Beat to quarters - C. S. Forester

Called as gripping and realistic a sea tale as you are likely to run across by the New York Times, C.

Forester's Beat to Quarters finds Hornblower faced with a near-impossible mission off the coast of Nicaragua.

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 or face court-martial.

A daunting enough set of orders -- even if the happily married captain were not woefully distracted by the passenger he is obliged to take on in Panama: Lady Barbara Wellesley.