Of course it doesn't help that the other nations don't actively promote their forces in the same manner the Americans do - perhaps good, perhaps bad.
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.