Book Review: Flying Colours

Book Review: Flying Colours by C.S. Forester

This is the third book in the Horatio Hornblower series as they were originally written, but the eighth in internal chronology.   For those of you who somehow have not heard of these books or their media adaptations before, Hornblower is an officer in the British navy during the Napoleonic Wars period, rising from midshipman to admiral over the course of many years.

Flying Colours is a bit of a departure from the usual for the series, as Captain Hornblower isn’t at sea for most of it.  At the end of the previous novel, Ship of the Line, he was forced to surrender to the perfidious French, and can only watch from a distance as the British Navy finishes off the French ships he had wounded.  Things are going poorly for Napoleon at the moment, and a propaganda victory would be nice.  Thus Hornblower, his crippled first lieutenant Bush, and coxswain Brown are to be transported to Paris for a show trial and execution.  (Hornblower had flown false colours at one point, which he considers a legitimate gambit, but it is treated as a war crime by the French.)

Halfway through the journey, the coach gets stuck during a blizzard, and Hornblower comes up with an escape plan.  The immediate plan succeeds, but our heroes are still deep in enemy territory, and it is many miles to the sea.  Now three unarmed men, one missing a leg, in the middle of winter, must somehow elude capture and reach the coast.

Hornblower is a layered character.  Skilled at seamanship, naval tactics and exciting the loyalty of his crews, Horatio is also crippled by self-doubt and a perceived need to prevent anyone from realizing just how “weak” he really is.  This means that  he has trouble making friends, particularly influential ones, and easily makes enemies.  He’s also careful not to let it be generally known that  he’s a “freethinker” which puts him at odds with more religiously-minded fellow officers.

More problematically, Hornblower is very class-conscious due to his humble beginnings, and this causes him to be rather classist at inopportune times.  And his relationships with women are difficult.  During this novel, he’s married to one woman who’s expecting his child, in love with the Admiral’s wife and has an affair with a third woman.  Horatio knows full well that his behavior is inexcusable, and this fuels his self-doubt even more, but doesn’t stop him from having adulterous (as far as he knows) sex.     At the end of the book, he reflects that if it were a romance novel, his gaining everything he thought he wanted would be a happy ending, but it has all turned to ashes in his mouth.

Once our heroes reach the sea again, there’s a small-scale but exciting battle–C.S. Forester is considered one of the best at describing these.

Overall, very well written and it’s no wonder that this is a much-beloved series.  Recommended to those who love tales of the sea and Napoleonic Wars buffs.