Horatio Hornblower


Horatio Hornblower is a fictional Napoleonic Wars–era Royal Navy officer who is the protagonist of a series of novels and stories by C. S. Forester. He was later the subject of films, radio and television programmes, and C. Northcote Parkinson elaborated a definitive biography.
The original Hornblower tales began with the 1937 novel The Happy Return with the appearance of a junior Royal Navy captain on independent duty on a secret mission to Central America. Later stories filled out his earlier years, starting with an unpromising beginning as a seasick midshipman. As the Napoleonic Wars progress, he gains promotion steadily as a result of his skill and daring, despite his initial poverty and lack of influential friends. After surviving many adventures in a wide variety of locales, he rises to the pinnacle of his profession, promoted to Admiral of the Fleet.

Inspirations

There are many parallels between Hornblower and real naval officers of the period, notably Admiral Lord Nelson and also Sir George Cockburn, Lord Cochrane, Sir Edward Pellew, Jeremiah Coghlan, Sir James Gordon, Sir William Hoste, and many others. The actions of the Royal Navy at the time, documented in official reports, gave much material for Hornblower's fictional adventures.
The name "Horatio" was inspired by the character in William Shakespeare's Hamlet and chosen also because of its association with contemporary figures such as Nelson.
Forester's original inspiration was an old copy of the Naval Chronicle, which described the effective dates of the Treaty of Ghent. It was possible for two countries to still be at war in one part of the world after a peace was obtained months before in another because of the time required to communicate around the world. The burdens that this placed on captains far from home led him to a character struggling with the stresses of a "man alone". At the same time, Forester wrote the body of the works carefully to avoid entanglements with real world history, so Hornblower is always off on another mission when a great naval victory occurs during the Napoleonic Wars.
Frederick Marryat has been identified as "the father of the seafaring adventure novel from which all others followed, from C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower to Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin" Hornblower and the eponymous protagonist of Marryat's Peter Simple both start their career rather unpromisingly and without influential friends, but advance themselves through hard work, honesty and bravery. Both fight in duels before their careers have properly even started and both are taken prisoners early in their careers, but escape in extraordinary fashion.

Characteristics

Hornblower is courageous, intelligent, and a skilled seaman, but he is also burdened by his intense reserve, introspection, and self-doubt, and is described as "unhappy and lonely". Despite numerous personal feats of extraordinary skill and cunning, he belittles his achievements by numerous rationalisations, remembering only his fears. He consistently ignores or is unaware of the admiration in which he is held by his fellow sailors. He regards himself as cowardly, dishonest, and, at times, disloyal—never crediting his ability to persevere, think rapidly, organise, or cut to the heart of a matter. His sense of duty, hard work, and drive to succeed make these imagined negative characteristics undetectable by everyone but him and, being introspective, he obsesses over petty failures to reinforce his poor self-image. His introverted nature continually isolates him from the people around him, including his closest friend William Bush, and his wives never fully understand him. He is guarded with nearly everyone, unless the matter is the business of discharging his duty as a King's officer, in which case he is clear and decisive.
Hornblower possesses a highly developed sense of duty, though on occasion he is able to set it aside; for example, in Hornblower and the Hotspur, he contrives an escape for his personal steward, who would otherwise have to be hanged for striking a superior officer. He is philosophically opposed to flogging and capital punishment and is pained when circumstances or the Articles of War force him to impose such sentences.
He suffers from seasickness at the start of his voyages. As a midshipman, he becomes seasick at the sheltered roadstead of Spithead, an embarrassment which haunts him throughout his career. He is tone-deaf and finds music an incomprehensible irritant.
A voracious reader, he can discourse on both contemporary and classical literature. His skill at mathematics makes him both an adept navigator and an extremely talented whist player. He uses his ability at whist to supplement his income during a poverty-stricken period of inactivity in the naval service.

Fictional biography

Youth

Hornblower is born in Kent, the son of a doctor. He has no inherited wealth or influential connections who can advance his career. In The Happy Return, the first novel published, Hornblower's age is given as 37 in July 1808, implying a birth year of 1770 or 1771. However, when Forester decided to write about Hornblower's early career in the sixth novel Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, he made his hero about five years younger, giving his birth date as 4 July 1776. This adjustment allows Hornblower to begin his career in wartime. He is given a classical education, and by the time he joins the Royal Navy at age seventeen, he is well-versed in Greek and Latin. He is tutored in French by a penniless French émigré and has an aptitude for mathematics, which serves him well as a navigator.

Early career

Hornblower's early exploits are many and varied. He joins the Royal Navy as a midshipman where he is horribly bullied and tries to resolve the matter with a duel. He is then transferred to under Edward Pellew and distinguishes himself. He fends off fire ships which interrupt his first examination for promotion to lieutenant. He is given command of the sloop Le Rêve while still only an acting lieutenant; the vessel blunders into a Spanish fleet in the fog, resulting in Hornblower's capture and imprisonment in Ferrol. During his captivity, he acquires a fluent knowledge of both Galician and Spanish, which proves highly useful in several further adventures, and is finally confirmed as a commissioned lieutenant. He leads a daring rescue of Spanish civilians from a shipwreck under extremely hazardous conditions, which leads to his being picked up by a British warship patrolling offshore; but since he had given his Spanish captors his parole that he would not escape, he insists upon being returned to captivity. The Spanish, admiring his sense of honour, release him in recognition of his "courage and self-sacrifice in saving life at the peril of own".
As a junior lieutenant, he serves in HMS Renown under Captain Sawyer, whose bouts of paranoia on a mission to the Caribbean strain discipline to breaking point. It is on this voyage that he begins his long friendship with William Bush, at the time his senior in rank. Due to his exploits, Hornblower is made commander, but his promotion is not confirmed when he returns to England following the announcement of the Peace of Amiens, causing him great financial distress: he has to make up the difference between a commander's pay and a lieutenant's, all from his half pay while inactive. He is forced to resort to playing whist with admirals and other senior figures in an officers' club for a modest stipend; all wins are his responsibility. Fortunately, his skill at whist is up to the task.

HMS ''Hotspur''

In 1803, renewed hostilities against France seem imminent, and Hornblower is confirmed in the rank of commander, and appointed captain of the sloop-of-war. Before sailing, he marries Maria, the daughter of his landlady, despite his doubts about the match. Maria dotes upon the irritable Hornblower in ways that he finds vexing; she knows little of the sea, and annoys him both with her ignorance and hero-worship of him, which clashes with his eternally low self-image. Despite this unfortunate beginning, however, he warms to her over the course of several books, and becomes a good husband to her and father to their two children, also named Horatio and Maria.
After gruelling service during the blockade of Brest aboard Hotspur, he is promised a momentous promotion to post captain by Commander-in-Chief William Cornwallis and is recalled to England. Once there, he meets the Secretary of the Admiralty and the rank is conferred when Hornblower agrees to take part in a dangerous clandestine operation that eventually leads to the resounding British victory at Trafalgar.

HMS ''Atropos''

Following this exploit, Hornblower is ordered by the Admiralty to organise Nelson's funeral procession along the River Thames and has to deal with the near-sinking of the barge conveying the hero's coffin. Later, after being given command of HMS Atropos, he is sent on a secret mission to recover gold and silver from a sunken British transport on the bottom of Marmorice Bay within the Ottoman Empire with the aid of pearl divers from Ceylon, narrowly escaping a Turkish warship at the end. Upon his return to a British-controlled port, after unloading the treasure and refitting his ship, Atropos is given to the King of the Two Sicilies for diplomatic reasons, much to his disappointment. Returning to England, he finds his two young children dying of smallpox. Their deaths were referred to in the first novel to be published.

HMS ''Lydia''

Later, he makes a long, difficult voyage in command of the frigate HMS Lydia round the Horn to the Pacific, where his mission is to support a megalomaniac, El Supremo, in his rebellion against the Spanish. He captures Natividad, a much more powerful Spanish ship, but then has to cede it reluctantly to El Supremo to placate him. When he finds that the Spanish have switched sides in the interim, he is forced to find and sink the ship he had captured—adding injury to insult, as he had given up a fortune in prize money to maintain the uneasy alliance with the madman.
Hornblower also takes on an important passenger in Panama—Lady Barbara Wellesley, the fictional younger sister of Arthur Wellesley —also Hornblower's future wife and the love of his life. He is at first nettled and infuriated by her forthright and outspoken manner, her ability to see easily through his reserve, and the great social gap between them. Over time, however, her beauty, strength, and intelligence win his heart, and the two become dangerously attracted to each other. Before things get out of hand, Hornblower informs Lady Barbara that he is married. She leaves the Lydia two days later when they rendezvous with other British ships. Hornblower fears for his career, having offended "the daughter of an earl, the sister of a marquis".

HMS ''Sutherland''

After these exploits, he is given command of HMS Sutherland, a seventy-four gun ship of the line. His feelings are disturbed during this period by the fact that his commander, Admiral Leighton, has recently married Lady Barbara, thereby apparently ending any hope that she and Hornblower might act on their feelings for one another. Hornblower is tormented by jealousy of Leighton, compounded by the admiral's dismissive treatment of him.
While waiting at his Mediterranean rendezvous point for the rest of his squadron—and its commander—to arrive, he carries out a series of raids against the French along the south coast of Spain, earning himself the nickname "the terror of the Mediterranean". After saving Admiral Leighton's flagship, HMS Pluto, which becomes dismasted in stormy seas, from the French battery at Rosas, he learns that a French squadron of four ships of the line has slipped the blockade at Toulon. He decides that his duty requires that he fight them at one-to-four odds to prevent them from entering a well-protected harbour. In the process, his ship is crippled, and with two-thirds of the crew incapacitated he surrenders to the French, not before, however, severely crippling three of the French ships and damaging the fourth. As a prisoner in Rosas, he witnesses the destruction of the French ships at anchor by Leighton's squadron.
He is sent with his coxswain, Brown, and his injured first lieutenant, Bush, to Paris for a show trial and execution. During the journey, Hornblower and his companions escape. After a winter sojourn at the chateau of the Comte de Graçay, during which he has an affair with the nobleman's widowed daughter-in-law, the escapees travel down the Loire river to the coastal city of Nantes. There, he recaptures a Royal Navy cutter, the Witch of Endor, mans the vessel with a commandeered gang of slave labourers, and escapes to the Channel Fleet.
As a further indication of Hornblower's success, Lt. Bush is promoted into Witch of Endor as commander, and shortly thereafter to post captain, with "the dockyard job at Sheerness waiting for ."
When Hornblower arrives home, he discovers that his first wife Maria has died in childbirth, but the baby boy survived and Lady Barbara has taken charge of the child, with her brothers Lords Wellesley and Wellington as godfathers.
Hornblower faces a mandatory court-martial for the loss of the Sutherland, but is "most honourably acquitted." A national hero in the eyes of the public, and a useful propaganda tool for various politicians, not to mention the Prince Regent, he is made a Knight of the Order of the Bath and appointed a Colonel of Marines.
Hornblower and Lady Barbara are now free to marry. They move to the fictional village of Smallbridge, Kent, where Hornblower, the new lord of the manor, longs for the sea.

Flag officer

A return to duty comes when he is appointed to be commodore and sent with a squadron of small craft on a mission to the Baltic Sea, where he must be a diplomat as much as an officer. He foils an assassination attempt on Tsar Alexander I of Russia and is influential in the monarch's decision to resist the French invasion of the Russian Empire. While at the court of the Tsar, it is implied that he is unfaithful to Barbara, dallying with a young Russian noblewoman. He provides invaluable assistance in the defence of Riga, employing his bomb-ketches against the French army, where he meets General Carl von Clausewitz of the Prussian Army.
He returns ill with typhus to England. Soon after his recovery, he is given the difficult task of dealing with mutineers off the coast of France. After provoking the French by trickery into attacking the mutinous ship, he rounds up the rebels, personally shooting their ringleader as he tries to escape. When he is approached by a French official willing to negotiate the surrender of a major port, he seizes the opportunity and engineers the return of the Bourbons to France. He is rewarded by being created a peer as Baron Hornblower of Smallbridge in the County of Kent. However, his satisfaction is marred by the death in action of his long-time friend, Bush.
When Napoleon returns from exile at the start of the Hundred Days, Hornblower is staying at the estate of the Comte de Graçay, which he was visiting after again growing tired of his life in Smallbridge. While there, he renews his affair with Marie de Gracay, so that he has now been unfaithful, with her, to both of his wives. When the French Army goes over to Napoleon en masse, Hornblower, the Count, and his family choose to fight rather than flee to Britain. He leads a Royalist guerrilla force, and causes the returned Emperor's forces much grief before his band is finally cornered; in a desperate shootout, Marie is slain, and a devastated Hornblower captured. After a brusque hearing before a military tribunal, he and the Count are both sentenced to the firing squad the next morning by an officer who obviously regrets the task. However, in the morning when his cell door is opened, he is granted a stay due to Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Waterloo. Napoleon had tried to stir up support for a renewed national resistance when he arrived in Paris after Waterloo, but the temper of the legislative chambers, and of the public generally, did not favour his view. Lacking support, Napoleon abdicates and after he is again sent into exile, Hornblower is released.
After several years ashore, he is promoted to rear admiral and appointed naval Commander-in-Chief of the West Indies. He foils an attempt by veterans of Napoleon's Imperial Guard to free Napoleon from his captivity on Saint Helena, captures a slave ship, and encounters Simón Bolívar's army. He also discovers a plot by Lady Barbara to engineer the escape of a Marine bandsman sentenced to death for a minor offence. An astonished Hornblower overlooks her breach of the law and reassures her of his love. Finally, while attempting to return to England, the Hornblowers are caught in a hurricane, and Horatio struggles desperately to save Barbara's life from the storm. In a moment of terror and desperation, she bares her heart to him, revealing that she never loved her first husband, only him. The two survive, and this revelation does much to heal the last self-inflicted wounds in Hornblower's soul. He retires to Kent and eventually becomes Admiral of the Fleet.
His final, improbable achievement occurs at his home, when he assists a seemingly mad man claiming to be Napoleon to travel to France. That person turns out to be Napoleon III, the nephew of Hornblower's great nemesis and the future President of France. For his assistance, Lord Hornblower is created a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. At the end of his long and heroic career, he is wealthy, famous and contented, a loving and beloved, indulgent husband and father, and finally free of the insecurities and self-loathing that had driven him throughout his life.
Forester provides two different brief summaries of Hornblower's career. The first was in the first chapter of The Happy Return, which was the first Hornblower novel written. The second occurs midway through The Commodore, when Czar Alexander asks him to describe his career. The two accounts are incompatible. The first account would have made Hornblower about five years older than the second. The second account is more nearly compatible with the rest of Hornblower's career, but it omits the time he spent as a commander in Hornblower and the Hotspur. There are other discrepancies as well; in one account of his defeat of a Spanish frigate in the Mediterranean, he distinguished himself as lieutenant and in another he is a post-captain with less than three years seniority. It appears that these discrepancies arose as the series matured and accounts needed to be modified to coincide with his age and career.
Likewise, Forester disregarded the strict Royal Navy practice of only promoting officers based on seniority as post-captain; Hornblower becomes a post-captain in 1805, is a rear admiral before Napoleon's death in May 1821, and is Admiral of the Fleet in 1848 before Napoleon III took power in France. In actuality the Navy List reflecting the first promotions to rear admiral after Napoleon's death shows captains holding that rank since 1797 still awaiting promotion to rear-admiral and as of the compilation of the Royal Naval Biography a few years later those who "made post" in 1805 were still well down the queue; the actual Admiral of the Fleet in 1848 was James Hawkins-Whitshed, who had become a captain in 1780, and no one who had become a captain after 1801 was named Admiral of the Fleet until 1864.

Non-canonical biography

wrote a fictional biography of Hornblower with the encouragement of C. S. Forester's widow, detailing his career as well as personal information. It corrects or elucidates some questionable points in the novels, and includes a confession that Hornblower kicked Captain Sawyer down the hatchway of the Renown. It adds subsequent careers of Lord Hornblower's relatives, ending with the present Viscount Hornblower's emigration to South Africa in the late 1960s. According to Parkinson, Hornblower in later life became a director of P&O, Governor of Malta, Commander in Chief at Chatham, a viscount, and Admiral of the Fleet, dying at the age of 80 on 12 January 1857.
This biography has confused some readers, who have taken it as a factual work. Parkinson includes in Horatio's family tree a number of real-life Hornblowers. They include:
The first three novels written, The Happy Return, A Ship of the Line, and Flying Colours were collected as Captain Horatio Hornblower by Little Brown in the US.
Both a single-volume edition and a three-volume edition were published.
Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, Lieutenant Hornblower, and Hornblower and the Atropos were compiled in one book, variously titled Hornblower's Early Years, Horatio Hornblower Goes to Sea, or The Young Hornblower. Hornblower and the Atropos was replaced by Hornblower and the Hotspur in later UK editions of The Young Hornblower.
Hornblower and the Atropos, The Happy Return, and A Ship of the Line were compiled into one omnibus edition, called Captain Hornblower.
Flying Colours, The Commodore, Lord Hornblower, and Hornblower in the West Indies were presented as a third omnibus edition called Admiral Hornblower to fill out the series.
Commodore Hornblower, Lord Hornblower, and Hornblower in the West Indies were also compiled into one book, called The Indomitable Hornblower.
Four "Cadet Editions" were released by Little Brown and later by Michael Joseph, each collecting two Hornblower novels and edited for younger readers:
Hornblower Goes to Sea, from Mr. Midshipman Hornblower and Lieutenant Hornblower;
Hornblower Takes Command, from Hornblower and The Atropos and Beat To Quarters;
Hornblower in Captivity, from A Ship of the Line and Flying Colours; and
Hornblower's Triumph, from Commodore Hornblower and Lord Hornblower.
The short stories "The Hand of Destiny", "Hornblower's Charitable Offering", and "Hornblower and His Majesty" plus other Hornblower material not previously published in book-form were collected in Hornblower One More Time though only 350 copies were printed.
As of June 2017 Amazon offers an electronic omnibus, Hornblower Addendum, consisting of the stories: "Hornblower and the Hand of Destiny", "Hornblower and the Widow McCool", "Hornblower's Charitable Offering", "Hornblower and His Majesty", and "The Last Encounter", although two of these are also included in the book Hornblower During the Crisis.

Serialisation

The Hornblower novels were all serialised in US periodicals and most also in UK periodicals. Except for the first novel Beat to Quarters, the serialisations appeared before the books.
US titleStory datesUS serial datesUS PartsUS magazineUK serial datesUK PartsUK magazine
Beat to Quarters – December 1808 – 22 October 19386Argosy 1Argosy
Ship of the Line – November 181026 2 1938 – 2 April 19386Argosy
Flying Colours – June 18113 12 1938 – 7 January 19396Argosy
Commodore Hornblower – December 1812 – 12 May 19458
Lord Hornblower – – 6 July 19468The Saturday Evening Post
Mr. Midshipman Hornblower – February 17996 3 1948 – 11 March 19509The Saturday Evening Post – June 195010Argosy
Lieutenant Hornblower – March 1803 – 17 November 19519The Saturday Evening Post6 10 1951 – 12 January 195210John Bull
Hornblower and the Atropos – September 180625 7 1953 – 12 September 19538The Saturday Evening Post3 10 1953 – 28 November 19539John Bull
Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies – July 182311 5 1957 – 26 April 195810The Saturday Evening Post25 5 1957 – 13 September 195813John Bull
Hornblower and the Hotspur – May 18051Argosy 24 2 1962 – 7 April 19627Today
Hornblower During the Crisis – June 180516 7 1966 – 30 July 19662The Saturday Evening Post

Historical figures in the novels

Royal Navy figures

In other media

Screen adaptations

is quoted as saying, "I recommend Forester to everyone literate I know," and Winston Churchill stated, "I find Hornblower admirable."
The popular Richard Sharpe novels by Bernard Cornwell were inspired by the Hornblower series; Cornwell avidly read the series as a child, and was disappointed to learn that there was no similar series chronicling the Napoleonic Wars on land.
The first of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels was commissioned by an editor at American publisher J. B. Lippincott & Co., who thought that it was likely that O'Brian could write more novels in the Hornblower genre.
The Richard Bolitho series by Douglas Reeman has drawn him acclaim "as the true heir to the highly successfully C. S. Forester ."
Dudley Pope was encouraged by C. S. Forester to create his Lord Ramage series of novels set around the same period.
Gene Roddenberry was influenced by the Hornblower character while creating the Star Trek characters James T. Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard. Nicholas Meyer, director of some of the Star Trek films, frequently cites Horatio Hornblower as one of his primary influences.
David Weber's character Honor Harrington closely parallels Hornblower and he deliberately gave her the same initials. Like Hornblower, the reader first meets Harrington in junior command rank, the daughter of doctors from a fairly modest background and lacking patronage of any sort, and throughout the series she accrues promotions, peerages, and other honours. By the time of the most recent novels Harrington is a Fleet Admiral, a duchess, the recipient of two different nations' highest military decorations, and so on.
Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga uses the Hornblower series as a structural model.
The astronauts of the 1972 Apollo 17 mission to the Moon named a small crater near the landing site Horatio, in honor of Horatio Hornblower.