Lieutenant Hornblower and his shipmates are sent to accompany a doomed royalist invasion of revolutionary France.
Acting Lieutenant Hornblower and his crew are captured by the enemy while escorting a Duchess who has secrets of her own.
Portsmouth, 1794. Under thundery skies and in lashing rain, 17-year-old midshipman Horatio Hornblower takes the first tentative steps of his naval career, but a feud with a shipmate causes complications.