Beat to Quarters (Hornblower Saga)

Summary

June 1808, somewhere west of Nicaragua-a site suitable for spectacular sea battles. The Admiralty has ordered Captain Horatio Hornblower, now in command of the thirty-six-gun HMS Lydia, to form an alliance against the Spanish colonial government with an insane Spanish landowner; to find a water route across the Central American isthmus; and "to take, sink, burn or destroy" the fifty-gun Spanish ship of the line Natividad or face court-martial. A daunting enough set of orders-even if the happily married captain were not woefully distracted by the passenger he is obliged to take on in Panama: Lady Barbara Wellesley.

The A&E television network's series of original movies based on Hornblower's adventures have been tremendously successful -- praised by critics, enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of viewers, and winner of the Emmy Award for best miniseries.

Readers and booksellers who admire Patrick O'Brian's novels delight in discovering this "new" series of nautical adventure stories.

About the Author

C. S. Forester (1899-1966) wrote several novels with military and naval themes, including The African Queen, The Barbary Pirates, The General, The Good Shepherd, The Gun, The Last Nine Days of the "Bismarck," and Rifleman Dodd. But Forester is best known as the creator of Horatio Hornblower, a British naval genius of the Napoleonic era, whose exploits and adventures on the high seas Forester chronicled in a series of eleven acclaimed historical novels. Over the years Hornblower has proved to be one of the most beloved and enduring fictional heroes in English literature, his popularity rivaled only by Sherlock Holmes.

Product Details

• Series: Hornblower Saga (Book 6)
• Paperback: 324 pages
• Publisher: Back Bay Books
• Fiction / Action & Adventure