1953 Napoleonic naval fiction, eighth written and fifth by internal
chronology. Hornblower takes command of a sloop of war, the smallest
ship in the fleet that rates a full captain, and proceeds about the
Mediterranean.
I am unconvinced by Maria, Hornblower's first wife, who turns up
at the start and briefly at the end of this book: she was invented for
the early books to be the encumbrance who'd have to be killed off
before Hornblower could be with his True Love, and even in these tales
of largely one-dimensional characters she stands out as simplistic,
perhaps because she is observed at greater length than most of them.
Yes, all right, perhaps Hornblower only married her because he felt
sorry for her, but even in this era one feels that they could have
tried to have a conversation about what each of them actually wanted
to make them happy, rather than acting out the rigid roles of Standard
Wife and Standard Husband.
Still, Forester is at his best when narrating some historical gem he's
dug up, and here we have the Severn and Thames Canal, the waterborne
portion of Nelson's funeral after Trafalgar, and a salvage operation
by breath-hold diving in hostile waters. Yes, occasionally Hornblower
falls into his standard pattern of self-hatred, but this is rather
briefer than in the earlier books; what this book is about is much
more the endless parade of problems requiring that the captain solve
them, and I was very much in the mood for that.
I am definitely enjoying these chronologically early books more than
the earlier-written ones that show Hornblower later in life. This may
of course be as simple as Forester maturing as a writer.