Ship Of The Line, A

Description

It is May, 1810 - and thirty-nine-year-old Captain, Horatio Hornblower has been handed his first ship of the line. Though the seventy-four-gun HMS Sutherland is 'the ugliest and least desirable two-decker in the Navy', Hornblower knows that by the time Sutherland and her squadron reach the blockaded Catalonian coast, every seaman will do his duty.

Author description

C.S Forester was born in Cairo in 1899, where his father was stationed as a government official. He studied medicine at Guy's Hospital, and after leaving Guy's without a degree he turned to writing as a career. On the outbreak of war he entered the Ministry of Information and later he sailed with the Royal Navy to collect material for The Ship. He made a voyage to the Bering Sea to gather material for a similar book on the United States Navy, and it was during this trip that he was stricken with arteriosclerosis, a disease which left him crippled. However, he continued to write and in the Hornblower novels created the most renowned sailor in contemporary fiction. He died in 1966.