Flying Colours (Paperback)

We all know ourselves best when we face problems. After the many successes in his career, Captain Hornblower ended up in Ship of the Line fighting an impossible battle between his ship, the Sutherland, and four French vessels. Taking horrible casualties, Hornblower struck his colours and surrendered at the end of that book. Flying Colours opens with Hornblower in a Spanish prison, with the expectation that he will be tried and executed for having flown French colours as camouflage to aid an attack. His wife, Maria, is pregnant in England. Hornblower also yearns for Lady Barbara Leighton, the wife of his admiral, whom readers met in Beat to Quarters and saw again in the beginning of Ship of the Line. Hornblower is in despair as he visits the dying and imprisoned sailors who are in the same garrison.

Many troubling questions go through Hornblower's mind. How well will he face death before a firing squad? Will his weak body betray him?

His first lieutenant, William Bush, is also to be tried. At the end of Ship of the Line, Bush lost the lower part of one leg. Will Bush survive the injury and trial?

What will happen to his wife and unborn child after he is dead?

Can he resist sweet temptation, when it is offered?

Can he escape death by firing squad?

Even if he escapes, how can he hope to be exonerated in a court martial for losing the Sutherland? Captains aren't supposed to surrender their vessels, no matter how badly damaged.

If he escapes the court martial, how will he handle being in love with Lady Barbara while being an unhappily married man with a new baby?

Will he ever have a chance to command a vessel again?

Anyone who has ever known self-doubt will find Hornblower's trauma realistic and refreshing. He becomes more like an ordinary person with normal feelings in this book. As a result, I found Hornblower to be much more appealing here than when his brilliant intellect guided him to smooth success in the earlier books.

Eventually, Hornblower finds himself wanting in many of these regards . . . but moves on. Ultimately, he faces new satisfactions and disappointments that indicate to him that his idealistic, perfectionist view of the world is a flawed one. Everyone else is merely human as well. Hornblower is deeply disappointed.

Forester raises an interesting point in the novel. There are real heroes in the book. These people are true to themselves and have total integrity. Public adulation will never be theirs, however. On the other hand, the world needs heroes . . . and new ones will be created, whether or not they deserve the honor. The possibility of remaining a real hero is improved by not having to deal with the issues that can tempt one away from heroism and integrity. So Bush is shown to be a real hero, while Hornblower is simply a self-doubting actor who is extraordinarily capable of creating great results.

The book does a magnificent job of using the title theme throughout. Having struck his colours on the Sutherland, Hornblower now flies his colours again in this book in every sense of that phrase. Watch for the subtleties of how this is done as you read the book.

If you know French, you will enjoy the challenge of imagining how Hornblower manufacturers phrases from his limited command of the language to accomplish what needs to be done. As I read the book, I mentally made the necessary translations.

The book is also interesting for displaying the consequences for the French of being under Napoleon's rule. Hornblower excoriates the Corsican tyrant in the earlier novels, but here we see that others are being squashed underneath authority's boot as well. Many of the social observations about the French people in 1811 are very nicely done in this book.

What is more important: Being fearless or overcoming your weaknesses? What can you do today to overcome your weaknesses and help others to do the same?

May you enjoy the peace that comes with living a life of integrity...

Our hero's quest begins as a French POW awaiting a firing squad, his friend and 1st Lt. Bush facing the same. Can Hornblower somehow with a wounded man it tow somehow escape a squad of French soldiers and their cruel officer and return to the white cliffs of Dover?

Since this is not the last book in the series we of course know the answer. A book with style and class, and with Hornblower still not shaking the fears and phobias or his future which seem to forever haunt him.

We also see the character of Brown developed more fully as a feature of the series. The playing off of Brown physical abilities and the class differences between him and the officers make for great reading.

Not to be missed. Of course you can say that about every book in the series.