The Happy Return. By C.S. Forester

The Happy Return

C. S. Forester (1937)

E-book downloaded from the Internet

The first Hornblower book that I read, given to me in 1982 by Jayavaradan Pandit. Also maybe the earliest book in the series written by Forester. Hornblower is captain of the Lydia and is sent to the Pacific, round Cape Horn. After eleven weeks of sailing on the high seas he makes a perfect landfall in the Gulf of Fonseca on the west coast of Nicaragua and Honduras. There he meets a local chieftian, El Supremo, who is a detestable despot (seemingly modelled on Conrad’s Kurtz), but who is in rebellion against the Spanish. Therefore Hornblower helps him by capturing and then handing over to his nascent navy, the Natividad, a much larger Spanish war ship. Soon thereafter he learns that the Spanish are now friends with the English and against El Supremo, and this was so even as he captured the Natividad. He is afraid of being discredited for helping the newly created enemy, even though this happened because he followed his orders perfectly, i.e. he did not communciate at any time with anyone until he made landfall. In Nicaragua he takes on board Lady Barbara Wellesley, thus beginning of their love affair. He again meets the Natividad and fights her and sinks her despite her superior firepowere, sustaining the while fearsome injuries to his own ship. He refits, and returns to his command cntre, the Caribbean island of St. Helena. On the long (and largely uneventful) trip there, again around Cape Horn, the love affair between Hornblower and Barbara develops a full head of steam, but Hornblower is conscious not only of Maria, but the fact that his background does not match Barbara’s blue blood, she being the sister of both Richard, the Marquis of Wellesley, sometime Governor General of the East India Company in India, and of Arthur Wellesley later Lord Wellington, who fought in India.  ["Humph," said Lady Wheeler. The name of Wellesley was still anathema to a certain section of Anglo-Indians. "This Lady Barbara is a good deal younger than he is, I fancy? I remember her as quite a child in Madras."]. The book ends with Hornblower abruptly breaking off their contact on reaching St. Helena. He is then sent back to England to assume a new command.