Claim: C. S. Forester was a novelist.

Cecil Louis Troughton Smith -LRB- 27 August 1899 -- 2 April 1966 -RRB- , known by his pen name Cecil Scott `` C. S. '' Forester , was an English novelist known for writing tales of naval warfare such as the 12-book Horatio Hornblower series , depicting a Royal Navy officer during the Napoleonic wars . Two of the Hornblower books , A Ship of the Line and Flying Colours , were jointly awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction in 1938 . His other works include The African Queen -LRB- 1935 ; filmed in 1951 by John Huston -RRB- .