The Isolation of the Spirit: Captain Horatio Hornblower, RN

C S Forester’s (1937) novel The Happy Return, which introduced Captain Horatio Hornblower, RN, effectively ‘created the most renowned sailor in contemporary fiction’ (Foreword, Penguin edition, 1951). Sir Winston Churchill described him as ‘admirable, vastly entertaining’. But for all his swashbuckling adventures, Hornblower was a tortured, isolated, lonely man, always dissatisfied with himself and questioning his abilities, which others, by contrast, found to be exemplary. This feeling of being alone was in some respects the product of the era in which he lived; in the early nineteenth century, the lack of technology and efficient transportation made the world a very large place. Organisational hierarchy was stricter and less flexible. Social classes rarely intermingled. Yet, in a timeless way, Hornblower personally isolated himself as a leader through his feelings of unworthiness and self-doubt, and constant need to prove to himself and his officers and crew that he could do his job. Hornblower was isolated both externally and internally.