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.

Hornblower leads his first ship of the line into enemy waters in this installment of C. S. Forester's beloved adventure series, called "exciting, realistic, packed with grand naval action" by the New Yorker. May 1810, seventeen years deep into the Napoleonic Wars. Captain Horatio Hornblower is newly in command of his first ship of the line, the seventy-four-gun HMS Sutherland, which he deems "the ugliest and least desirable two-decker in the Navy List." Moreover, she is 250 men short of a full crew, so Hornblower must enlist and train "poachers, bigamists, sheepstealers," and other landlubbers. By the time the Sutherland reaches the blockaded Catalonian coast of Spain, the crew is capable of staging five astonishing solo raids against the French. But the grisly prospect of defeat and capture looms for both captain and crew as the Sutherland single-handedly takes on four French ships. "A fine sea tale, to be ranked with the best of its kind." — New York Times

Forced to surrender his ship, the Sutherland, after a long and bloody battle, Captain Horatio Hornblower now bides his time as a prisoner in a French fortress. Within days he and his first lieutenant, Bush, who was crippled in the last fight, are to be taken to Paris to be tried on trumped-up charges of violating the laws of war, and most probably executed as part of Napoleon's attempt to rally the warweary empire behind him. Even if Hornblower escapes this fate and somehow finds his way back to England, he will face court-martial for his surrender of a British ship. As fears for his life and his reputation compete in his mind with worries about his pregnant wife and his possibly widowed lover, the indomitable captain impatiently awaits the chance to make his next move.

1812 and the fate of Europe lies in the hands of newly appointed Commodore Hornblower. Dispatched to northern waters, Hornblower will protect Britain's Baltic interests and halt the advance of Napoleon's empire into Sweden and Russia. First he must battle the terrible Baltic weather: fog, snow and icebound waterways; overcome Russian political and commercial intrigues; avoid the seductive charms of royalty as well as the deadly reach of assassins in the imperial palace; and contend with hostile armies and French privateers. With the fate of Europe balanced on a knife edge, the responsibility lies heavy on a Commodore's shoulders.

Weary of the war that he has waged nearly his entire life, Hornblower finds himself assigned an especially dangerous and dubious new task: to rescue a man he knows to be a tyrant from the mutiny of his crew in the Bay of the Seine. This risky adventure, coinciding with reports that the tide of war may be turning-as Wellington has swept over the Pyrenees and the Russians have reached the Rhine-propels Hornblower toward the heart of the French Empire, toward a fateful reunion with old friends, and toward the harrowing but glorious conclusion of his own battle with Napoleon.

Here we meet Horatio Hornblower, a young man of 17, in this Volume #1 of what becomes the 11 volume set about the career of this British Naval officer fighting against Napoleon and his tyranny of Europe as an inexperienced midshipman in January 1794. Bullied and forced into a duel, he takes an even chance. And then he has many more chances to show his skills and ingenuities - from sailing a ship full of wetted and swelling rice to imprisonment and saving the lives of shipwrecked sailors. And along the way, he fights galleys, feeds cattle, stays out of the way of the guillotine, and makes friends with a Duchess. Here Hornblower becomes a man and develops the strength of character which will make him a hero to his men, and to all England.

In this gripping tale of turmoil and triumph on the high seas, Horatio Hornblower emerges from his apprenticeship as midshipman to face new responsibilities thrust upon him by the fortunes of war between Napoleon and Spain. Enduring near-mutiny, bloody hand-to-hand combat with Spanish seamen, deck-splintering sea battles, and the violence and horror of life on the fighting ships of the Napoleonic Wars, the young lieutenant distinguishes himself in his first independent command. He also faces an adventure unique in his experience: Maria.

In the wake of a humbling incident aboard a canal boat in the Cotswolds, young Captain Horatio Hornblower arrives in London to take command of the Atropos, a 22-gun sloop barely large enough to require a captain. Her first assignment under Hornblower's command is as flagship for the funeral procession of Lord Nelson. Soon Atropos is part of the Mediterranean Fleet's harassment of Napoleon, recovering treasure that lies deep in Turkish waters and boldly challenging a Spanish frigate several times her size. At the center of each adventure is Hornblower, Forester's most inspired creation, whose blend of cautious preparation and spirited execution dazzles friend and foe alike.

Horatio Hornblower, now Admiral, sails over seas as challenging as any in his victorious career. As admiral in charge of His Britannic Majesty's West Indies Station he is as gallant, daring, implosive as ever. In this tense time after Napoleon's defeat, all kinds of vagabonds, revolutionaries, Imperial Guards. and pirates come sailing into the waters where Hornblower is working his small contingent of naval vessels to preserve the peace and eliminate piracy. With intrepid daring and brilliant strategies, Hornblower wins his victories. With this series of adventures, Volume 11, Hornblower's professional life as a British naval officer reaches its climax, not in a battle against men, but against nature. Here the inner Hornblower shows his colors.

Hornblower's reconnaissance mission quickly turns to warfare in this installment of the beloved series of naval adventures by C. S. Forester, "a master of the genre" ( New York Times ). April 1803. The Peace of Amiens is breaking down. Napoleon is building ships and amassing an army just across the Channel. Horatio Hornblower—who, at age twenty-seven, has already distinguished himself as one of the most daring and resourceful officers in the Royal Navy—commands the three-masted Hotspur on a dangerous reconnaissance mission that evolves, as war breaks out, into a series of spectacular confrontations. All the while, the introspective young commander struggles to understand his new bride and mother-in-law, his officers and crew, and his own "accursed unhappy temperament" — matters that trouble him more, perhaps, than any of Bonaparte's cannonballs.

The final Horatio Hornblower story tells of Napoleon's plans to invade England. Set in 1805, Hornblower and the Crisis finds Horatio Hornblower in possession of confidential dispatches from Bonaparte after a vicious hand-to-hand encounter with a French brig. The admiralty rewards Hornblower by sending him on a dangerous espionage mission that will light the powder trail leading to the battle of Trafalgar ... Hornblower and the Crisis was unfinished at the time of Forester's death, but the author left notes—included here—telling us how the tale would end. Also included are two further stories—Hornblower and the Widow McCool and The Last Encounter—that tell of Hornblower as a very young and very old man, respectively. This is the final book chronicling the adventures of C. S. Forester's inimitable nautical hero, Horatio Hornblower.