Editing In Which We Serve (section)

===Screenplay development===
Coward agreed to work on the project as long as the subject was the [[Royal Navy]], and he was given complete control.<ref>[[#Hoare|Hoare]], p. 322</ref>

As the sinking of {{HMS|Kelly}} on 23 May 1941 was still on Coward's mind, he decided to use the ship's demise as the basis for his script. Mountbatten, aware that there was some public antipathy to his political ambitions, agreed to support the project as long as it was not a conspicuous biography of his own experiences. In order to do research, Coward visited the [[HMNB Devonport|naval base]] in [[Plymouth]], where [[Michael Redgrave]], with whom he was in a relationship at the time, was stationed. He also visited [[Portsmouth]] and the [[Home Fleet]] at [[Scapa Flow]], where he sailed on {{HMS|Nigeria|60|6}}.<ref>[[#Hoare|Hoare]], pp. 323–24</ref>

Coward spent the final months of 1941 drafting a screenplay. However, when he submitted it to Havelock-Allan, the producer told him the film would run between eight and nine hours if it was made as written because it included lengthy scenes in [[Paris]], [[China]], and the [[West Indies]]. Havelock-Allan told Coward he needed to trim the plot down to the basics by eliminating everything that was not related to the ''Torrin'' or its crew. Heeding the advice, Coward started his story with the laying of the ship's keel in 1939 and concluded it soon after it sank off the coast of Crete.<ref>[[#Hoare|Hoare]], pp. 324–25</ref> For the speech at the end of the film, when Capt. Kinross addresses the survivors from the ''Torrin'' in Alexandria, Coward used the real speech that Mountbatten gave to the surviving crew of HMS ''Kelly'' after they were rescued and taken to Egypt.<ref name="Mountbatten"/><ref>{{cite book|title=The Book of Military Quotations|first=Peter G.|last=Tsouras|publisher=Zenith Imprint|year=2005|isbn=0-7603-2340-2|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=BDgnD0omDo0C&q=kelly+survivors+there+isn%27t+one+of+you+mountbatten&pg=PA89 81]}}</ref>