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2 unusual facts about The Happy Return


The Happy Return

Another passenger on the lugger, the young Englishwoman Lady Barbara Wellesley, the (fictional) sister of Marquess Wellesley and Sir Arthur Wellesley (the future Duke of Wellington), comes aboard.

In June 1808, Hornblower is in command of the 36-gun frigate HMS Lydia, with orders to sail to the Pacific coast of Nicaragua (near modern Choluteca, Choluteca) and supply a local landowner, Don Julian Alvarado ("descendant" of Pedro de Alvarado by a fictional marriage to a daughter of Moctezuma), with muskets and powder.


Pedro de Alvarado

C. S. Forester's 1937 novel The Happy Return, set in Central America in 1808, features a character El Supremo who claims to be a descendant of Alvarado by a (fictional) marriage to a daughter of Moctezuma.


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