Sharks and Little Fish, written from the viewpoint of a sailor who serves on surface ships and submarines of the World War II German navy, the Kriegsmarine.

The book was serialized in Weekly Shōnen Sunday as Japanese Manga arranged by Kai Takizawa and illustrated by Taiyou Noguchi in 1970.