This is the first adventure of Horatio Hornblower set in the Napoleonic wars. He is on a mission to deliver arms to a Spanish tyrant and gets drawn into a sea battle with a Spanish ship called Natividad, before eventually returning home.

Cecil Scott Forester (born Cecil Smith) was born in 1899 in Cairo and died in 1966. He was educated in Dulwich College, South London, and failed to complete medical studies when his writings became successful. The Hornblower series will see the hero rise up to admiral. They are light, simply told and descriptive of sea battles and the life of the time.