I have to marvel at C.S. Forester's ability to incorporate such detailed knowledge of wartime seafaring in such smooth, compulsively readable prose. I finished his second Hornblower book, A Ship of the Line, yesterday and the climactic battle was so gripping I stood reading it for twenty minutes at the train station. It's not a perfect book, even by the standards of pulp, but it's also a work of singular brilliance.
As I said earlier, as brilliant as it is, it's not right to class it with a masterpiece of prose like Moby Dick. Though Horatio Hornblower is kind of everything Captain Ahab wishes he could be, or possibly believes he is. Ship of the Line presents an even more consistent series of victories at sea for Hornblower in his new command of the Sutherland, formerly a Dutch vessel, a prize taken and refitted by the British. Hornblower cannily uses the ship's hull construction, with a bow curved in a way not characteristic of British ships, to pass himself off as an ally to unsuspecting prey.
Now he finds himself under command of Admiral Leighton, the husband of Lady Barbara, Hornblower's love interest from the first book, The Happy Return. Lady Barbara appears only briefly but she remains as a presence in Hornblower's mind, particularly in an interesting scene where he wrestles with his discomfort at the knowledge that she was probably responsible for getting him his new command.
The only problem I have with the novel is a strange jump from chapter 16 to 17. Sixteen is a brilliant description of the Sutherland's desperate rescue of another ship, Leighton's flagship, the Pluto, in the middle of a storm.
Bush was shouting something now, and pointing away over the quarter, and Hornblower followed the gesture with his eyes. The Pluto had vanished, and for a moment Hornblower thought she must have sunk with all hands. Then a breaking wave revealed her, right over on her beam ends, the grey waves breaking clean over her exposed bottom, her yards pointing to the sky, sails and rigging showing momentarily black through the white foam in the lee of her.
“Jesus Christ!” yelled Bush. “The poor devils have gone!”
“Set the main topmast stays’l again!” yelled Hornblower back.
She had not sunk yet; there might possibly be some survivors, who might live long enough in the wild sea to grab a rope’s end from the Sutherland’s deck and who might be hauled on board without being beaten to death; it had to be tried even though it was a hundred to one against one of the thousand men on board being saved. Hornblower worked the Sutherland slowly over towards the Pluto. Still the latter lived, with the waves breaking over her as if she were a half-tide rock. Hornblower’s imagination pictured what was happening on board—the decks nearly vertical, with everything carrying away and smashing which could. On the weather side the guns would be hanging by their breechings; the least unsoundness there and they would fall straight down the decks, to smash holes on the opposite side which would sink her in a flash. Men would be crawling about in the darkness below decks; on the main deck the men who had not been washed away would be clinging on like flies on a windowpane, soused under as the waves broke.
The desperate rescue is effected by a combination of luck and Hornblower's brilliance . . . then, the next chapter has a quiet scene in the Pluto's cabin and no mention is made of the disaster in the previous chapter.
Hornblower looked round the big cabin, the cushioned lockers, the silver on the table, Elliott and Bolton gorged with the vast dinner they had consumed, Sylvester with paper and ink before him, Villena in his gaudy yellow uniform staring idly about while the English conversation which he did not understand went on round him. On the bulkhead opposite him hung a portrait of Lady Barbara, a likeness so good as to be startling—Hornblower felt as if he might hear her voice at any moment. He caught himself wondering what they did with it when they cleared for action, tore his thoughts away from Lady Barbara with an effort, and tried as tactfully as he could to show his distaste for the whole scheme.
I checked to make sure the copy I was reading wasn't missing a chapter. It wasn't. I wonder if Forester intended to remove chapter sixteen at some point but never got around to it. Sometimes it does feel like Forester writes like someone whose experience is from playing video games of sea battles. There are vivid descriptions of mutilated bodies littering the deck peppered in but the action is so much driven by strategy there are many moments were it feels like visceral details are too hastily passed over. But what what great strategy driven prose it is.
Twitter Sonnet #1446
The chicken swam in yellow space to live.
The lettuce brushed the passing, rusty car.
A pumpkin carries many gifts to give.
The vine can walk but never very far.
With bread she stopped the choc'late river flow.
Her choice of drink deserved an olive tip.
At nine, the lounging cats were all aglow.
In varied lives they caught a savage grip.
We grasped for eyes but all we found were grapes.
The future Nelson fell from flying shrouds.
A forest's sun was changed when viewed on tapes.
Behind the clearer sky we hid the clouds.
The shadow waltz escaped from glowing stores.
Decisive seas dissolved the masted wars.
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