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".