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 0316290602
- ISBN13 9780316290609
- Publish Date 1 June 1998 (first published 1 January 1950)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 21 May 2021
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Little Brown and Company
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 310
- Language English