In the chaotic aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, the legendary Rear Admiral Lord Hornblower struggles to impose order. Serving as commander-in-chief of His Majesty's ships and vessels in the West Indies, Hornblower confronts a formidable array of hostile forces, among them pirates, revolutionaries, and a blistering hurricane. The war is over, but peaceful it is not.

May 1810, seventeen years deep into the Napoleonic Wars. Captain Horatio Hornblower is newly in command of his first ship of the line, the seventy-four-gun HMS Sutherland, which he deems "the ugliest and least desirably two-decker in the Navy List." Moreover, she is 250 men short of a full crew, so Hornblower must enlist and train "poachers, bigamists, sheepstealers," and other landlubbers. By the time the Sutherland reaches the blocked Catalonian...

The year is 1812. Hornblower has been ordered to do everything possible, diplomatically and militarily, to protect the Baltic trade and to stop the spread of Napoleon's empire into Sweden and Russia. Though he has set sail a hero, one misstep may ruin his chances of ever becoming an admiral. Hornblower must find his way through a maze of perils -- hostile armies, seductive Russian royalty, ice-bound waterways, assassins in the imperial palace -- before...

April 1803. The Peace of Amiens is breaking down. Napoleon is building ships and amassing an army just across the Channel. Horatio Hornblower -- who, at age twenty-seven, has already distinguished himself as one of the most daring and resourceful officers in the Royal Navy -- commands the three masted Hotspur on a dangerous reconnaissance mission that evolves, as war breaks out, into a series of spectacular confrontations. All the while, the introspective...

In this gripping tale of turmoil and triumph on the high seas, Horatio Hornblower emerges from his apprenticeship as midshipman to face new responsibilities thrust upon him by the fortunes of war between Napoleon and Spain. Enduring near-mutiny, bloody hand-to-hand combat with Spanish seamen, deck-splintering sea battles, and the violence and horror of life on the fighting ships of the Napoleonic Wars, the young lieutenant distinguished himself in...

The year is 1793, the eve of the Napoleonic Wars, and Horatio Hornblower, a seventeen-year-old boy unschooled in seafaring and the ways of seamen, is ordered to board a French merchant ship and take command of crew and cargo for the glory of England. Though not an unqualified success, this first naval adventure teaches the young midshipman enough to launch him on a series of increasingly glorious exploits. This novel -- in which young Horatio gets...