Neat Adventure

SHIP OF THE LINE--C. S. Forester-- Little, Brown ($2.50).

Contemporary historical novels like Anthony Adverse carry a lot of philosophical baggage. Compared with them the historical novels of Cecil Scott Forester travel light. Last year Author Forester caught the attention of a few adventure-minded readers with his fast-moving, lightly-laden Beat to Quarters. That book revolved around a romantic hero, Captain Horatio Hornblower, a shy, dignified, portly British sea dog of Napoleonic times, master of H.M.S. Lydia, who pitted his 36-gun frigate against ships twice as strong. Last fortnight, when he continued Captain Hornblower's story in Ship of the Line, it seemed likely that more readers would hear of Author Forester, and keep a lookout for him hereafter.

Ship of the Line begins with a glimpse of Hornblower becalmed at home--bored with his dowdy wife, pawning his sword to get money for ship stores, worried about manning and outfitting his new command, the two-decker Sutherland-- but the winds of romance blow hard as soon as he is out of sight of land. Convoying ships of the East India Co., Hornblower drives off two French raiders (incidentally conquering his secret shame, seasickness), accepts the grateful tributes of the merchantmen, then outrages them by seizing their men to fill out his crew. In another 48 hours the phlegmatic Englishman takes his first prize, a French merchantman that nets him -L-5,000, storms.a French battery on the east coast of Spain, raids overland to burn a coastal vessel moving down a sheltered lagoon, on a night attack, steals another prize, lying under the guns of Port Vendres and winds up his exploits--for which he is severely censured by his admiralty--maneuvering the Sutherland close to shore and shattering infantry columns with his broadsides.

Written in a spare, economical prose, Ship of the Line contains such lucid explanations of naval maneuvers that before they have finished its readers may feel they could sail a frigate themselves.

"Then with a series of heavy crashes, one following another as the Sutherland crossed her enemy's stern and each section of guns bore in turn, she fired her broadside into her . . . with every shot tearing its destructive course from end to end of the ship. .. . . That was the sort of broadside which won battles. That single discharge had probably knocked half the fight out of the Frenchmen, killing and wounding a hundred men or more, dismounting half a dozen guns." With little philosophizing about war and man's fate, Author Forester, competent and unpretentious, hurries his story along, wastes no words as he makes Captain Hornblower a hero, follows him brisky to defeat and to prison from which, presumably, another fast-moving story will be required to free him.

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