Forester, C. S.

C. S. Forester (Cecil Louis Troughton Smith, 1899 to 1966) was a British author who created Horatio Hornblower, a Royal Navy officer of the Napoleonic Wars, across eleven novels beginning with The Happy Return (1937; US title Beat to Quarters). The series traces Hornblower from midshipman to admiral. Forester also wrote The African Queen (1935) and The Good Shepherd (1955), a destroyer-escort convoy novel filmed as Greyhound. The Hornblower books set the template for the age-of-sail naval adventure that Patrick O’Brian later extended.