Claim: C. S. Forester wrote warfare tales of Horatio Hornblower.

A Ship of the Line is an historical seafaring novel by C. S. Forester . It follows his fictional hero Horatio Hornblower during his tour as captain of a ship of the line . By internal chronology , A Ship of the Line , which follows The Happy Return , is the seventh book in the series -LRB- counting the unfinished Hornblower and the Crisis -RRB- . However , the book , published in 1938 , was the second Hornblower novel completed by Forester . It is one of three Hornblower novels adapted into the 1951 British-American film Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N. .