Horatio Hornblower, now Admiral, sails over seas as challenging as any in his victorious career. As admiral in charge of His Britannic Majesty's West Indies Station he is as gallant, daring, implosive as ever. In this tense time after Napoleon's defeat, all kinds of vagabonds, revolutionaries, Imperial Guards. and pirates come sailing into the waters where Hornblower is working his small contingent of naval vessels to preserve the peace and eliminate piracy. With intrepid daring and brilliant strategies, Hornblower wins his victories. With this series of adventures, Volume 11, Hornblower's professional life as a British naval officer reaches its climax, not in a battle against men, but against nature. Here the inner Hornblower shows his colors.
--This text refers to the
Kindle Edition
edition.
C. S. Forester (1899-1966) wrote several novels with military and naval themes, including The African Queen, The Barbary Pirates, The General, The Good Shepherd, The Gun, The Last Nine Days of the "Bismarck," and Rifleman Dodd. But Forester is best known as the creator of Horatio Hornblower, a British naval genius of the Napoleonic era, whose exploits and adventures on the high seas Forester chronicled in a series of eleven acclaimed historical novels. Over the years Hornblower has proved to be one of the most beloved and enduring fictional heroes in English literature, his popularity rivaled only by Sherlock Holmes.
Born Cecil Louis Troughton Smith in Cairo, Egypt, Forester grew up in London. At the start of World War II he traveled on behalf of the British government to America, where he produced propaganda encouraging the United States to remain on Britain's side. After the War, Forester remained in America and made Berkeley, California, his home.
The character of Horatio Hornblower was born after Forester was called to Hollywood to write a pirate film. While the script was being drafted, another studio released Captain Blood, starring Errol Flynn, based on the same historical incidents about which Forester was writing. Rather than seek another movie project, and to avoid an impending paternity suit, Forester jumped aboard a freighter bound for England. By the end of the voyage he had outlined Beat to the Quarters, which introduced the now legendary character Hornblower, Bush, and Lady Barbara.
Forester died in 1966 while working on Hornblower During the Crisis.
Back Bay's editions of the Hornblower novels are numbered according to the chronology of Hornblower's life and career, not according to the sequence in which they were written. The series is comprised of the following titles:
Mr. Midshipman Hornblower
Lieutenant Hornblower
Hornblower and the Hotspur
Hornblower During the Crisis
Hornblower and the Atropos
Beat to Quarters
Ship of the Line
Flying Colours
Commodore Hornblower
Lord Hornblower
Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies
