Record Added: 11/18/2015 Series Horatio Hornblower #1 Setting  Sea or Islands Topic Historical Fiction History: Sea, Ships, or P Publisher Little, Brown, & Company ISBN 0316290602 Year 1998 Age Adult Pages 310 Description Blue printed dustjacket
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Horatio Hornblower was born in C.S. Forester's fertile imagination and became arguably more famous, certainly more personal, than Nelson, Cook and Drake combined. He fought in a dozen major campaigns during the Napoleonic wars, and it was in these pages that we first got a glimmer of just how much Bonaparte was hated, and why.
Forester's genius was not tidy, and so this story, which sets Hornblower on course at age 17, is Forester's sixth book about him, though it should have been the first. Lieutenant Hornblower, which follows it, carries the intrepid young man another step forward in his career.
In this story, a gawky and seasick Hornblower comes aboard his first ship. He immediately earns the contempt of the other midshipmen. The young Hornblower is particularly despised by a midshipman named Simpson. Simpson, at age thirty-three, had failed his examination for lieutenant too many times to ever expect promotion. He takes out his bitterness and disappointment on his juniors.
Hornblower is extremely unhappy. He takes the first opportunity for death presented to him by challenging Simpson in a duel. Hornblower finds that the most mathematically sound method for the duel is to have one of the two pistols loaded, with neither Hornblower nor Simpson knowing which is which. The captain secretly frustrates this by having the officers of the duel load neither weapon and claiming a misfire when neither one shoots. The captain later has him transferred to the frigate HMS Indefatigable. |
Notes
Series Titles: - Mr. Midshipman Hornblower {*have}
- Lieutenant Hornblower {*have}
- Hornblower and the Hotspur {*have}
- Hornblower During the Crisis
- Hornblower and the Atropos {*have}
- Beat to Quarters {*have}
- Ship of the Line
- Flying Colours {*have}
- Commodore Hornblower {*have}
- Lord Hornblower {*have}
- Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies {*have}
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