I'm glad you liked it -- I abandoned it more out of a complete lack of idea what to do with it, so the solution might have been to let it stand.

And yeah. Admiral Hornblower is such a fucking weird, weird, weird book. I mean, I read it, and I'm like, "WTF, has the man had a hot wire drawn through his frontal cortex??? HE SEES A TUGBOAT NAMED THE TEMERAIRE, AND HE CAN'T THINK OF THE IMPLICATION OF THE NAME? AFTER TWENTY YEARS AT SEA WITH BUSH?"