Book description
May, 1810 and thirty-nine-year-old Captain Horatio Hornblower has
been handed his first ship of the line
Though the seventy-four-gun HMS Sutherland is the ugliest and least
desirable two-decker in the Navy and a crew shortage means he must
recruit two hundred and fifty landlubbers, Hornblower knows that by
the time Sutherland and her squadron reach the blockaded Catalonian
coast every seaman will do his duty. But with daring raids against the
French army and navy to be made, it will take all Hornblower s
seamanship and stewardship to steer a steady course to victory and
home This is the sixth of eleven books chronicling the adventures of
C. S. Forester s inimitable nautical hero, Horatio Hornblower.
C. S Forester was born in Cairo in 1899, where his father was
stationed as a government official. He studied medicine at Guy s
Hospital, and after leaving Guy s without a degree he turned to writing
as a career. On the outbreak of war he entered the Ministry of
Information and later he sailed with the Royal Navy to collect material
for The Ship. He made a voyage to the Bering Sea to gather material for
a similar book on the United States Navy, and it was during this trip
that he was stricken with arteriosclerosis, a disease which left him
crippled. However, he continued to write and in the Hornblower novels
created the most renowned sailor in contemporary fiction. He died in
1966.
