Lord Horatio Hornblower

Captain Horatio Hornblower is a captain and commodore in the British Navy during the Napoleonic wars. During the time of the novel he is thirty-eight to thirty-nine years old; he is very educated and joined the naval service fairly late at the age of about seventeen. He estimates he has spent only several months ashore during his decades of naval service. Hornblower is an exceptional navigator, captain, and seaman, although he is nervous and constantly plagued by internalized self-doubt. He regards himself as cowardly and dishonest, yet all who know him regard him in exactly the opposite way. His powerful drive to unqualified success masks his internal turmoil in icy reserve and even his closest friends barely know him. An introspective and lonely man, Hornblower is married to Barbara and has one surviving child—Richard—from a previous wife who died during childbirth. Two...