1. Mr Midshipman Hornblower
1793, the eve of the Napoleonic Wars, and Midshipman Horatio Hornblower receives his first command... As a seventeen-year-old with a touch of seasickness, young Horatio Hornblower hardly cuts a dash in His Majesty's Navy, Yet from the moment he is ordered to board a French merchant…
2. Lieutenant Hornblower
Lieutenant William Bush joins HMS Renown under a captain whose increasingly erratic behaviour places the ship and crew in danger. Hornblower, still a junior lieutenant, must navigate professional obedience, private judgement and the consequences of command while the squadron operates against Spanish possessions in the Caribbean.…
3. Hornblower and the Hotspur
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 --…
4. Flying Colours
After the disastrous end of his command in the Mediterranean, Horatio Hornblower is a French prisoner facing trial and probable execution for violating the laws of war. Escape gives him another chance, but getting home requires a dangerous journey through hostile territory with Lieutenant Bush and…
4. Hornblower During the Crisis
In 1805, Hornblower leaves HMS Hotspur and becomes involved in the capture of a French vessel whose papers suggest an opportunity for deception. Rather than returning immediately to ordinary command, he is drawn into an intelligence operation that could exploit forged orders attributed to Napoleon and…
5. Hornblower and the Atropos
After helping organise the river procession for Nelson’s state funeral, newly promoted Captain Hornblower takes command of the small sloop HMS Atropos. His Mediterranean assignment develops into a hazardous salvage operation in Ottoman waters and a confrontation with a much larger Spanish frigate.
5. Lord Hornblower
With Napoleon apparently defeated, Hornblower is sent to suppress a mutiny aboard a British ship whose crew has turned against its brutal captain and carried the vessel to France. The mission forces him to balance naval discipline against his knowledge that the deposed commander is a…
6. Beat to Quarters
In 1808 Captain Hornblower commands HMS Lydia on a secret mission off Central America. Ordered to support the unstable rebel leader El Supremo and destroy the Spanish ship Natividad, he must rapidly reassess his alliances when Britain and Spain cease to be enemies, while carrying Lady…
7. Ship of the Line
In 1810 Hornblower receives his first ship of the line, HMS Sutherland, and joins operations off the Catalan coast. With an understrength and inexperienced crew, he attacks French coastal positions and shipping before a final battle leaves his ship shattered and Hornblower a prisoner.
9. Commodore Hornblower
In 1812 Hornblower commands a small British squadron sent to the Baltic to influence Sweden and Russia against Napoleon. The mission combines diplomacy involving Crown Prince Bernadotte and Tsar Alexander I, an assassination attempt, cooperation with Carl von Clausewitz and naval support during the defence of…
11. Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies
In the early 1820s Rear-Admiral Hornblower commands Britain’s West Indies station. Across linked episodes he confronts a Bonapartist rescue plot, slavery and the slave trade, piracy, Simón Bolívar’s independence struggle and a destructive hurricane, showing how political unrest continues after the Napoleonic Wars.
12. Hornblower’s Temptation and the Last Encounter
This volume brings together two short Horatio Hornblower stories set at opposite ends of his life. In “Hornblower’s Temptation,” the young lieutenant faces a difficult moral and professional decision during the early years of his naval career, when rank gives him responsibility without much protection from…