~ Trade Paperback

June 1808, somewhere west of Nicaragua: The Admiralty has ordered Captain Horatio Hornblower 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 . . . 

First published in 1937, The Happy Return is the first book published in C.S. Forester's wildly successful Horatio Hornblower series, which was inspired by an old copy of the Navy Chronicle, a British periodical published monthly between 1799-1818 that featured bios, histories, news, and essays on nautical subjects.