Book description
June, 1808 and off the Coast of Nicaragua Captain Horatio
Hornblower has his hands full
Now in command of HMS Lydia, a thirty-six-gun frigate, Hornblower
has instructions to form an alliance against the Spanish colonies with
a mad and messianic revolutionary, El Supremo; to find a water route
across the Central American isthmus; and to take, sink, burn or
destroy the fifty-gun Spanish ship of the line Natividad or face
court-martial. And as if that wasn t hard enough, Hornblower must also
contend with the charms of an unwanted passenger: Lady Barbara
Wellesley This is the fifth 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.
