Reading along and see that Hornblower gets trapped by the Turks who have not only manned an abandoned fort but sent up a ship of the line & anchored it right next to him to confiscate a fortune in British naval silver & gold Hornblower has been salvaging from a shipwreck in the Aegean.
I think to myself, "How the hell will Horny get his ass out of this one?" So I inventory what he has. And realize that he's been salvaging the treasure from the shipwreck using Ceylonese pearl divers setting up underwater explosives and using timed fuses to break up the shipwreck to get to the gold,
This is the perfect setup for blowing a hole under the water line of the Turkish ship of the Line, sinking it and getting away that way! Hornblower is to become the Godfather of the Navy Seals and underwater demolition!
But no, either Hornblower doesn't think of it or he doesn't want to start a war between Britain & the Ottoman Empire in 1808 (Crimean War wasn't until 1853) when Boney was giving Britain a hard enough time as it was.
Ahh, what could have been.
