Horatio Hornblower

Horatio Hornblower is a fictional officer in the British Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, originally the protagonist of a series of novels by C. S. Forester, and later the subject of films and television programs.

Life

According to Forester, Hornblower, the son of a doctor, was born on July 4, 1776 (the date of the signature of the United States Declaration of Independence). He was given a classical education, and by the time he joined the Royal Navy at age 17, he was well-versed in Greek and Latin. He is also an expert mathematician, which serves him well in being a pilot and navigator. He often suffers from severe seasickness and plays Whist excellently.

Related Topics:
July 4 - 1776 - United States Declaration of Independence - Mathematician - Pilot - Navigator - Seasickness - Whist

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Described as "unhappy and lonely" from the start, Hornblower is chiefly characterized by his reservation and self-hatred. He regards himself as careless, cowardly, dishonest, and, at some times, disloyal. Ambition and a drive to succeed make these characteristics all but non-existent in his actual behavior, which is regarded as heroic and outstanding by everyone save himself. His reservation and shyness make him continually isolated from the people around him, including his "closest friend" William Bush and his wives, who never fully understand him. His continuous introspection makes him a very self-conscious and lonely man, and the enforced isolation of a captain in the Royal Navy make him lonelier still.

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He often suffers from severe seasickness and plays Whist excellently; he is tone-deaf and finds any music, whether aboard or ashore, an incomprehensible irritant. He is philosophically opposed to capital punishment, to the extent that he contrives escape for a crewman (his personal steward) condemned to hanging at the yard-arm in Hornblower and the Hotspur. He does this despite believing that severe corporal punishment (e.g. flogging round the fleet) is the only way to maintain discipline in the face of severe privation.

Related Topics:
Seasickness - Whist - Tone-deaf - Capital punishment - Corporal punishment - Flogging

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As in the novels of Frederick Marryat and Patrick O'Brian, many of Hornblower's exploits are based upon those of Horatio Nelson and Thomas Cochrane. Brian Perett has written a book The Real Hornblower: The Life and Times of Admiral Sir James Gordon, GCB, ISBN 1557509689, that presents the case for a different inspiration.

Related Topics:
Frederick Marryat - Patrick O'Brian - Horatio Nelson - Thomas Cochrane - Admiral Sir James Gordon

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A "biography" of Hornblower, called The Life and Times of Horatio Hornblower, was published in 1970 by C. Northcote Parkinson.

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Early Career

Hornblower's early exploits include confronting Spanish fire ships which interrupt his first examination for Lieutenant, suffering incarceration as a Spanish prisoner-of-war in El Ferrol;http://ferrol.historia.tripod.com/ferrolnaval1750/, surviving a Captain with paranoid schizophrenia, orchestrating Nelson's funeral procession along the Thames and having to deal with the near-sinking of the barge conveying Nelson's coffin, recovering sunken treasure from the bottom of Marmorice Bay with the aid of pearl divers from Ceylon, and having his ship gifted out from under him to the King of the Two Sicilies for diplomatic reasons - following which on his return to England he finds his two young children dying of the smallpox. He later makes a long, difficult voyage round the Horn, keeping out of sight of land in the Pacific. He also meets a mad rebel against the Spanish Colonial authorities, twice defeats the same ship of superior force, and brings home the Duke of Wellington's youngest sister, Lady Barbara Wellesley.

Related Topics:
Fire ship - El Ferrol - Paranoid schizophrenia - Nelson - Coffin - Pearl diver - Ceylon - King of the Two Sicilies - Smallpox - Duke of Wellington

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Later Career

After these exploits commanding a frigate, he is given the command of HMS Sutherland, a 74 gun ship of the line, and while waiting at his Mediterranean rendezvous for the rest of the squadron - and its commander - to arrive, carries out a series of pinprick raids on the south coast of France. He later takes his ship into action off Toulon against a French squadron of four sail of the line where it is very badly damaged and, with two-thirds of its crew incapacitated, he has to surrender to the French. He is imprisoned and sent off with his coxswain Brown and the injured Bush to Paris for trial and execution. During this journey Hornblower breaks himself and his companions free of their escort, and after a winter sojourn at the chateau of the Comte de Graçay, sails down the river Loire and to the coastal city of Nantes, where he recaptures a Royal Navy cutter, the Witch of Endor, and uses this to escape to the Channel Fleet.

Related Topics:
Frigate - Ship of the line - Cutter - Channel Fleet

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Hornblower is court-martialed for the loss of the Sutherland but is "gloriously acquitted." Among the honors he receives is a knighthood. However, when he arrives home, Maria has died in childbirth, and his infant son in the care of Lady Barbara. He marries Lady Barbara after a decent interval and settles in the country, in Kent. After this, he is sent as Commodore on a mission to the Baltic, where he must serve as a diplomat as much as an officer. He is involved in the defense of Riga against the French army, where he encounters Carl von Clausewitz.

Related Topics:
Commodore - Carl von Clausewitz

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He returns ill with typhus to England, yet soon after his recovery goes off to bring in mutineers off the coast of France. After bringing in the mutinous ship, he sets up the return of the Bourbons to France, and is made a peer of the realm, Lord Hornblower. When Napoleon returns from exile at the start of the Hundred Days, Hornblower is at the estate of the Comte de Graçay, and leads a Royalist Guerrilla movement; after capture by the French he is about to be shot under an earlier warrant for his execution when news arrives of Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo. After several years ashore, he is sent to be the Commander-in-Chief of the West Indies. He foils an expedition which is to land a company of Napoleon's Imperial Guard on Saint Helena (to try to release the Emperor), captures a slave ship, and encounters Simón Bolívar's army. The last Forester wrote of him, he was Admiral of the Fleet, living in retirement in Kent, and is able to speed to France Napoleon III, who has been delayed by a series of transport mishaps.

Related Topics:
Bourbons - Hundred Days - Guerrilla - Saint Helena - Simón Bolívar - Napoleon III

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Forester offers two different brief summaries of Hornblower's career. The first was in the first chapter of The Happy Return, which was the first Hornblower novel written. The second occurs mid-way through The Commodore, when Czar Nicholas asks him to describe his career. The second account is incompatible with the first. The first account would have made Hornblower about five years older than the second. The second account is more nearly compatible with the rest of Hornblower's career, but it omits the time he spent as a Commander in Hornblower and the Hotspur.

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