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7 unusual facts about Horatio Hornblower


Battle of Espinosa de los Monteros

The Gun, by C. S. Forester (author of the Horatio Hornblower series), begins with the Spanish retreat from Espinoza.

Honor Among Enemies

The novel also plays up Honor Harrington's similarities with Horatio Hornblower, as one chapter shows Captain Harrington reading one of C.S. Forester's "darned good" Hornblower novels.

Hornblower

Horatio Hornblower, a fictional officer of the British Royal Navy created by C.S. Forester

Post-captain

Commanders, who received the title of captain as a courtesy, whether they currently had a command or not (e.g. the fictional Captain Jack Aubrey in Master and Commander or the fictional Captain Horatio Hornblower in Hornblower and the Hotspur); this custom is now defunct.

Being "made post" is portrayed as the most crucial event in an officer's career in both Forester's Horatio Hornblower series and O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series.

Ruse of war

In the novel A Ship of the Line, British Captain Horatio Hornblower sails his Dutch-built ship unmolested into a well-defended enemy harbor by flying French colors and hoisting the French recognition signal for the day.

Worth, Kent

C.S. Forester's fictional naval hero Horatio Hornblower was born in the village of Worth, according to Hornblower's biographer Cyril Northcote Parkinson see The Life and Times of Horatio Hornblower (1970), on 4 July 1776.


HMS Hotspur

A sloop called Hotspur appears in the Horatio Hornblower novel, Hornblower and the Hotspur, third in the series, armed with eighteen 9-pounder cannon and four carronades

HMS Pluto

A fictional HMS Pluto appears as the admiral's flagship in the Horatio Hornblower novel A Ship of the Line.

Hornblower in the West Indies

Hornblower in the West Indies, or alternately Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies is one of the novels in the series CS Forester wrote about fictional Royal Navy officer Horatio Hornblower.

The Frogs and the Lobsters

Horatio Hornblower, the central character, is assigned to a division of the invading army that is to hold the bridge at Muzillac, but the royalist officer in charge is a butchering madman whose obsession with revenge over his former subjects does nothing to help the doomed invasion.


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