num_pages: 240
description: June 1808, somewhere west of Nicaragua, a site suitable for spectacular sea battles. The Admiralty has ordered Captain Horatio Hornblower, now in command of the thirty-six-gun HMS Lydia, to form an alliance against the Spanish colonial government with an insane Spanish landowner; to find a water route across the Central American isthmus; and "to take, sink, burn or destroy" the fifty-gun Spanish ship of the line Natividad. A daunting enough set of orders, even if the married captain were not distracted by the passenger he is obliged to take on in Panama: Lady Barbara Wellesley.
language: English
title: The Happy Return
titlecomplete: The Happy Return
characters: Horatio Hornblower
genres: Maritime, Historical, Historical Fiction, Literature, Military Fiction, Classics, War, British Literature, Adventure, Fiction
ratings_count: 11193
series: Hornblower Saga: Chronological Order, Hornblower Saga: Publication Order
publisher: Penguin Putnam~mass