Horatio Hornblower

Horatio Hornblower is a fictional Napoleonic Wars era Royal Navy officer who is the protagonist of a series of novels by C. S. Forester. He was later the subject of films and radio and television programs.

The original Hornblower tales began with the 1937 novel The Happy Return (U.S. title Beat to Quarters) with the appearance of a junior Royal Navy captain on independent duty on a secret mission to Central America. Later stories filled out his earlier years, starting with an unpromising beginning as a seasick midshipman. As the Napoleonic Wars progress, he gains promotion steadily as a result of his skill and daring, despite his initial poverty and lack of influential friends. After surviving many adventures in a wide variety of locales, he rises to the pinnacle of his profession, promoted to Admiral of the Fleet, knighted as a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB), and named the 1st Baron Hornblower.

Ernest Hemingway is quoted as saying, "I recommend Forester to everyone literate I know,"^[1] and Winston Churchill stated, "I find Hornblower admirable."^[2]

Inspirations

There are many parallels between Hornblower and real naval officers of the period, notably Admiral Lord Nelson and also Sir George Cockburn, Lord Cochrane, Jeremiah Coghlan, Sir James Gordon, Sir William Hoste, and many others. The actions of the Royal Navy at the time, documented in official reports, gave much material for Hornblower's fictional adventures.^[3]

The name "Horatio" was inspired by the character in William Shakespeare's Hamlet and chosen also because of its association with contemporary figures such as Nelson.^[4]

Forester's original inspiration was an old copy of the Naval Chronicle, which described the effective dates of the Treaty of Ghent. It was possible for two countries to still be at war in one part of the world after a peace was obtained months before in another because of the time required to communicate around the world. The burdens that this placed on captains far from home led him to a character struggling with the stresses of a "man alone".^[5] At the same time, Forester wrote the body of the works carefully to avoid entanglements with real world history, so Hornblower is always off on another mission when a great naval victory occurs during the Napoleonic Wars.

Characteristics

Hornblower is courageous, intelligent, and a skilled seaman; but he is also burdened by his intense reserve, introspection, and self-doubt, described as "unhappy and lonely". Despite numerous personal feats of extraordinary skill and cunning, he belittles his achievements by numerous rationalizations, remembering only his fears. He consistently ignores or is unaware of the admiration in which he is held by his fellow sailors. He regards himself as cowardly, dishonest, and, at times, disloyal—never crediting his ability to persevere, think rapidly, organize, or cut to the heart of a matter. His sense of duty, hard work, and drive to succeed make these imagined negative characteristics undetectable by everyone but him and, being introspective, he obsesses over petty failures to reinforce his poor self-image. His introverted nature continually isolates him from the people around him, including his closest friend William Bush, and his wives never fully understand him. He is guarded with nearly everyone, unless the matter is the business of discharging his duty as a King's officer, in which case he is clear and decisive.

Hornblower possesses a hyper-developed sense of duty, though on occasion he is able to set it aside; for example, in Hornblower and the Hotspur, he contrives an escape for his personal steward, who would otherwise have to be hanged for striking a superior officer. He is philosophically opposed to flogging and capital punishment, and is pained when circumstances or the Articles of War force him to impose such sentences.

He suffers from chronic seasickness, especially at the start of his voyages. As a midshipman, he was once sick at the sheltered roadstead of Spithead. His embarrassment haunts him throughout his career. He is tone-deaf and finds music an incomprehensible irritant (in a scene in Hotspur, he is unable to recognize the British national anthem).

A voracious reader, he can discourse on both contemporary and classical literature. His skill at mathematics makes him both an adept navigator and an extremely talented whist player. He uses his ability at whist to supplement his income during a period of inactivity in the naval service.

Fictional biography

Youth

Hornblower is born in Kent, the son of a doctor. He has no inherited wealth or influential connections who can advance his career. In The Happy Return, the first novel published, Hornblower's age is given as 37 in July 1808, implying a birth year of 1770 or 1771. However, when Forester decided to write about Hornblower's early career in the sixth novel Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, he made his hero about five years younger, giving his birth date as July 4, 1776 (the date of the adoption of the United States Declaration of Independence). This adjustment allows Hornblower to begin his career in wartime.^[6] He is given a classical education, and by the time he joins the Royal Navy at age seventeen, he is well-versed in Greek and Latin. He is tutored in French by a penniless French émigré and has an aptitude for mathematics, which serves him well as a navigator.

Early career

Hornblower's early exploits are many and varied. He joins the Royal Navy as a midshipman and fends off fire ships which interrupt his first (disastrous) examination for promotion to lieutenant. He is given command of the sloop Le Rêve while still only an acting lieutenant, which blunders into a Spanish fleet in the fog, resulting in Hornblower's capture and imprisonment in Ferrol. During his captivity, he acquires a fluent knowledge of both Galician and Spanish, which proves highly useful in several further adventures, and is finally confirmed as a commissioned lieutenant. He leads a daring rescue of Spanish civilians from a shipwreck under extremely hazardous conditions, giving his Spanish captors his parole that he would not escape during the rescue attempt. The Spanish release him in recognition of his “courage and self-sacrifice in saving life at the peril of [his] own”.

As a junior lieutenant he serves in HMS Renown under Captain Sawyer, whose bouts of paranoia on a trip to the Caribbean disrupt discipline. It is on this voyage that he begins his long friendship with William Bush, at the time his senior officer. Hornblower is made commander but his promotion is not confirmed when he returns to England following the announcement of the Peace of Amiens, causing him great financial distress. He resorts to making a living as a professional gambler, playing whist with admirals and other senior figures for a modest income plus any money that he wins in the games.

HMS Hotspur

In 1803, renewed hostilities against France seem imminent, and Hornblower is confirmed as commander of HM Sloop Hotspur. Before sailing, he marries Maria, the daughter of his landlady, despite his doubts about the match. Maria dotes upon the irritable Hornblower in ways that he finds distressing; she knows little of the sea, and annoys him both with her ignorance and her desire for social status derived from his promotions, as well as her hero-worship of him, which clashes with his eternally low self-image. Despite this unfortunate beginning, however, he warms to her over the course of several books, and becomes a good (though not perfect) husband to her and father to their two children, also named Horatio and Maria.

After gruelling service during the blockade of Brest aboard the Hotspur, he's promised the coveted promotion to Captain by Commander-in-Chief William Cornwallis and is recalled to England. Once there, he meets the secretary of the Admiralty and post rank is conferred when Hornblower agrees to take part in a clandestine operation that eventually leads to the resounding British victory at the Trafalgar.

HMS Atropos

Following this exploit, Hornblower is ordered by the Admiralty to organize Nelson's funeral procession along the River Thames and has to deal with the near-sinking of the barge conveying the hero's coffin. Later, after being given command of HMS Atropos, he is sent on a secret mission to recover gold and silver from a sunken British transport on the bottom of Marmorice Bay within the Ottoman Empire with the aid of pearl divers from Ceylon, narrowly escaping a Turkish warship at the end. Upon his return to a British-controlled port, after unloading the treasure and refitting his ship, the HMS Atropos, is given to the King of the Two Sicilies for diplomatic reasons, much to his disappointment. Returning to England, he finds his two young children dying of smallpox. Their deaths were referred to in the first novel to be published.

HMS Lydia

Later (in the time line, but written of in the first novel), he makes a long, difficult voyage in command of the frigate HMS Lydia round the Horn to the Pacific, where his mission is to support a madman, El Supremo, in his rebellion against the Spanish. He captures the Natividad, a much more powerful Spanish ship (Bush refers to it as a "ship of the line", although Hornblower believes this is stretching a point), but then has to reluctantly cede it to El Supremo to placate him. When he finds that the Spanish have switched sides in the interim, he is forced to find and sink the ship he had captured—adding injury to insult, as he had given up a fortune in prize money to maintain the uneasy alliance with the megalomaniac.

Hornblower also takes on an important passenger in a stop in Panama—Lady Barbara Wellesley, the fictional younger sister of Arthur Wellesley (later to become the Duke of Wellington)—also Hornblower's future wife, and without doubt the love of his life. He is at first nettled and infuriated by her forthright and outspoken manner, her ability to easily see through his reserve, and her refusal to be cowed or overawed by him. Over time, however, her beauty, strength, and intelligence win his heart, and the two become dangerously attracted to each other. This results in a kiss that is interrupted by Lady Barbara's maid Hebe—when she is sent away, the spell is broken, and Hornblower, engaging in his typical self-loathing and second-guessing behavior, refuses to give in to his feelings again. Perceiving herself to be rejected, Lady Barbara leaves the Lydia two days later when they rendezvous with other British ships. Hornblower fears for his career, having offended the daughter of an earl and sister of a marquis.

HMS Sutherland

After these exploits, he is given command of HMS Sutherland, a seventy-four gun ship of the line. His feelings are disturbed during this period by the fact that his commander, Admiral Leighton, has recently married Lady Barbara, thereby apparently ending any hope that she and Hornblower might act on their feelings for one another. Hornblower is tormented by jealousy of Leighton, compounded by the admiral's dismissive treatment of him; this treatment is due in fact to Leighton's rightly suspecting his wife's attraction to the famous captain, and feelings of inferiority towards Hornblower, but naturally the self-doubting captain is incapable of realizing this.

While waiting at his Mediterranean rendezvous point for the rest of his squadron—and its commander—to arrive, he carries out a series of raids against the French along the south coast of Spain. He learns that a French squadron of four ships of the line is loose, having slipped the blockade. He decides that his duty requires that he fight at one-to-four odds to prevent them from entering a well-protected harbour. In the process, his ship is crippled and with two-thirds of the crew incapacitated, he surrenders to the French. As a prisoner he witnesses the destruction of the French ships at anchor by Leighton's squadron.

He is sent with his coxswain, Brown, and his injured first lieutenant, Bush, to Paris for a show trial and execution. During the journey, Hornblower and his companions escape. After a winter sojourn at the chateau of the Comte de Graçay, during which he has an affair with the nobleman's widowed daughter-in-law, the escapees travel down the Loire river to the coastal city of Nantes. There, he recaptures a Royal Navy cutter, the Witch of Endor, mans the vessel with a gang of slave labourers and escapes to the Channel Fleet.

Hornblower faces a mandatory court-martial for the loss of the Sutherland, but is "most honourably acquitted." A national hero in the eyes of the public, he is awarded a knighthood and made a Colonel of Marines (a sinecure which confers a second salary without any additional duties). When he arrives home, he discovers that his first wife Maria has died in childbirth and that his infant son has been adopted and cared for by Lady Barbara. As she has been widowed by the death of Admiral Leighton, Hornblower's former commander (he had died of wounds sustained during the attack Hornblower had observed as a prisoner) they are free (after a decent interval) to marry. Thereafter, he lives as a country squire in the fictional village of Smallbridge, Kent, largely satisfied but longing for the sea.

Flag Officer

A return to duty comes when he is appointted to be commodore and sent with a squadron of small craft on a mission to the Baltic Sea, where he must be a diplomat as much as an officer. He foils an assassination attempt on Tsar Alexander I of Russia and is influential in the monarch's decision to resist the French invasion of the Russian Empire. While at the court of the Tsar, it is implied (but not explicitly confirmed) that he is unfaithful to Barbara, dallying with a young Russian noblewoman. He provides invaluable assistance in the defence of Riga, employing his bomb-ketches against the French army, where he meets General Carl von Clausewitz of the Prussian Army.

He returns ill with typhus to England. Soon after his recovery, he is given the difficult task of dealing with mutineers off the coast of France. After provoking the French by trickery into attacking the mutinous ship, he rounds up the rebels, personally shooting their ringleader as he tries to escape. When he is approached by a French official willing to negotiate the surrender of a major port, he seizes the opportunity and engineers the return of the Bourbons to France. He is rewarded by being created a peer as Baron Hornblower of Smallbridge in the County of Kent. However, his satisfaction is marred by the death in action of his longtime friend, Bush.

When Napoleon returns from exile at the start of the Hundred Days, Hornblower is staying at the estate of the Comte de Graçay, which he was visiting after again growing tired of his life in Smallbridge. While there, he renews his affair with Marie de Gracay, so that he has now been unfaithful, with her, to both of his wives. When the country goes over to Napoleon en masse, Hornblower, the Count, and his family choose to fight rather than flee to Britain. He leads a Royalist guerrilla force, and causes the returned Emperor's forces much grief before his band is finally cornered; in a desperate shootout, Marie is slain, and a devastated Hornblower captured. After a brusque hearing before a military tribunal, he and the Count are both sentenced to the firing squad the next morning by an officer who obviously regrets the task. However, in the morning when his cell door is opened, he is granted a stay due to Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Waterloo. Napoleon had tried to stir up support for a renewed national resistance when he arrived in Paris after Waterloo, but the temper of the legislative chambers, and of the public generally, did not favor his view. Lacking support, Napoleon abdicates and after he is again sent into exile, Hornblower is released.

After several years ashore, he is promoted to rear admiral and appointed naval Commander-in-Chief of the West Indies. He foils an attempt by veterans of Napoleon's Imperial Guard to free Napoleon from his captivity on Saint Helena, captures a slave ship, and encounters Simón Bolívar's army. He also discovers a plot by Lady Barbara to engineer the escape of a Marine bandsman sentenced to death for a minor offence. An astonished Hornblower overlooks her breach of the law and reassures her of his love. Finally, while attempting to return to England, the Hornblowers are caught in a hurricane, and Horatio struggles desperately to save Barbara's life from the storm. In a moment of terror and desperation, she bares her heart to him, revealing that she never loved her first husband, only him. The two survive, and this revelation does much to heal the last self-inflicted wounds in Hornblower's soul. He retires to Kent and eventually becomes Admiral of the Fleet.

His final, improbable achievement occurs at his home, when he assists a seemingly mad man claiming to be Napoleon to travel to France. That person turns out to be Napoleon III, the nephew of Hornblower's great nemesis and the future President (and later Emperor in his own right) of France. For his assistance, Lord Hornblower is created a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. At the end of his long and heroic career, he is wealthy, famous and contented, a loving and beloved, indulgent husband and father, and finally free of the insecurities and self-loathing that had driven him throughout his life.

Forester provides 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 Alexander asks him to describe his career. The two accounts are incompatible. 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. There are other discrepancies as well; in one account of his defeat of a Spanish frigate in the Mediterranean, he distinguished himself as lieutenant and in another he is a post-captain with less than three years seniority. It appears that these discrepancies arose as the series matured and accounts needed to be modified to coincide with his age and career.

Non-canonical biography

C. Northcote Parkinson, more famous for his invention of Parkinson's Law, wrote a "biography" of Hornblower, detailing his career as well as personal information. The biography sheds light upon what really happened to Captain Sawyer on HMS Renown (including a confession that Hornblower pushed Captain Sawyer down the hatchway), as well as subsequent careers of Lord Hornblower's descendants, ending with the present Lord Hornblower's emigration to Apartheid South Africa in the late 1960s. According to Parkinson, Hornblower in later life became a director of P&O, Governor of Malta (1829–1831), Commander in Chief at Chatham (1832–1835) a Viscount (in 1850), and an Admiral of the Fleet, dying at the age of 80 on 12 January 1858.^[7]

This fictional biography of a fictional character has confused some readers, who have taken it as a factual work.^[3] Parkinson includes in Horatio's family tree at least two real life Hornblowers, though he nowhere admits to this. They are Jonathan Hornblower senior and Jonathan Hornblower junior, who were noted engineers designing and working with steam engines in mines in Cornwall in the late 18th century. In their spare time they were active Baptist Christians, founding a church in Chacewater whose offshoot in Truro is very much alive to this day.

Bibliography

The Hornblower canon by Forester consists of eleven novels (one unfinished) and five short stories. In addition, The Hornblower Companion includes maps showing where the action took place in the ten complete novels plus Forester's notes on how they were written.

Another short story, "The Point and the Edge," is included only as an outline in The Hornblower Companion.

Omnibus publications

The first three novels written, The Happy Return, A Ship of the Line, and Flying Colours were collected as Captain Horatio Hornblower (1939) by Little Brown in the US. Both a single-volume edition and a three-volume edition (in a slip case) were published.

Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, Lieutenant Hornblower, and Hornblower and the Atropos were compiled in one book, variously titled Hornblower's Early Years, Horatio Hornblower Goes to Sea, or The Young Hornblower. Hornblower and the Atropos was replaced by Hornblower and the Hotspur in later UK editions of The Young Hornblower.

Hornblower and the Atropos, The Happy Return, and A Ship of the Line were compiled into one omnibus edition, called Captain Hornblower.

Flying Colours, The Commodore, Lord Hornblower, and Hornblower in the West Indies were presented as a third omnibus edition called Admiral Hornblower to fill out the series.

Commodore Hornblower, Lord Hornblower, and Hornblower in the West Indies were also compiled into one book, called The Indomitable Hornblower.

Four "Cadet Editions" were released by Little Brown and later by Michael Joseph, each collecting two Hornblower novels and edited for younger readers: Hornblower Goes to Sea (1953, 1954), from Mr. Midshipman Hornblower and Lieutenant Hornblower; Hornblower Takes Command (1953, 1954), from Hornblower and The Atropos and Beat To Quarters; Hornblower in Captivity (1939, 1955), from A Ship of the Line and Flying Colours; and Hornblower's Triumph (1946, 1955), from Commodore Hornblower and Lord Hornblower.

The short stories The Hand of Destiny, Hornblower's Charitable Offering, Hornblower and His Majesty plus other Hornblower material not previously published in book-form was collected in Hornblower One More Time (000000001976-07-04-0000Jul 4, 1976) though only 350 copies were printed.^[11]

Serialisation

The Hornblower novels were all serialised in US periodicals and most also in UK periodicals. Except for the first novel Beat to Quarters, the serialisations appeared before the books.

Historical figures in the novels

Royal Navy figures

• Vice-Admiral The Hon. Sir Henry Blackwood, 1st Baronet (Hornblower and the Atropos)
• Admiral Prince William Henry, Duke of Clarence (later King William IV) (Flying Colours)
• Admiral Lord Collingwood (Hornblower and the Atropos)
• Admiral The Hon. Sir William Cornwallis (Hornblower and the Widow McCool, Hornblower and the Hotspur, Hornblower and the Atropos)
• Admiral Lord Gambier (Flying Colours)
• Rear-Admiral Lord Gardner, second in command to Admiral Cornwallis (Hornblower and the Hotspur)
• Captain Richard Bowen — HMS Terpsichore, but called Captain Sir Richard Bowen, killed at Teneriffe
• Admiral Sir John Gore — HMS Medusa (Hornblower and the Hotspur)
• Admiral Sir Richard Grindall — HMS Prince (Hornblower and the Hotspur)
• Admiral Sir Graham Eden Hamond, 2nd Baronet — HMS Lively, but called Hammond (Hornblower and the Hotspur)
• Captain Sir Thomas Masterman Hardy — HMS 'Triumph (Flying Colours)
• Admiral John Jervis, 1st Earl of St Vincent (Hornblower and the Atropos, Lord Hornblower)
• Captain Charles John Moore Mansfield — HMS Minotaur, but called Marsfield (Hornblower and the Hotspur)
• Admiral Sir Graham Moore — HMS Indefatigable (Hornblower and the Hotspur)
• Admiral of the Fleet Sir Peter Parker, 1st Baronet (Hornblower and the Atropos)
• Rear-Admiral Sir William Parker, 1st Baronet, of Harburn (Hornblower and the Hotspur)
• Captain Lord Henry Paulet — HMS Terrible (Hornblower and the Hotspur)
• Admiral Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth — HMS Indefatigable (Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, Hornblower and the Hotspur, Lord Hornblower)
• Rear-Admiral Sir James Saumarez, later Lord de Saumarez, — HMS Temeraire (The Happy Return)
• Captain Samuel Sutton — HMS Amphion (Hornblower and the Hotspur)

Other historical figures

• Aleksandr Pavlovich Romanov, Tsar Alexander I of Russia (The Commodore)
• Sir John Barrow — Second Secretary to the Admiralty (Hornblower and the Crisis)
• Lord William Cavendish-Bentinck (Hornblower and the Atropos)
• Prince Karl XIV Johan of Sweden (The Commodore)
• Napoleon III of France (The Last Encounter)
• General Count Pierre Jacques Etienne Cambronne (erstwhile commander of the Imperial Guard) (Hornblower In The West Indies)
• Colonel Karl Philip Gottlieb von Clausewitz (The Commodore)
• Lord Conyngham (Flying Colours)
• General Sir Hew Whitefoord Dalrymple (governor of Gibraltar – although Dalrymple did not in fact become governor until a later date than that at which the novel is set) (Mr. Midshipman Hornblower)

• Lady Frances Dalrymple (wife of Sir Hew) (Mr. Midshipman Hornblower)
• Duke d'Angoulême (the future French pretender Louis XIX) (Lord Hornblower)
• Duchess d'Angoulême, (the daughter of King Louis XVI) (Lord Hornblower)
• General Hans Karl von Diebitsch (Commodore Hornblower)
• John Hookham Frere (Flying Colours)
• General-Lieutenant Ivan Nikolaevich Essen (The Commodore)
• King George III of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (Hornblower and the Atropos)
• George Augustus Frederick, The Prince Regent (later King George IV) (Flying Colours)
• William Marsden — Secretary to the Lords of the Admiralty (Hornblower and the Crisis)
• General Count Sebastian Francisco de Miranda (Hornblower and the Crisis)
• General Count Louis Marie Jacques Alamaric Narbonne-Lara (The Commodore)
• Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (Flying Colours)
• Spencer Perceval — Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (Flying Colours)
• Richard Colley Wellesley, 2nd Earl of Mornington, Marquis Wellesley (A brother of Hornblower's fictional wife, Lady Barbara Wellesley) (The Commodore)
• General Ludwig Yorck von Wartenburg (The Commodore)

Ships featured

In other media

Screen adaptations

• The film Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951) stars Gregory Peck in the title role, encompassing the events in The Happy Return, A Ship of the Line, and Flying Colours, with C. S. Forester sharing writing credits. Peck and co-star Virginia Mayo would recreate their roles on a one-hour Lux Radio Theater program broadcast on January 21, 1952, which is included as an audio-only feature in the film's DVD release.^[13]
• The ITV and A&E television series Hornblower (1998–2003) starred Ioan Gruffudd as Hornblower, and included stories from Mr. Midshipman Hornblower up to Hornblower and the Hotspur.

Radio adaptations

• Michael Redgrave played Hornblower in a radio series of the same name between 1952 and 1953, later rebroadcast over Mutual in the United States syndicated via Towers of London.^[14]
• Nicholas Fry played Hornblower in the radio series 'The Hornblower Story' in 1979/80 for the BBC (20 x 30mins). This series covers the books, 'Mr Midshipman Hornblower', 'Lieutenant Hornblower', 'Hornblower and the Hotspur' and 'Lord Hornblower'.

Literary appearances

• In the fictional setting of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore, Hornblower is the equivalent of Lord Nelson, with The Black Dossier depicting Hornblower's Column as one of London's most popular landmarks.
• A "biography", called The life and times of Horatio Hornblower, was published in 1970 by C. Northcote Parkinson which gives various scholarly "corrections" to the stories told by Hornblower's creator.^[7]
• In Dudley Pope's Ramage, Hornblower is mentioned in passing as a former shipmate of the title character, Lord Ramage, when both were midshipmen.
• Sten Nadolny's novel The Discovery of Slowness contains allusions to the Hornblower cycle. For instance, the Lydia is written among other vessels in a sailor's bar in Plymouth. Lieutenant Gerard who appears in The Happy Return and A Ship of the Line is mentioned several times.
• In Dewey Lambdin's King, Ship, and Sword, the main character Alan Lewrie (another fictional British captain of the era) makes a visit to the Admiralty and takes particular note of a tall, thin lieutenant in a threadbare uniform with a melancholy expression. While the lieutenant's name is never mentioned, he displays several of Hornblower's best known characteristics, and the state of a penniless lieutenant fits with the events at the end of Lieutenant Hornblower (this scene takes place during the Peace of Amiens).

Influence on other fiction

Napoleonic War series

• The popular Sharpe novels by Bernard Cornwell were inspired by C. S. Forester's Hornblower series.^[15]
• Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels were likely influenced by the Hornblower tales.^[16]
• Douglas Reeman's Richard Bolitho series was inspired by Hornblower and was described in publicity as 'the best of Hornblower's successors'.
• Dudley Pope was encouraged by C. S. Forester to create his Lord Ramage series of novels set around the same period.

Science fiction series

• Gene Roddenberry was influenced by the Hornblower character while creating the Star Trek characters James T. Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard. Nicholas Meyer, director of some of the Star Trek films, frequently cites Horatio Hornblower as one of his primary influences.^[17][18]
• The science fiction characters of John Grimes (created by A. Bertram Chandler) and Nicholas Seafort (created by David Feintuch) are heavily inspired by the Hornblower series.
• David Weber's character Honor Harrington closely parallels Hornblower and he deliberately gave her the same initials.^[19] The first novel in the series, On Basilisk Station, is dedicated to C. S. Forester; in the sixth, Honor Among Enemies, Harrington is described reading a Hornblower novel. Several major plot points from the Hornblower novels are more or less closely paralleled in Weber's "Honorverse" series; for example, the bully shipmate story happens to a side character in the Honorverse, while the pistol duel with Simpson is recreated very closely (including the early turning and shooting in the back), with Harrington facing an antagonist unrelated to the bully and serving as the climax to a different storyline. Also like Hornblower, the reader first meets Harrington in junior command rank, the daughter of doctors from a fairly modest background and lacking patronage of any sort, and throughout the series she accrues promotions, peerages, and other honours. By the time of the most recent novels Harrington is a Fleet Admiral (NATO O-11 equivalent), a duchess, the recipient of two different nations' highest military decorations, and so on. Weber's main space-nation, the Star Kingdom of Manticore, is deliberately made to resemble 19th-century Britain in a good many respects (peerage, strong informal importance of birth and patronage in Naval service, etc.), likely in part to accommodate the parallels to Hornblower. Some readers will even jokingly summarize the Honorverse series as "Horatio Hornblower, in space".
• Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry (featured in the Terran Empire series) also parallels the Hornblower series.
• The fifth novel in the Jackelian series of Stephen Hunt, Jack Cloudie, has the Hornblower series as a major influence (fighting with airships, rather than sailing craft). The title, Jack Cloudie, is itself derived from Jack Tar, as is the series name.
• Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga uses the Hornblower series as a structural model.^[20]
• David Feintuch's Seafort Saga has a very similar central character in Nicholas Seafort, a young Midshipman serving on a deep space military ship who rises through the ranks to become Earth's savior several times over. Seafort is recognized by those around him as a brave and noble man, but the sacrifices he is called to make plague him with guilt and angst.
• In The Traitor's Hand, the third novel of the Ciaphas Cain series by Sandy Mitchell, set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, there is brief mention of an Imperial Navy commander named Horatio Bugler, who would go on to have a much more distinguished career.

Other references

• Captain Horario Harpplayer, R.N. is a short story parody written by the science fiction author Harry Harrison. While Hornblower is tone deaf, Harpplayer is completely colour blind, with the result that he cannot recognize a little green man as an alien from outer space. Harpplayer reflects on the "imaginary colors" that other people claim to see, and refers to the alien as "Mr. Greene".
• The British comedy film Carry On Jack featured a character named Midshipman Poopdecker, played by Bernard Cribbins, who was intended as a parody of Hornblower.
• President Jimmy Carter accidentally called the late Senator Hubert Horatio Humphrey "Hubert Horatio Hornblower" during his acceptance speech after he was nominated for re-election in 1980.
• The video game Age of Pirates 2: City of Abandoned Ships features a character named Horatio Hornblower who offers his services to the player if the right questions are asked.
• In the episode "Smile Time" of the television series Angel, one of the demon-possessed puppets is named Ratio Hornblower. The same character also appears in the limited comic book series Spike: Shadow Puppets.

References

External links

• C. S. Forester Society, dedicated to the author and his works