Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
---|---|---|
Searching... Lake Elmo Library | FICTION FOR | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Stillwater Public Library | FICTION FOR | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
Called "as gripping and realistic a sea tale as you are likely to run across" by the New York Times, C. S. Forester's Beat to Quarters finds Hornblower faced with a near-impossible mission off the coast of Nicaragua.
June 1808, somewhere west of Nicaragua -- a site suitable for spectacular sea battles. The Admiralty has ordered Captain Horatio Hornblower, now in command of the thirty-six-gun HMS Lydia , to form an alliance against the Spanish colonial government with an insane Spanish landowner; to find a water route across the Central American isthmus; and "to take, sink, burn or destroy" the fifty-gun Spanish ship of the line Natividad or face court-martial. A daunting enough set of orders -- even if the happily married captain were not woefully distracted by the passenger he is obliged to take on in Panama: Lady Barbara Wellesley.
Author Notes
Born Cecil Louis Troughton Smith on August 27, 1899, in Cairo, Egypt, where his father was a government official, C. S. Forester grew up mainly in England. He was educated at Dulwich College, studying medicine briefly before decidint to become a writer. Forester moved to the United States before the start of World War II, and lived in Berkeley, California, until his death in 1966.
Although Forester was a journalist, a novelist and a Hollywood scriptwriter, he is probably best known for his historical fiction, particularly the series of novels that feature Horatio Hornblower. The eleven-book series begins with Mr. Midshipmen Hornblower, in which the seventeen-year old Hornblower joins the British navy in 1793, just as the Napoleonic Wars are about to begin. Hornblower's continuing adventures, as well as his advancement to the highest ranks of the navy, are chronicled in further books, including Beat to Quarters, Flying Colours, Commodore Hornblower, Lord Hornblower, The Happy Return, and A Ship of the Line, for which Forester recived the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1939.
Several of Forester's novels were made into films, most notably Payment Deferred (his first novel published in 1926), Eagle Squadron, The Commandos (the movie title was The Commandos Strike at Dawn), Captain Horatio Hornblower, Sink the Bismarck!, and The African Queen, starring Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart.
Forester's nonfiction includes The Age of Fighting Sail: The Story of the Naval War of 1812, as well as biographies of Lord Nelson, Napoleon, Josephine, and King Louis XIV. He also wrote an autobiography, Long Before Forty.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (1)
Library Journal Review
C.S. Forester constructs a swift adventure novel that enthralls readers with the pace of war and the perils of love. Horatio Hornblower captains the H.M.S. Lydia to a top-secret rendezvous off Nicaragua in 1807. Lydia, 36-gun frigate, has seen better days. Her timbers leak and her deck planks creak under the crew's weight. When Hornblower unwillingly allies himself with a psychopathic warlord named El Supremo, the Lydia must go into battle against a ship twice her size with double her firepower. (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
Part I The Prosperous Voyage | |
I The Captain | p. 3 |
II Land | p. 19 |
III The Orders | p. 26 |
IV El Supermo | p. 41 |
V Revictualling | p. 58 |
VI The Coming of the "Natividad" | p. 72 |
VII El Supremo's Fleet Sails | p. 84 |
Part II The Unprosperous Voyage | |
VIII News from Europe | p. 111 |
IX Lady Barbara Comes on Board | p. 124 |
X The Anchor | p. 134 |
XI More News from Europe | p. 142 |
XII Lady Barbara's Accomplishments | p. 152 |
XIII Meeting The "Natividad" | p. 163 |
XIV The Ships Dismasted | p. 177 |
XV Refitting | p. 184 |
XVI Evening and Night | p. 193 |
XVII The Battle | p. 205 |
XVIII Sunday Morning | p. 242 |
XIX Fresh Orders from Spain | p. 255 |
XX The Isle of Coiba | p. 265 |
XXI El Supremo Again | p. 275 |
Part III The Happy Return | |
XXII Homeward | p. 289 |
XXIII The Coward | p. 305 |
XXIV The Happy Return | p. 317 |