''A Ship of the Line'' is an historical seafaring novel by C. S. Forester. It follows his fictional hero Horatio Hornblower during his tour as captain of a ship of the line. By internal chronology, ''A Ship of the Line'', which follows ''

The Happy Return ''The Happy Return'' (''Beat to Quarters'' in the US) is the first of the Horatio Hornblower novels by C. S. Forester. It was published in 1937. The American title is derived from the expression " beat to quarters", which was the signal to p ...

'', is the seventh book in the series (counting the unfinished '' Hornblower and the Crisis''). However, the book, published in 1938, was the second Hornblower novel completed by Forester. It is one of three ''Hornblower'' novels adapted into the 1951 British-American film ''

Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N. ''Captain Horatio Hornblower'' (a.k.a. ''Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N.'' in the UK, "R.N." standing for "Royal Navy") is a 1951 British naval swashbuckling war film in Technicolor from Warner Bros., produced by Gerry Mitchell, directed by Rao ...

''.

Plot summary

Hornblower has recently returned to England from the Pacific in the frigate HMS ''Lydia'', having gained widespread fame (but no financial stability) as a result of sinking the superior ship ''Natividad'' in battle. As a reward for his exploits, he is given command of a seventy-four ship of the line, HMS ''Sutherland'', once the Dutch ship ''Eendracht''. A ship that is, in Hornblower's estimation, "the ugliest and least desirable

two-decker A two-decker is a sail warship which carried her guns on two fully armed decks. Usually additional guns were carried on the upper works (forecastle and quarterdeck), but this was not a continuous battery and thus not counted as a full gun deck ...

in the Navy List". He is assigned to serve under Rear Admiral Leighton, Lady Barbara Wellesley's new husband. Throughout, Hornblower is torn between his love for Lady Barbara and his sense of duty and loyalty to his frumpy wife, Maria. His feelings for Maria are complicated by the previous loss of both of his children to

smallpox Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by variola virus (often called smallpox virus) which belongs to the genus Orthopoxvirus. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (WHO) c ...

. Hornblower's first orders are to escort a convoy of

East Indiamen East Indiaman was a general name for any sailing ship operating under charter or licence to any of the East India trading companies of the major European trading powers of the 17th through the 19th centuries. The term is used to refer to vesse ...

off the Spanish coast. He successfully fights off simultaneous attack on the convoy by two fast, manoeuvrable

privateer A privateer is a private person or ship that engages in maritime warfare under a commission of war. Since robbery under arms was a common aspect of seaborne trade, until the early 19th century all merchant ships carried arms. A sovereign or deleg ...

lugger A lugger is a sailing vessel defined by its rig, using the lug sail on all of its one or several masts. They were widely used as working craft, particularly off the coasts of France, England, Ireland and Scotland. Luggers varied extensively ...

s. Since he has been forced to sail with an understrength crew, and had to make do with "lubbers, sheepstealers, and bigamists", he breaks Admiralty regulations and presses twenty sailors from each Indiaman just before they part company. With his ship now at full complement, Hornblower wreaks havoc on the French-occupied Spanish coast. He captures a French brig, the ''Amelie'', by surprise, storms a French fort and takes several more vessels in its harbour as prizes, repeatedly fires upon several thousand Italian soldiers marching along a coastal road, and saves his Admiral's ship from certain ruin by towing it away from a French battery during a severe storm. When Hornblower encounters a squadron of four French ships of the line that have broken through the English blockade of

Toulon Toulon (, , ; oc, label= Provençal, Tolon , , ) is a city on the French Riviera and a large port on the Mediterranean coast, with a major naval base. Located in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, and the Provence province, Toulon is th ...

, he attacks them despite the odds of four to one, and manages to disable or heavily damage all of them. However, with many of his crew killed or wounded, including Bush, who loses a leg, and his ship dismasted, he is then forced to strike his colours and surrender. This novel ends as a

cliffhanger A cliffhanger or cliffhanger ending is a plot device in fiction which features a main character in a precarious or difficult dilemma or confronted with a shocking revelation at the end of an episode or a film of serialized fiction. A cliffhang ...

Notes

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Ship Of The Line, A Hornblower books 1938 British novels British novels adapted into films Michael Joseph books