SOURCE: Sternlicht, Sanford V. “Hornblower: The Man Alone.” In C. S. Forester and the Hornblower Saga, pp. 89-115. Syracuse, N. Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1999.

[In the following essay from the only full-length study of Forester, a revised reprint of a 1981 edition, Sternlicht presents a full description of all of the Hornblower novels, along with background sources and an assessment of the importance of the series in popular literature.]

C. S. Forester created Horatio Hornblower in 1937. Their association continued until Forester's death in 1966. It began as Forester watched a freighter captain, the skipper of the S. S. Margaret Johnson, make decisions for that little world he commanded, his ship.¹ It developed into a parable for English indomitability in the face of tyranny perpetrated by Napoleonic France or Hitlerian Germany. It ended as a fictional epic of a successful British naval officer, cast in the Nelsonian mold, who was born in obscurity on July 4, 1776, and who survived shot and shoal to live into an honored old age. In the process, Horatio Hornblower became one of those few characters in art who step out of the covers of a book or the arch of a proscenium stage seemingly to usurp an actual place in history. Sometimes those characters survive because they are true to life; Hornblower is true to history.

For Forester, the series were “psychological novels. They started with my interest in the problems of the independent command, they presented themselves to me in the first place as studies in psychology.”² For his audience, the Hornblower saga represented the historical novel at its most exciting, an opportunity to identify with a Romantic hero and to learn a bit of history at the same time.

Perhaps the Hornblower Saga really began ten years before the first novel, The Happy Return (1937; American title: Beat to Quarters), was published. In 1927, in a secondhand book shop, Forester purchased three bound volumes of an old professional magazine, The Naval Chronicle, published from 1790 to 1820. The issues were written by naval officers for naval officers of the period and they served as a professional roundtable where ideas concerning tactics, shiphandling, communications, gunnery, and other naval procedures were discussed, shared, and evaluated. The books went with Forester aboard the Annie Marble, and as they represented his primary leisure reading for many months, the author absorbed them thoroughly and stowed away their copious information for a later day.

I THE SAGA

All in all, Forester wrote ten Hornblower novels, an eleventh which he was unable to finish before his death, and several additional stories which, some more than others, fit into the Saga. The most important of these stories is “The Last Encounter,” which Forester wrote as a conclusion to the tale of Hornblower. Almost all of the Saga were published first in serial form in the Saturday Evening Post, where they were lavishly and imaginatively illustrated. Some of the stories also appeared in Collier's and Argosy.

Mr. Midshipman Hornblower (1950) is, in fact, a collection of ten stories about the young Horatio Hornblower. It covers the period between June 1794 and March 1798. Horatio is seventeen when he reports aboard H.M.S. Justinian, becomes seasick immediately, and shortly afterwards is involved in a duel. Fortunately he is transferred to the frigate Indefatigable, under the command of the dashing Captain Sir Edward Pellew. Midshipman Hornblower is given the opportunity to bring a captured prize to port and promptly loses her. Captured by a French privateer, he sets fire to the enemy ship and effects her capture. His next learning experience is in a cutting-out expedition in which a French ship is stormed at her anchorage, captured, and sailed out. Then the young midshipman sees ship-to-ship action in command of the mizzen top. An unsuccessful attempt at a French Royalist invasion of Revolutionary France finds Horatio in action with British regular troops on the enemy shore. When the becalmed convoy, guarded by the Indefatigable, is attacked by Spanish galleys, Horatio captures one from a small craft. Promoted by Pellew to acting lieutenant, his examination for permanent promotion is interrupted and postponed by emergency action against Spanish fire ships at Gibraltar. He then has temporary command of a cattle boat. Finally, given his first real command, the tiny captured sloop Le Reve, Horatio is himself captured again, this time by the Spanish. His promotion comes through to him in captivity because of his outstanding service to date. The Spanish release him from captivity after he risks his life to effect the rescue of shipwrecked Spanish sailors. In four years the young lieutenant has had an enormous amount of adventure and experience on which he would draw during his future career as a King's Officer.

One additional story is set during Horatio's midshipmancy. “The Hand of Destiny” takes place from October through December 1796. The story was published in Collier's on November 23, 1940, long before Forester thought of the possibility of a collection of Midshipman Hornblower stories. In it, Hornblower faces his first days as a lieutenant. He prevents a mutiny and thwarts a cruel captain. Clearly, Forester omitted “The Hand of Destiny” from Midshipman Hornblower because it conflicts chronologically and artistically with later work. For example, during “The Hand of Destiny,” Hornblower is serving under a Captain Courtney on board His Majesty's Frigate Marguerite and they capture a Spanish vessel named the Castilla. In Midshipman Hornblower during the same period, Horatio is quite busy on the Indefatigable, under Captain Pellew. It is stated that he has been promoted to lieutenant at the age of twenty, whereas in Midshipman Hornblower he is promoted in August 1797 at the age of twenty-one, and while in Spanish captivity. Hornblower will fight another vessel named Castilla in Hornblower and the Atropos (1953). Last, in Lord Hornblower (1948) he would put down yet another mutiny, once more obtaining a free hand from his superior officer to deal with the mutineers. Forester simply cannibalized this story and used the material elsewhere. Then he ignored it nearly ten years later in planning and writing the stories which would comprise Midshipman Hornblower.

The events of “Hornblower's Temptation,” first published in the Saturday Evening Post on December 9, 1950, and later included in Hornblower during the Crisis (1967), take place late in 1799 after his promotion, release, and restoration to duty. Hornblower is the junior lieutenant on H.M.S. Renown. He is given the onerous task of arranging for the execution of a man who is an Irish rebel and deserter by British standards but a hero to his own people. Hornblower agrees to forward the man's sea chest to his “wife” along with a letter and a poem. Eventually Hornblower discovers that the poem contains a coded combination for a secret compartment which holds a very large sum of money and a list of rebel names. Hornblower is tempted to turn over the trunk to his superiors but decides, in order to save the lives of the Irishmen on the list, to jettison the trunk and letter.

Lieutenant Hornblower (1952) introduces Hornblower's longtime friend and shipmate, Lieutenant William Bush. The story, covering the period from May 1800 through March 1803, is told through Bush's eyes. The Renown is commanded by the sadistic, schizophrenic, paranoiac Captain Sawyer, who accuses his lieutenants, of whom Hornblower is the most junior, of plotting a mutiny. Indeed, they have been contemplating the possible need for a Caine Mutiny-type take-over. As Sawyer is about to arrest his officers, he falls or is pushed down a hold. Suspicion seems to fall on Hornblower, who obviously is incapable of harming even a mad superior officer, and also on a mistreated volunteer named Welland. Bush and the reader never learn if Sawyer was pushed or actually fell, although Welland's offstage drowning at the end of the book somewhat implies guilt and expiation.

With Captain Sawyer incapacitated by his fall, the first lieutenant, Buckland, takes command. He is pusillanimous and finds it difficult to make decisions. He finally reads the secret orders given to Sawyer and orders an attack on the fortifications and privateer lair of Samana Bay, Santo Domingo. Poorly planned, it fails, but Hornblower saves the day with brilliant planning and courageous action. After capturing the Spanish fortifications and all the defenders, the victorious English embark all prisoners on the prizes and the Renown. The latter is captured by escaping prisoners while enroute to Kingston. Hornblower, skippering a prize, recaptures the ship of the line, while Sawyer is killed by the Spaniards, Bush severely wounded, and Buckland ignominiously caught and tied up in his bed.

In Kingston, Bush is hospitalized and Hornblower is promoted to commander, subject to final approval at home. He is given command of a sloop and sent to England, where he arrives just after news of peace with France, and so his promotion is not confirmed.

Bush returns to England, now paid off like most of the wartime naval officers, to find Hornblower impoverished, still a lieutenant, without a billet, and eking out a mere subsistence in a club, playing whist, an intellectual card game and the ancestor of bridge.

The reader and Bush meet Maria Mason, daughter of Hornblower's sharp-tongued landlady. Maria, who is dumpy and “not quite young,” is deeply in love with Horatio, who admires her and appreciates her kindness but does not love her. Nevertheless, the book's end finds Hornblower, to Bush's disgust, proposing to Maria, having learned that war with France is about to break out again, that his promotion is finally being confirmed, and that a command is awaiting him thanks to a card partner who admires his brilliant game, one Admiral Lord Parry, a commissioner of the navy.

The viewpoint in Hornblower and the Hotspur (1962) is the hero's once more. This work covers the period between April 1803 and July 1805. Hornblower is in command of the sloop Hotspur. His naval rank is commander. He has appointed Bush his first lieutenant. As the story opens, Hornblower marries Maria and proceeds to take the Hotspur on a long patrol to observe the French fleet at Brest as war approaches once more. Through brilliant seamanship he escapes from the guns of the French frigate Loire as war breaks out. Hornblower learns that Maria is pregnant. He plans and executes a successful attack on a French semaphore station and battery. Unfortunately, his steward proves to be a coward and the servant hangs himself in Hornblower's cabin. He is sent a well-trained servant, Doughty, who takes admirable care of Hornblower until the man makes a fatal mistake of striking a warrant officer in a quarrel. Hornblower reluctantly makes it possible for the steward to escape to the frigate Constitution, an American man-of-war in Cadiz, on her way to attack the Barbary pirates.

Meanwhile, Hornblower and the Hotspur survive a terrible winter on blockade duty and subsequently single-handedly thwart a French invasion of Ireland by smashing the transports. Then, given the opportunity to obtain vast prize money by being selected to participate in an action against a Spanish treasure fleet, Hornblower unselfishly chooses to take the Hotspur off to intercept the French frigate Felicite, attempting to warn the Spanish. Hornblower beats off the Frenchmen but loses all chance for the much-needed money, only to find later on that, although the treasure was captured, the sailors did not share the fortune due to a fine point of law. Maria has had a son, and when Hornblower returns to Plymouth she becomes pregnant again. As the book ends, Hornblower is recommended for promotion to captain and must leave the Hotspur.

Hornblower and the Crisis (1967; American title: Hornblower during the Crisis) deals with, or might have dealt with, the period between August and December 1805. Forester died before completing the work, although he left notes for the remainder of the book. The crisis is the impending invasion of Britain by Napoleon's amphibious forces which are waiting for Admiral Villenueve to achieve temporary control of the Channel. Meanwhile, the British nation is hoping that Nelson will be able to catch Villenueve at sea and destroy the French battle fleet.

As the story opens, Hornblower is just about to leave the Hotspur. He is relieved by Captain Meadows and he takes passage for England in a small supply vessel which, however, is delayed by adverse winds. While Hornblower is aboard the lighter, the Hotspur runs on a rock and is lost. Hornblower is a friendly witness at Meadow's court-martial. The latter received a reprimand and he winds up on the lighter with Hornblower with all the other officers from the Hotspur, including Bush.

The lighter, named Princess, is attacked by a French brig-of-war and, through Hornblower's clever plan and the courage of the English officers, the English get temporary control of the brig and escape. Meadows dies in the fight on the brig. Hornblower remembers to get the codes and dispatches from the cabin of the French captain.

Back at Plymouth, Hornblower brings the captured documents to the port admiral who sends him on to the Admiralty in London. Hornblower conceives a plan to copy and use the seals and Napoleon's signature from the documents to forge an order that, if delivered by British spies, would send Villenueve to sea, where Nelson could get at him. The Admiralty agrees to the plan, promotes Hornblower to captain, and sends him on the mission.

The plot continues in outline. Forester planned to send Hornblower to Spain with the forged order, where he would deliver it to Villenueve, who then would go to sea, only to be caught by Nelson at Trafalgar on October 21, 1805. Thus Hornblower would have been responsible for Nelson's opportunity to save England by ending the invasion crisis.

Hornblower and the Atropos (1953) encompasses the period from December 1805 to January 1808. Trafalgar has resulted in a decisive British victory and the death of Nelson. Maria is pregnant once more and the small family is traveling by canal boat from Gloucester to London. Hornblower is on his way to take command of the twenty-two-gun sloop Atropos. Although he is now a captain in rank, he is so junior that his new ship is still only a sloop-of-war, the smallest captain's billet in the Royal Navy.

To Hornblower's surprise, his first set of orders commands him to organize and execute plans for the funeral procession by water for the late Admiral Nelson. The main funeral barge, carrying the enormously heavy metal coffin, nearly sinks, placing both the hero of Trafalgar's body and Hornblower's career in grave jeopardy. Both “survive” the funeral by inches, for “never, never, would England forgive the man who allowed Nelson's coffin to sink, unceremoniously, in Thames mud beside the Isle of Dogs.”³

At the very moment the funeral is taking place, Maria is giving birth to a daughter, their second child. Hornblower is presented to King George III. The king, sane at the time, orders Hornblower to take under his wing the royal great-nephew, the Prince of Seitz-Bunau, as a midshipman on the Atropos. With the Atropos at anchor in a fog, Hornblower rescues a British merchant ship seized by a French privateer, which he then captures. Hornblower sails for the Mediterranean, where he surmounts political, personnel, and technical difficulties to salvage British gold and silver from beneath the noses and guns of the Turks.

Another Spanish Castilla appears and Atropos joins with H. M. Frigate Nightingale, 28, to defeat and capture her. Hornblower takes Atropos to Sicily for repairs and there, unfortunately, the King of the Two Sicilies, having been driven from Naples by Napoleon and now shipless, desires a war ship and Admiral Collingwood finds it politically expedient to give the king the smallest ship in his command, the Atropos. Bitterly Hornblower returns to England to seek a frigate command, hopefully the Lydia, now fitting out. Arriving in Portsmouth, he rushes to Maria, only to find the children ill with smallpox.

Six months later Hornblower is at sea again on the Lydia, a thirty-six-gun frigate. The Happy Return (1937; American title: Beat to Quarters) covers some five months in Hornblower's career, June through October 1808. Bush is Hornblower's first lieutenant and we meet for the first time Coxswain Brown, and the woman who will be Hornblower's second wife, Lady Barbara. We also learn, late in the story, that Hornblower and Maria's two children have died of the smallpox attack related in Hornblower and the Atropos.

Hornblower has been ordered to sail the Lydia, 36, around Cape Horn to the Pacific Coast off Spanish Central America without making an intermediary port. The Lydia has been under sail for seven months and out of sight of land for eleven weeks. Hornblower achieves a miracle of navigation by making a perfect landfall anyway, arriving as ordered at the Gulf of Fonesca to meet with a mad Spanish rebel who calls himself El Supremo. Hornblower, with much distaste, supplies the rebel band with guns and ammunition and then captures the fifty-gun Spanish ship of the line Natividad, turning the valuable vessel over to El Supremo. Sailing South, Hornblower learns that Spain has taken herself out of the Napoleonic orbit and has allied herself with Britain. Now Hornblower must recapture the Natividad.

The situation is further complicated by the appearance of young Lady Barbara Wellesley in Panama. She is the sister of the future Duke of Wellington and thus one of the most influential women in the British Empire. Lady Barbara, marooned in the Spanish possession, insists on passage to England. Reluctantly Hornblower accedes to her demands. However, despite her presence on board, he must first find and defeat the Natividad once more. This time she is better manned, and the rebels put up a courageous fight before sinking. The damage to the Lydia is enormous and the Spanish will not help Hornblower repair his vessel, so Hornblower sails her to a deserted island and completely refits the battered ship in a mere sixteen days.

Meanwhile Lady Barbara has been a great help with the wounded, and the taciturn captain falls in love with her. She loves Hornblower and offers to become his mistress. The tormented hero cannot bring himself to make love to her and the angered aristocrat sweeps out of his life. The story ends with Hornblower on his way home to Maria, seemingly relieved at having escaped commitment and scandal.

A Ship of the Line (1938) covers the period between May and October of 1810. Hornblower is in command of the ship of the line Sutherland, 74, the “ugliest and least desirable two decker in the Navy list.” He has retained Bush as his first lieutenant. Meanwhile Lady Barbara has married Rear Admiral Sir Percy Leighton and she may have secretly used her influence to help obtain Hornblower his new command, for the Sutherland has been assigned to Leighton's squadron. Maria is pregnant once more.

The Sutherland is assigned to convoy duty and Hornblower saves a fleet of East Indiamen from French privateers through brilliant shiphandling. Temporarily on independent duty, he takes prizes, destroys a shore battery, and even routs an army marching down a Spanish road. Hornblower achieves five victories in three days. When the flagship is dismasted and near to foundering in a fierce storm, Hornblower tows the stricken vessel to safety in a fashion similar to the way a ship of Nelson's was once saved by a subordinate.

Hornblower does not get on well with Leighton, who is not quite up to his job. The admiral orders Hornblower to take command of an ill-conceived and ill-fated Anglo-Spanish amphibious expedition against the French fortification at Rosas. The attack fails and Hornblower barely escapes death. Finally Hornblower takes on four French ships of the line in a desperate attempt to prevent them from escaping Leighton's squadron. Although the French are mauled, the Sutherland is shot to pieces, Bush's foot is blown off, and Hornblower surrenders the ship. As the book ends, Hornblower is facing years of captivity.

The story “Hornblower's Charitable Offering,” which appeared in the May, 1941 issue of Argosy, may have been intended originally as a chapter in Ship of the Line and left out of the book by Forester perhaps because he finished it too late for inclusion, or it may have been an afterthought. The moment is sometime between May 16, 1810, when Sutherland departed Plymouth, and June 12, 1810, when she reached her squadron rendezvous off Point Palamos.

The Sutherland rescues two wretched French escapees from the Spanish prison island of Cabrera, where 20,000 French prisoners of war are being held without shelter and are near starvation. In an act of compassion, surely difficult to explain later on to the Admiralty, Hornblower lands a portion of his ship's food supplies to the pathetic prisoners.

Flying Colours (1938) picks up Hornblower's career immediately after the surrender of the Sutherland and covers the period from November 1810 through June 1811. Hornblower is a disconsolate prisoner at Rosas. The four damaged French ships and the stricken Sutherland are at anchor beneath his fortress prison. He witnesses their destruction by British fire-ships.

Hornblower is to be sent to Paris with Bush to stand trial for “piracy” by order of Napoleon. It is expected that Hornblower will be executed. Hornblower selects Coxswain Brown to accompany them as his servant during the long and arduous winter coach trip under guard through the heart of France. Bush is feverish because of the amputation of his lower leg and Hornblower and Brown struggle to keep him alive on the cruel trip. The coach runs off the road in a snow storm and, seeing a rowboat at the riverside, Hornblower seizes upon an escape plan. The Englishmen overpower their chief captor and steal the boat. They drift down the unknown river until capsized at a waterfall.

Miraculously they all survive and make their way to the first house in sight, where to their good fortune they are sheltered by an old royalist, the Comte de Graçay, and his young, widowed daughter-in-law, Marie. Four months later, the lady becomes Hornblower's lover. In the spring, the Englishmen attempt to escape from France by building a fifteen-foot, flat-bottomed boat (the same length as the Annie Marble), and rowing down the Loire to Nantes, where, disguised as Dutch officers loyal to the French, they recapture the British cutter Witch of Endor, 10, and, with the help of released prisoners of the French, fight off pursuers and sail the vessel to the British channel fleet, where Hornblower is welcomed as one thought to be dead. Bush is immediately promoted to commander.

Hornblower soon learns first that Leighton is dead and then that Maria died giving birth to a son who has survived. In England the routine court-martial acquits him with honor. Hornblower is taken to London and is invested as a Knight of the Order of the Bath by the Prince Regent. He is also awarded a sinecure pension as Colonel of Marines. Now affluent and famous, but still not happy, Sir Horatio calls on Lady Barbara, who has been caring for his infant son, Richard. Flying Colours ends with Hornblower knowing “she was his for the asking,” and the clear implication that he would ask.

Commodore Hornblower (1945) opens with Horatio and Barbara married and living in the manor house of Smallbridge. The book covers the period between May and October 1812. Hornblower is promoted to commodore and ordered to take a squadron of vessels to the Baltic to harass the French forces, protect British maritime trade, show the flag, and exert diplomatic pressure on the Swedes and Russians in the British cause. Hornblower is now a player on the great stage of European diplomacy. He is given the seventy-four-gun ship of the line Nonsuch for his flag and, at his request, one-legged Bush is made captain of the flagship, serving as Hornblower's second in command.

Towing a disabled bomb ketch, Hornblower's squadron forces its way into the Baltic past enemy batteries. He recaptures a prize and cleverly destroys the French privateer Blanchefleur with mortar fire from his two bomb vessels. The action, in Swedish waters, so angers Napoleon that he seizes a piece of Sweden, alienating that nation.

Hornblower sails to the Russian naval base at Kronshtadt, where he stiffens Czar Alexander's resolve to resist Napoleon. Hornblower thwarts his Finnish-born interpreter's attempt to assassinate the czar and Prince Bernadotte of Sweden. Getting slightly drunk at an imperial banquet, Hornblower makes love to the Countess Canerine. She gives him fleas.

Operating in the Baltic, Hornblower harasses Bonaparte's northern flank. Ordered to Riga to prevent one of Napoleon's armies, under the command of General Macdonald, from reaching the northern Russian capital, St. Petersburg, Hornblower meets the countess once more but remains sober. At the siege of Riga, Hornblower serves with Colonel von Clausewitz, the great military theorist, who has defected from the Prussian army under Napoleon's control and is aiding the Russian stand against the tyrant.

Hornblower's bomb ketches blast Macdonald's siege and field artillery, gaining more time for the Russians. Hornblower then plans and executes a successful amphibious operation. Caught up in an enemy attack, Hornblower, on horseback, saves the Russian defenders by leading them in a flanking counterattack. The Russian army and the British naval squadron hold Macdonald at Riga while Napoleon meets his destiny at Moscow, but Hornblower is physically exhausted by his exertions. Finally, as Macdonald retreats, Hornblower has a feverish inspiration and he gallops with Clausewitz after the Prussian army in Macdonald's force. Hornblower convinces the Prussians to defect from Napoleon, thus changing the entire course of the war. Hornblower has practically saved Russia and caused Prussia to switch from the French to the British cause. However, he has contracted typhus and the squadron sails home without him. Recovering, he makes his way home to England and Barbara's arms.

The events of the story “Hornblower and His Majesty,” published in the March 23, 1940, issue of Collier's and the March 1941 issue of Argosy, take place sometime during the period from late 1812, when Hornblower ostensibly has recovered from his illness and is back on duty, and December 24, 1815, the date of peace between Britain and the United States, and the end of the War of 1812. Here Forester is careless about dates or arithmetic, and Hornblower's Baltic command, not having been written as yet, is of course ignored. Since Forester mentions recent single-ship-action victories by the United States, the time most likely is the end of the first six months of the War of 1812, sometime in January 1813. Sir Horatio is given command of the royal yacht Augusta and ordered to take the mad but lovable King George III for a healthful sail up the English Channel.

The royal yacht is surprised and chased by a Yankee privateer. Hornblower is tempted to surrender with the thought that the capture of the king might bring about an end to the unnecessary war between Britain and America. Putting temptation aside, Hornblower effects an escape into a fog bank.

Lord Hornblower (1946) extends over the period from October 1813 through May 1814. Hornblower is called upon to suppress yet another mutiny. This time the men of the brig Flame have imprisoned their cruel captain and threatened to sail the ship into French hands if they are not given amnesty and redress. Commodore Hornblower is assigned the sister ship of the Flame, the brig Porta Coeli, and he obtains orders to negotiate. He locates the mutineers off Le Harve and is unable to convince them to give up. Hornblower tricks the French into driving the Flame towards him, and in a brilliant hand to hand boarding Hornblower leads the recapture of the Flame and the acquisition of a French prize.

A French prisoner suggests that the mayor of Le Harve might be able to cause the war-weary city to defect in exchange for commercial privileges. Hornblower sends for reinforcements and to Hornblower's delight, Captain Bush arrives with the Nonsuch, 74. The city is secured and Hornblower becomes governor (an early Douglas MacArthur) of a French port with a Bourbon duke as figurehead ruler. Hornblower waits for a French counterattack. He sends Bush up the Seine to attack and destroy the French siege train, and although Bush is successful, he is killed when the powder barges blow up. Hornblower is disconsolate at the loss of his best friend through his orders.

Immediately, Barbara arrives with additional French royalty. Napoleon is finally defeated and Paris is taken. Hornblower is rewarded for his seizure of Le Harve by elevation to the peerage. He is now Lord Hornblower of Smallbridge. In Paris, Barbara is asked by her brother, the Duke of Wellington, to go to Vienna with him and serve as his hostess as he represents England at the Council of Vienna. Barbara is delighted, but Hornblower refuses to accompany her, partly out of jealousy for his brother-in-law's achievement and partly because there would be nothing for him to do there. They quarrel.

Before leaving for Smallbridge, Hornblower meets his old friend the Count de Graçay, and his former lover, Marie, for whom his feelings rekindle. The timing is dangerous for his marriage and career.

With Barbara in Vienna, Hornblower returns to Smallbridge but is soon restless. He and Brown decide to visit Graçay at the count's invitation. He and Marie become lovers again while Brown marries a young French girl. Suddenly their reverie is interrupted by the news that Napoleon has escaped from Elba and the Bourbon army has deserted to Bonaparte. France is Napoleon's again and Hornblower, the count, Marie, and Brown must flee for their lives.

Asked to lead a guerrilla uprising, they forfeit their chance for escape but manage to tie down a division of French troops sorely needed by Napoleon in the North. In the moment of their capture, Marie is shot to death. The count and Hornblower are sentenced to be shot, and as Hornblower awaits execution at dawn he is told, “It is not death.” Napoleon has been defeated at Waterloo. This time the war is truly over and he will return to Barbara and his son, Richard.

“The Point and the Edge” is merely an outline of a story which Forester relates in The Hornblower Companion (1964) as an example of his writing technique.⁴ Hornblower, in the year 1819, is a very senior captain keeping busy and fit on the beach by taking fencing lessons. He is nearly mugged by a destitute thug but he defeats and captures the mugger with the point of his walking stick. Instead of having the man arrested and executed, he has him enlisted in the Royal Navy. Forester either never actually wrote out the story or it was never published and subsequently lost or destroyed.

Hornblower in the West Indies (1958; American title: Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies) covers the period between May 1821 and October 1823. Hornblower is now a rear admiral and has been given his first full flag assignment as commander-in-chief of the British West Indies Squadron. It is peacetime and the squadron consists of only a few frigates, brigs, and schooners. Yet there is much to do. In New Orleans, Hornblower learns of a French plot to rescue Napoleon from St. Helena and return him to the throne of France, with the probable further outcome that the world would be torn by war once more.

Hornblower thwarts the plot by lying to General Count Cambonne, commander of the Old Guard. He tells the general that Napoleon is dead, giving his word of honor as a gentleman that he speaks the truth. The French are diverted from St. Helena and the despairing Hornblower returns to base to resign his commission because of his loss of honor, only to find that Napoleon has indeed died. Hornblower's long, personal conflict with Napoleon is finally over and the world is saved from the scourge of war.

In the next episode, Hornblower captures a speedy Spanish slaver by cleverly having a drogue attached to the faster ship's rudder. Then Hornblower is kidnapped by pirates in Jamaica, and after his release he destroys their lair using mortar fire once more.

Hornblower then is a witness to the victory of General Simón Bolívar at the turning point of the war for Venezuelan liberation, the Battle of Carabobo on June 24, 1821. His sympathies are with the rebels, who are aided by British mercenaries.

After his three-year tour of duty is at an end, Lady Barbara comes out from England to meet him in Kingston and return home with her husband. Hornblower is saddened by the end of his command. He has, of course, performed brilliantly. Upon being relieved of command, Hornblower and Lady Barbara take passage on a packet ship bound for home. The Pretty Jane runs into a fierce hurricane and nearly founders. Only a waterlogged cargo keeps her afloat. Hornblower takes charge and through his courage, seamanship, and intelligence he saves Barbara's life and the lives of the surviving crew. In the face of imminent death, Barbara confesses that she never loved her first husband and that she has only loved Hornblower. After their safe arrival in Puerto Rico, Hornblower realizes that Barbara's words have made him happy forever.

In the early 1960s Forester wrote the story “The Last Encounter” as a conclusion to the Hornblower Saga, and then he deposited the manuscript in his bank vault, probably desiring its publication after his death. It was published with Hornblower and the Crisis (1967). The story is set in 1848, the year of revolution. Hornblower is now seventy-two, healthy and wealthy, recently promoted to Admiral-of-the-Fleet, although he can never expect active duty again. Lady Barbara is well and still beautiful. Brown continues to serve as Hornblower's butler, although a long time ago he substituted “Ye, my lord,” for “aye, aye sir.” Son Richard is a colonel in the guards serving the young Queen Victoria, and there are promising grandchildren.

On a rainy night a man comes to Smallbridge announcing that he is “Napoleon Bonaparte” and asking the loan of a horse and carriage to get him to the next train station so that he can rush to Paris to meet his destiny in the forthcoming elections. Old Hornblower is sure that the man is mad, but is amused that someone should impersonate, albeit badly, his old, long-deceased adversary. The stranger flatters Lady Barbara and she talks Hornblower into indulging the request. Later it turns out that the visitor was indeed a Bonaparte, Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon I, Pretender to the Imperial Throne, soon to be President of France and eventually Emperor Napoleon III. Once more Hornblower has influenced history. Thus with a humorous tale, the Saga of Horatio Hornblower comes to a happy conclusion.

In 1964 Forester published The Hornblower Companion containing charts of the Hornblower adventures drawn by Samuel H. Bryant with Forester's comments on the locales and “Some Personal Notes.” The latter is an account of Forester's writing techniques and a history of how he came to create and develop Hornblower.⁵

II WRITING THE HORNBLOWER SAGA

Forester did not set out in 1936 to write a novel epic. Hornblower came into being as the answer to a set of problems devised by a working novelist as he pursued his craft in the subgenre of the historical novel. Hornblower became almost a living character, and Forester spun out the Hornblower Saga in part because of the circumstances of the novelist's life, because of the initial growing demand for the reading public for more Hornblower, and because Forester found in Hornblower an alter-ego, a surrogate life of action to complement his own life of the mind, his own life of ever-decreasing physical activity.

Not surprisingly, the origin of the Hornblower Saga lies in both chance and Forester's penchant for eclectic and esoteric research. The second-hand purchase in 1927 of the three volumes of The Naval Chronicle from 1790 to 1820, to be read and reread aboard the Annie Marble, provided Forester, along with continuing interest in the Napoleonic war and the Peninsular Campaign, with the seeds for the Saga. Forester also studied Sir Charles Oman's magnum opus, A History of the Peninsular War (1902-1930), after writing Death to the French and The Gun. Finally, although he never mentioned it in his brief autobiographical writings, Forester must have become acquainted with the life and career of Admiral Lord Donald Cochrane and perhaps read either Cochrane's autobiography⁶ or the biography written by his heir, Thomas Barnes Cochrane.⁷ Cochrane was probably the greatest frigate captain in the history of the Royal Navy and surely one of its most outstanding seamen. The parallels between Cochrane's real life and Hornblower's fictional life are almost startling. Their dates are similar, Cochrane having been born in 1775 and having died in 1860. Cochrane performed convoy duty in frigates and on several occasions saved English merchant ships from French coastal privateers as Hornblower does in Ship of the Line.⁸ Cochrane used signal and flag ruses as Hornblower does in Ship of the Line and the tactic is used unsuccessfully against Hornblower in Commodore Hornblower. Cochrane once took on three French ships of the line with only one small ship at his command and damaged them considerably before surrendering, as Hornblower does in Ship of the Line. Cochrane, in sloops or frigates, defeated much more powerful ships, as Hornblower does in The Happy Return. Cochrane fought dockyard corruption, as Hornblower attempts to do in a small way in Hornblower and the Atropos. Cochrane conducted extremely successful amphibious actions against enemy signal stations, shore batteries, and harbors with prizes to cut out, as Hornblower does while commanding both Hotspur and Sutherland. Both Cochrane and Hornblower are harassed by bureaucrats for supposedly excess use of powder and shot expended in the King's service. Cochrane was a friend of the Wellesley family. Like Hornblower, Cochrane destroyed a French army column ashore by brilliant inshore shiphandling and outstanding gunnery. Cochrane planned and led a great fire-ship action similar to the one Hornblower observed at the beginning of Flying Colours. Cochrane was made Knight of the Bath by George III in 1809, Hornblower in 1811. Both Cochrane and Hornblower obtain command of the West Indies Station. Cochrane planned a rescue of Napoleon from St. Helena in order to make him Emperor of South America. Hornblower thwarts a rescue attempt in Hornblower in the West Indies.

However, although both Cochrane and Hornblower were superb navigators and as commanders were adored by their men, their backgrounds and personalities differed. Cochrane was a nobleman by birth and, although beloved by subordinates, was hated by superiors because of his arrogant, uncompromising, and overweening manner. Hornblower was never disrespectful to superior officers no matter what he thought of their abilities. Hornblower's career, when compared to Cochrane's, actually seems more plausible. Yet both the wild lord and the careful, middle-class mariner end their lives as Admirals-of-the-Fleet, the highest rank in the Royal Navy.

Only Lord Nelson, also a middle-class mariner, can claim to have more influence over the writing of the Hornblower Saga than Lord Cochrane. Forester wrote a biography of Nelson before he created Hornblower. In some ways the Hornblower Saga is almost a biography of Cochrane.

The details provided in The Naval Chronicles intrigued Forester. In them he not only learned of naval campaigns, ships' encounters, and diplomatic accomplishments, but also of shiphandling, maneuvers, stationkeeping, signaling, gunnery, heavy-weather sailing, courts-martial, punishment, and execution. He learned in full detail the texts of treaties such as the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812. In a sense, by reading and rereading the Chronicles and other related books, Forester trained vicariously as a British naval officer of the Napoleonic period.

Observing the captain of the Margaret Johnson at work, the Man Alone, in command, making decisions sometimes of a life-and-death nature, but much more often of routine and business, Forester conceived the idea of an historical novel set in the Central American waters he was then visiting in a leisurely manner. It would be a naval story, probably because Forester was at sea, for he was also fascinated by the character of the Duke of Wellington, who certainly could have illustrated and provided a situation of exploring the problems, challenges, and possibilities of the Man Alone as he led the isolated British Expeditionary Force in the Iberian Peninsula. But a sea story it would be, one partially set in the Gulf of Fonesca, where the Margaret Johnson anchored and Forester did some power boating. If Wellington would not figure in the novel which would be The Happy Return, an imaginary younger sister, Miss Barbara Wellesley, would. The Wellesley family had had its scandals. Nelson, of course, had been involved with Lady Hamilton. Perhaps the fictitious sister might have a fictitious naval lover?

The world of 1936 was obsessed with the break-up of Spain and the rising tide of war. In comparison, Forester thought of the break-up of the Spanish Empire in Bonaparte's time and immediately afterwards, a break-up in which Nelson and Cochrane had participated. Queer things had happened on the Central American coast. Could the British, in their desperate attempt to wrench Spain out of the French orbit in 1808, have supported a demonic rebel, one who might call himself El Supremo? Thus the first character of the Hornblower Saga was born, and he was not Hornblower, the hero, but El Supremo, the villain.⁹

Finally, as the Margaret Johnson entered the Atlantic, the British naval captain, who would be a victim of the Spanish change of sides following Napoleon's attempt to put his brother in the throne of Spain, and who would have to first befriend and then battle El Supremo, began to develop. Hornblower was to be Forester's main example of the Man Alone. The writer would send his protagonist on independent duty far from home and diplomatic support; and further complicate matters for the tested officer by placing an influential noblewoman aboard the captain's man-of-war. That ship would have to be a frigate, for ships of the line seldom operated independently, anymore than battleships did in World War I or World War II.

Without intending to create an epic hero of eleven volumes' duration, Forester, nevertheless, from the beginning set a particular task for himself. Although his hero would conquer his country's enemy or enemies in time, his internal struggles, his cynicism concerning his own motives, his human weaknesses, and his occasional despair would engage him in internal combat for a lifetime. Never would that struggle entirely subside into self-satisfaction.¹⁰

Hornblower was not to be an aristocrat, thus making the affair with Lady Barbara more complicated and more interesting. He would be in his early thirties, married to an uninteresting and less than attractive woman, whom he seldom managed to see due to the demands of his profession. Most of all, however, the hero, soon to be named Horatio Hornblower, would be a perceptive, imaginative man, brave but not fearless, a superb leader, through which the reading public would be able to see the events and actions of the novel. He would also be shy and unsure of himself socially, a somewhat tall and gangling man, handsome in an unselfconscious, rugged, masculine way. He would get tongue-tied and seasick. He would be a whiz at mathematics and be totally tone-deaf. The Happy Return was then written with comparative ease and Horatio Hornblower was born seemingly to live out his fictional life in one year and one book.

After the acceptance of The Happy Return, Forester continued to study the Peninsular War and the way British seapower had strangled Napoleon's attempt to reinforce and supply by sea his fortresses in Spain. Simultaneously, Forester was growing more and more interested in General Francisco Franco's revolt in Spain. The author decided to write a sequel to The Happy Return in which he could portray the effectiveness of the British blockade in 1809-1810. Hornblower was to be resurrected and given command of a ship of the line and sent to the Spanish Coast, where he could again use his knowledge of Spanish, first ascertained in The Happy Return. He would help Wellington in thwarting the French design for Spain. But this time Hornblower was not to be so successful. It was one of Forester's most important decisions, in writing Ship of the Line, to insure that Hornblower would not always be victorious, at least not at first. He would lose Lady Barbara to Admiral Leighton. He would be one of the few English captains ever to surrender a ship to the French, and the novel would end with his career in shambles, with Hornblower parted, seemingly until the long war ended, from both his wife and the woman who had nearly been his lover.

With Hornblower a prisoner of the French in a Spanish fortress, Forester began to read some of the letters of Napoleon. The letters revealed to Forester that Napoleon was essentially unscrupulous in nearly all his dealings, a nineteenth-century Machiavellian and practitioner of Realpolitik. Napoleon could be “induced” by the novelist to condemn the imprisoned British captain as a pirate because he had employed a ruse of war in sailing under false colors. The ruse was legitimate but Napoleon could still make political capital out of it. Perhaps there could be an escape arranged for Hornblower, but how could this occur if Hornblower and the wounded Bush were to be transported to Paris for a travesty trial and with almost all of Continental Europe in Napoleon's hands? The problem was fascinating for Forester and Flying Colours resulted.

The difficulty of finding a way for three Englishmen to escape from the middle of France, with one of them recently relieved of a foot, was resolved by Forester's recollection of his boating trip years before on the River Loire in the Annie Marble. Forester's experiences afloat were never as a yachting sailor but rather as a river and canal boatsman. He would put the three escaping Englishmen, Hornblower, Bush, and Brown, into a small boat and float them down a river. The title of the book was, in fact, suggested by the publisher, Michael Joseph, who said to Forester, “You want to bring him back with flying colours?”¹¹ Once Forester got his escapees down to the port city of Nantes, he knew Hornblower could find a ship and sail them all safely home again; but what fun to have his hero no longer in command of a mighty ship of the line, but temporarily skipper of a twenty-foot boat and a crew of three.

Forester decided at this time to kill off both Maria and Admiral Leighton so that there would be no impediments to the marriage of Horatio and Barbara. Yet despite his love affair with Marie de Graçay and the unexpected intimacy with Bush, Hornblower remained the Man Alone, keeping his own counsel always, in command and solely responsible.

It was six years between the writing of Flying Colours and Commodore Hornblower, years in which Forester struggled with crippling arteriosclerosis and depression. The thought of continuing his hero's active life, just as his own active life had been curtailed, appealed to Forester. However it was bomb ketches that really caught his attention. Forester had developed a fascination for those strange, ill-used, two-masted, mortar-carrying vessels of the Napoleonic period. They had been used frequently in amphibious operations, the kind of affair Hornblower rather excelled in. Their special value was that they could lob an exploding shell shoreward in a high trajectory, rather than merely send a solid shot a short distance on a flat trajectory. The bomb ketches presented the first realistic shore bombardment possibilities. Forester had witnessed the effective use of modern long-range gunnery in shore bombardment aboard an American battleship in 1943, just prior to his illness. He decided to plan a hypothetical ship-to-shore campaign with bomb ketches and larger vessels to cover the mortars. Of course, Hornblower was ready to command the squadron. He was ready for promotion, too, to commodore. And he had been trained by Forester as a Man Alone, now ready to make strategic as well as tactical decisions, ready to deal with friendly nations as well as neutrals and enemies. The place was the Baltic, the year was 1812, the book was Commodore Hornblower. Of course it was better for Forester, with his millions of American readers, to have Hornblower in the Baltic in 1812 rather than off Baltimore that fateful year.

Commodore Hornblower first came out in serial form in the Saturday Evening Post. Forester was never quite sure that his work was well suited for that kind of publication and later on the Hornblower books would suffer somewhat because of their episodal construction forced on them by the length limitations and the need for chapter or section climaxes. As a general and family magazine, the Post required a degree of sanitizing and decorum not expected in general fiction in the 1940s through the 1960s. Nevertheless, Hornblower's adultery in Commodore Hornblower, albeit a one-night stand under the influence of drink (Commodore Hornblower could never hold liquor well) and punished by the infestation of fleas, was the first adultery in the history of the Post and it provoked numerous newspaper comments and letters from the reading public. Did Forester mean to imply that the typhus Hornblower contracted, a disease passed on through lice, might have been transmitted in the act of adulterous sexual intercourse and was perhaps a punishment on the Adventurer by the God-Novelist for his first infidelity to Lady Barbara?

Hornblower's recovery after typhus paralleled Forester's partial recovery from arteriosclerosis, or at least the disease had halted and the author had learned to live with his disability. He also had been disabled.

It was now 1945 and Forester was witnessing the break-up of the three Axis empires. With Hornblower safely back at Smallbridge, Forester began to reflect on the fall of the Napoleonic empire. It must be remembered that the first five of Forester's Hornblower books were written either just before or during World War II. In the writing of Commodore Hornblower and Lord Hornblower, Forester used Napoleon as a surrogate Hitler. Both men had been archenemies of England, both had conquered almost all of Continental Europe, both had been kept at bay by the British Navy, and both had come within inches, or rather the few miles of the English Channel, of conquering Forester's beloved country. Now Forester turned with relish to Hornblower's part in the defeat, if not in the death, of the villain who had longed for his blood.

During the last days of Napoleon's reign, the city of Bordeaux had defected from the emperor's cause. Forester thought it might be an interesting task for his Man Alone to be involved in the defection of a French city, to have to run it, supply it, defend it, as many an Allied commander had done or was still doing in Europe, Asia, and Africa. After all, some, like General Douglas MacArthur, had whole nations to administer.

Now Forester decided to complicate the relationship between Horatio and Barbara. By having them go their separate ways from Paris after Hornblower meets Marie once more, Forester is able to start up the romance between Hornblower and Marie again and to create a situation in which Hornblower is trapped in France during Napoleon's brief return to power before the Battle of Waterloo. Lord Hornblower turned out to be the most carefully crafted and precisely motivated of the Hornblower novels, the one which satisfied Forester the most. It builds to great suspense and ends only a minute or so after Hornblower has been reprieved from certain death.

Soon after completing Lord Hornblower and believing he was finished with the naval hero, Forester suffered a severe and near fatal heart attack. He was only given an even chance to live. Once more Forester turned to the Hornblower Saga for therapy. He decided to write on the young Hornblower's beginning, with his entry into the Royal Navy as a midshipman. Remembering his even chance to live or die, Forester created a depressed young man willing to take an even chance in a duel, either to rid himself of a tormentor or be killed and thus end an unbearable existence. It was also pleasant to imagine Lord Hornblower as a young man, eighteen years old, navigating French prizes, skirmishing with Spanish galleys, eventually taken prisoner, and conveniently learning Spanish in preparation for previously written adventures aboard the Lydia. Hornblower seemed to confer some of his youth on his creator, who rallied and recovered. Thus, Midshipman Hornblower was written as a labor of therapy and love.

It was only natural for Forester to begin to fill in further gaps in the Saga between Midshipman Hornblower's career and Captain Hornblower's adventures. Lieutenant Hornblower followed the midshipman's story. Forester had found a copy of a British militia artillery manual of 1860 and he became very interested in the use of heated shot by coast artillery against wooden ships. He wanted to put that information into a novel. Forester could also pay homage to Hornblower's doughty friend Bush, sadly dispatched in Lord Hornblower, by letting the good lieutenant, his shot-away foot temporarily restored, tell this story. Now Forester could also explain Hornblower's rather improbable marriage to Maria. Hornblower is then promoted, loses the promotion because of peace, is in despair, and then regains the promotion with the renewal of war with France. He is a commander, but the readers will not see Hornblower acting in that rank until much later.

Now Forester skips from 1803 to 1805 and he will have to back and fill later on. But in Hornblower and the Atropos he can link up with The Happy Return. Hornblower is to be a very junior captain, too junior to have commanded a ship of the line, alas, at Trafalgar, but of just the right seniority to be given charge of the water section of the funeral arrangements for Nelson. Forester can also use his knowledge of the inland waterways of England. He had spent much time on the English canals and rivers in a motorboat. Now he could combine this knowledge with his interest in exploring further the relationship between Hornblower and Maria, whom he had killed off in Flying Colours. And then the two children had to die. The little happiness they had brought Horatio was over and Forester could feel quite satisfied that although Hornblower had been given much happiness with Barbara and his third child, Richard, he had earned his family bliss with his early unhappiness and suffering.

After Hornblower and the Atropos, Forester had the opportunity to sail in the West Indies. In those lovely, warm waters he got to thinking about Hornblower again. His hero was not one to remain happy for long, and it was time to consider his career after the end of the Napoleonic wars. Perhaps, given the long, peacetime wait between commands, Hornblower at Smallbridge would begin to brood over Barbara's first marriage. Did she love Leighton, or his memory, more than she loved him? Better to promote him to rear admiral and to send him to sea again. The West Indies kept the shrunken Royal Navy busy enough in the 1820s. There was a great deal of fighting going on in Central and South America, the slave trade was under attack from the Royal Navy, piracy needed suppression, and finally there was the odd fact located that some of Napoleon's Old Guard had seized a piece of Texas from Mexico and had tried unsuccessfully to colonize it. Perhaps they could be inveigled into an attempt to free their old master on St. Helena and return him to the throne of France? Of course his nemesis, Horatio Hornblower, would just happen to be Commander-in-Chief of the West Indies Squadron and the one to thwart such a sinister design. Most important of all for the Hornblower Saga is the fact that Forester used Hornblower in the West Indies to finally cement the bond between Hornblower and Barbara. Forester brings the development of that relationship to fruition and culmination in the great storm scene. Their love is on firm ground forever. The next and last appearance of Lady Barbara is as a contented old woman in “The Last Encounter.”

Forester had finished with Hornblower's active service with Hornblower in the West Indies and he had to back and fill once more. Fortunately, there was a significant gap in Hornblower's early career to be filled in. Hornblower had not been seen in the rank of commander and the period from 1803 to 1805 should have found him in a sea command distinguishing himself enough to obtain the rank of captain and command of the Atropos. Hornblower and the Hotspur resulted. The incident of the forfeited prize money actually occurred in 1804, and the Hotspur's seakeeping blockade off France was based on the actions of small ships of the Royal Navy during that very period. Hornblower was at his best in single-ship, Man Alone situations. Commanding the Hotspur brought out the finest in Hornblower and, indeed, the best in Forester. Although episodal, Hornblower and the Hotspur is perhaps the most tightly knit and believable of the Saga.

But if time could be played back and rerun for Hornblower it could not be for Forester. The novelist decided to write “The Last Encounter” as a wrap-up story and put it away until after his death. Then, almost as an afterthought, Forester went to work on a long Hornblower novel once more. At last Forester would deal with the one precise time in the naval history of the Napoleonic Wars he had assiduously avoided: Trafalgar. Hornblower, who already had been made to attend Nelson's coffin in Hornblower and the Atropos, surely would have had at least something to do with England's greatest naval victory. A few months in 1805 remained available for some action by Hornblower and Forester decided to have his hero bring about the decisive action at Trafalgar by espionage work, since he apparently could not have been at the battle, due to the lack of enough chronological time to develop a command situation between Hotspur and Atropos. So Forester died with Hornblower in action in Hornblower and the Crisis and on his way to force the French to fight Nelson. Thus he is still in transit, with Maria and their first son and Bush alive; and with the joys of Lady Barbara yet unknown.

III SCOPE AND ACCOMPLISHMENT

The Hornblower Saga masterfully evokes a time, the Napoleonic Wars; a milieu, the life of a British naval officer of the epoch; and a place, the British world of the Romantic period. Forester takes his readers on a world tour during what was, in fact, a world war. We freeze in the Arctic and swelter in the Caribbean; we smell the stenches of rotting corpses, gunpowder, filthy bodies, excrement in the holds, and opulent food at imperial courts. Bullets and cannon shot miss us by inches; the sea is ever waiting to swallow us. Death comes suddenly and violently to our friends at our sides. But, like Hornblower, we survive shot and sharpened sword point, the worst the angry ocean can do, the perfidy of our enemies and even despair over the death of those we love. Always there is Forester's ultimate skill: he makes us believe we are there.

The effect was achieved because Forester mastered the quintessential skill of the historical novelist; the mixing of fact and fiction, of real personages and fictional characters, of actual events and plausible events which seem as if they could have happened at a circumscribed time and in a real place. Furthermore, and of great importance, there was Forester's intuitive realization that the historical novelist's success is directly proportional to his ability as a background painter. The historical panorama must appear unseamed and flawless to sustain the “suspension of disbelief.”

The Hornblower novels are, for the most part, heavily plotted on carefully constructed outlines. The reader's attention is quickly captured, and even when the novel is episodically constructed for serialization the storyline and the character interest carry through. Young readers today, picking up a paperback Hornblower, very frequently find themselves searching out additional titles until they have read the entire Saga, for above all the Hornblower books bring great pleasure to every class of readers.

Forester created a superb, ever-developing protagonist. When Hornblower first appears in Flying Colours he is something of a supersailor. His navigation is miraculous and he is able to defeat the ship of the line Natividad not once but twice. Something of a caricature, he is short-tempered and given to making odd sounds rather than communicating with people. Hornblower was created and first flourished in the period just before and during World War II, a time when many people in the world were looking for great heroes, perhaps almost comic book superheroes, as the war against the unmitigated evil of totalitarianism took shape. It was a time when men and women would most admire the military leader for his martial virtues. Generals and admirals were the most applauded of men: Montgomery, Eisenhower, MacArthur, Zhukov, Halsey, Nimitz, Patton, and even Rommel.

As time passed and the end of the war brought a waning of enthusiasm for the military man, Hornblower changed, became more human, more fallible. Midshipman Hornblower and Lieutenant Hornblower could make and did make errors; Commander Hornblower in Hornblower and the Hotspur is at his most complex, and in his most interesting person. Hornblower is a man living in a more disillusioned world.

With Hornblower in the West Indies, Forester was able to capture the British sense of having become a declining world sea power, so that the admiral has only a few small ships for his squadron and, like an old and almost toothless lion, uses cunning instead of strength. Wits would have to serve for power, even at the risk of honor. Thus, intuitively, perhaps, Forester made his hero serve the popular needs of his time and his audience by molding Hornblower into a reflection of the British, and even perhaps the American self-image.

Finally, Hornblower was a hero cut out for the mass audience. He illustrated the Romantic notion of advancement through merit. It was perhaps Forester's most manipulative alteration of probability to have a poor physician's son rise not only to high rank in the caste-ridden Royal Navy of the Napoleonic period, but even to marry into the first rank of nobility, something which even Nelson had not done. It was very gratifying for the millions who read the Saga to believe, however, that a humbly born man of integrity and ability, modest, and highly self-critical, loyal almost to a fault, could overcome such dangers and adversities as Hornblower did, could survive shot and prison fever, captivity, and a dictator's enmity to rise to the top of his profession and achieve his nation's esteem and the love of a brilliant, beautiful, influential, and rich woman.

If Hornblower and the Hotspur, with its brooding and suffering hero doing the grimmest duty of war, is Forester's best Hornblower novel, then Hornblower in the West Indies, except for the emotional recommitments of Horatio and Barbara at the end, is Forester's weakest, due not only to its jarringly episodal nature, but also to its strained improbabilities, especially the unmotivated and unprepared escape of Hornblower's secretary from Cockpit Country in Jamaica. But no Hornblower novel is a great art novel. It is as a total effort, the historical novelist recreating an epoch on a grand scale, that the importance of Forester's work here can best be understood and appreciated. Like Shakespeare with his historical octology of the Wars of the Roses from their first cause in Richard II to their conclusion in Richard III, Forester came to his subject without an overall plan. It was an idea which grew on him, and he, like the great playwright, would back and fill to finish placing an historical vision on paper. This is not to compare Forester with Shakespeare, of course, but only to point out that an epic may develop almost as if it had a mind of its own, or perhaps because there was created an indomitable character who won a stranglehold over his creator and would not die. This character, Horatio Hornblower, was both a masterful tactician and a superb strategist; an outstanding naval leader; and diplomat who could see the grand plans of early nineteenth-century Europe even as he led men into battle on sea and land; a benevolent commander; a legendary officer who though firm with his subordinates was nevertheless loved; a nervous man; a self-doubting man; a poor lover, perhaps; a worse husband, sometimes unfaithful; in sum, a hero of great scale, who, however could be identified with by millions of ordinary mortals living long after Horatio Hornblower's time.

Thus the adventures of Horatio Hornblower from Midshipman Hornblower to “The Last Encounter” form a body of literature that will most probably outlast not only Forester's best work, like The General, but most of the art novels of the author's time. Succeeding generations shall not weary of a well-written story. They will come to know that within the covers of a Hornblower book a wind is forever rising, a dark sea beginning to boil, and a few brave men commanded by an intrepid if dour leader are setting out under oars in a wooden longboat toward a hostile shore in service to a good cause. The sand appears beneath the keel, the trees above the beach take shape, there is the glittering reflection of steel in the woods, and then—but who knows—but that in the end, beyond the daring adventure, all will be well. That certainty, along with the rich consistency of character and Forester's narrative skills, may prove that there is a place in popular reading for novels which do not rely on crass sentimentality, soft-core pornography, or unmitigated violence in order to give pleasure, to offer insight into human behavior, and to evoke simultaneously the immediateness and the distance of the past.

Notes

1. The Hornblower Companion, p. 107.

2. John K. Hutchens, “On an Author,” New York Herald Tribune, March 30, 1952, p. 2.

3. Hornblower and the Atropos, in The Young Hornblower (London: Michael Joseph, 1964), p. 428.

4. The Hornblower Companion, pp. 171-72.

5. The naval historian C. Northcote Parkinson, using the events of Forester's Hornblower Saga as a basis, wrote a “documented biography” of The Life and Times of Horatio Hornblower (1970). Parkinson has Hornblower die in 1857 and Lady Barbara die in 1861.

6. The Autobiography of a Seaman, Two Volumes (London: R. Bentley, 1860).

7. Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Two Volumes (London: R. Bentley, 1869).

8. For a new biography of Cochrane, see Donald Thomas, Cochrane: Britannia's Last Sea-King (New York: Viking, 1979).

9. The Hornblower Companion, p. 111.

10. Ibid., p. 114.

11. Ibid., p. 124.