Hornblower and the Hotspur

Hornblower and the Hotspur was published in 1962, the tenth of C. S. Forester's novels about his naval officer to appear and the third in the story's internal order. It opens with a wedding in Portsmouth. Hornblower's bride is Maria, his landlady's daughter, and he goes through with the ceremony because he cannot bring himself to stop it, knowing all the while that he should.

Days later he is promoted to commander and given the Hotspur, a small three-masted sloop, along with orders that amount to reconnaissance of the French base at Brest. The book is full of the monotony of blockade duty and its sudden violence, and Hornblower's restlessness, which Forester treats as both the reason he is good at his job and the reason he is unhappy, keeps pushing him into fights his ship is barely large enough to survive.

It is also the record of a marriage going wrong in slow motion. Maria adores him, he is irritated by her, and the household he returns to between cruises keeps growing while his feelings do not change; Forester reports all of it without sentiment. Hornblower is recommended for promotion before the book is over, though the money he might have made has slipped away in a manner entirely characteristic of him.