Many know of Horatio Hornblower's exploits during the Napoleonic Wars through the novels of C.S. Forester, but how many know the true Hornblower – the man who rose from midshipman to admiral of the British Fleet? Using Hornblower family papers discovered in the 1970s, C. Northcote Parkinson has set the record straight in this authoritative biography. Drawn from the Hornblower series as well as from Parkinson's knowledge of the Royal Navy, this account of the popular fictional hero is as entertaining as the C.S. Forester novels themselves.

Originally published in 1949, Portsmouth Point: The British Navy in Fiction, 1793-1815 is a captivating look into the naval experience during the Napoleonic wars. The author, C.N. Parkinson, uses excerpts from the writings of real officers, midshipman and crew members during the late 18th and early 19th centuries to create a semi-fictitious collection of naval stories. The dialogue, characters, and events within the book are not historical fact, but as Parkinson writes in the preface, a truly good novelist “writes boldly the sort of talk there might have been and so creates— as compared with the biographer— an impression more vivid, and in a sense, more true.”

The author reviews history from Sumerian days to the present time to show that throughout its course, East and West have alternately been dominant, the periodic decline of one civilization creating a cultural vacuum that was filled by the adjacent rising culture.

First Published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Captain Richard Delancey heads for the East Indies on the 32-gun frigate Laura to take part in the capture of the Cape of Good Hope. His ingenious tactics gain the attention of his superiors, who recruit him for a high-stakes mission: to seek out and destroy the French privateer Subtile.

Richard Delancey is soon called into action once more, as Britain prepares for the threat of a new French assault. Disturbing rumors are circulating about Napoleon's new weapons of war: vessels driven by steam-engines, new explosive devices, and, most troubling of all, a French secret weapon named Nautilus, which can travel underwater and attach explosive devices below the waterline.

With his Royal Navy commission in hand, Richard Delancey is posted to Gibraltar to command the sloop Merlin for convoy protection in the Mediterranean. Overcoming problems with his crew, Delancey quickly proves his mettle during the siege of Valletta and during the battle at Cadiz.

The Nore and Spithead mutinies intervene to upset the course of Delancey's career. He devises an original legal defence in the court martial of a fellow officer accused of murder, and acquits himself well, but falls afoul of the naval establishment and is passed over in the general promotion of all in his rank after the victory at Camperdown.

"The Guernseyman" recounts the earliest adventures of Parkinson's hero, Richard Delancey. Ranked as a midshipman, he is no sooner aboard than his ship sails for the port of New York. But when the events of the American Revolution and the ongoing hostilities between England and France send him back across the sea, Delancey finds himself instrumental in defending the Isle of Jersey and, later, the Rock of Gibraltar.