1793, the eve of the Napoleonic Wars, and Midshipman Horatio Hornblower receives his first command … As a seventeen-year-old with a touch of sea sickness, young Horatio Hornblower hardly cuts a dash in His Majesty’s navy. Yet from the moment he is ordered to board a French merchant ship in the Bay of Biscay and take command of crew and cargo, he proves his seafaring mettle on the waves. With a character-forming duel, several chases and some strange tavern encounters, the young Hornblower is soon forged into a formidable man of the sea. This is the first of eleven books chronicling the nautical adventures of C. S. Forester’s inimitable hero, Horatio Hornblower.
- ISBN10 0140011153
- ISBN13 9780140011159
- Publish Date 29 November 1973 (first published 1 January 1950)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 22 September 2011
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Penguin Books Ltd
- Format Paperback
- Pages 320
- Language English