The Happy Return
June, 1808, and off the Coast of Nicaragua Captain Horatio Hornblower has his hands full. Now in command of HMS Lydia, a thirty-six-gun frigate, Hornblower has instructions to form an alliance against the Spanish colonies with a mad and messianic revolutionary, El Supremo; 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. And as if that wasn't hard enough, Hornblower must also contend with the charms of an unwanted passenger, Lady Barbara Wellesley .
Please Note: This book has also been published under the title Beat to Quarters.
About the Hornblower Saga Series
Books in series order
- 1.Mr Midshipman Hornblower(1950)
- 2.Lieutenant Hornblower(1952)
- 3.Hornblower and the Hotspur(1962)
- 4.Hornblower and the Crisis(1967)
- 5.Hornblower and the Atropos(1953)
- 6.The Happy Return(1937)
- 7.A Ship of the Line(1938)
- 8.Flying Colours(1938)
- 9.Commodore Hornblower(1945)
- 10.Lord Hornblower(1946)
- 11.Hornblower in the West Indies(1957)
- +Hornblower Companion(1964)
Reading age: 12+ years
This series should be read in order.
As a seventeen-year-old with a touch of seasickness, 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. In 1793, on the eve of the Napoleon Wars, the young Midshipman receives his first command...
Please Note: The Hornblower Saga is presented here in order of the narrative's chronology rather than the order in which the books were published.