Hornblower and the Yankee

One Christmas, when I was a youth...my Mom gave me a gift of a partial set of Alexander Kent books. The books represented most of the Richard Bolitho series, set during the Napoleonic Wars.  The series introduced me to British Naval fiction for the very first time.  I found myself fascinated and hooked.  I read everything by Alexander Kent, and once finished with that I branched out to C.S. Forester and the Hornblower series, and other similar type novels. 

The British Navy, as depicted in these wonderful adventure novels, was the Prince of the Seas. The books were full of adventure, romance, daring, swashbuckling, intrigue, danger. The sea life was romanticized and glorious as depicted.  There were cutting out operations, captures, escapes, great sea victories, beautiful damsels in distress. There was the dirty side too, the press gangs, mutinies, and villains.   This was escapism literature of the various best sort.

The books, though fiction, introduced me to that greatest of British Naval heroes, Lord Horatio Nelson. Indeed, I am sure the heroes of many of the novels I read were likely patterned after this real life, larger than life hero.   Nelson, hero of The Battle of the Nile, destroyer of the French and Spanish fleets, and tragic casualty during his greatest victory of all, the Battle of Trafalgar.  There, during the pinacle of British Naval power, Nelson was shot on the deck of the great warship 'HMS Victory'; later dying within the dark dank bowels of the very same vessel.

From this small set of books, gifted by my Mother...I had come to know and love British Naval history and dominance.  And Nelson and the 'HMS' Victory represented everything I loved about that particular era in history.  This 'obsession' of mine was very likely a contributing factor to my 'joining' the US Navy at 17 after graduating High School.  It was a great disappointment at that point in my life that my poor vision prevented me from being accepted in this 'calling'. I had no other plans as I matriculated from High School.  As I moved on and made alternate decisions with my life, I don't think I ever stopped loving this period of history and setting in time;  17th Century British Navy.  Of interesting note is that my rejection from the U.S. Navy is what led me to working at Sky-Y YMCA Camp the Summer of 1977. As Richard Gere's character xxx states in the movie 'An Officer and a Gentleman', "I've got no place else to go".  Well, I did have some place to go...Summers at the YMCA and Uni.

40 years later, while visiting my dear 'Sky-Y' friend Neville in Hampshire, he surprised me by driving me down to Portsmouth where we were actually  boarding the 'HMS Victory'.  This was a very magical moment for me.  Coming full circle from the 'Nicholas' of my youth to that very sweet moment of time. Strolling the very same decks Nelson commanded! Seeing the exact area where Nelson was shot, and seeing the area his cot was hung and upon which he died! There would have been no way Neville would have known how much this moment meant to me, nor how much it touched me and made me reflect upon my path in life.

Thanks Nev!

I am curious, what fiction genres touched your heart when you were a youth?  And what impact did that have on your life?



Cheers, nca