I am a huge fan of historic nautical fiction particularly covering the period of the American and the French Revolutionary and the Napoleonic Wars. Many authors have written and write books covering that period. I am parituclarly partial to series depicting the various career stages of a British naval officer or seaman, against the historical background of the time.

C. S. Forester was the first, in 1938 with The Happy Return, to start what would grow into an 11-book series of novels around one Horatio Hornblower‘s career rising through the ranks whilst participating or witnessing various historical events at the time of Napoleon and Nelson.
In the final series chronology, The Happy Return is the sixth book of the adventures of Horatio Hornblower.
In 1808, Hornblower is Captain in command of HMS Lydia, a thirty-six gun frigate. His is ordered to the Pacific, off the coast of Nicaragua, on a secret mission to provide arms and assistance to a colonial revolutionary, El Supremo, in his battle against the Spanish colonizers. It turns out that El Supremo is quite mad. Hornblower captures a Spanish two-decker and is ordered to turn it over to El Supremo and his crew. Hornblower then escorts El Supremo’s army to Managua, or nearby, and then continues to Panama. At Managua, his orders are changed as England and Spain are now allies in the war against Napoleon. Hornblower with a passenger on board, Lady Barbara Wellesley, must now go and try to keep El Natividad, the Spanish ship from capturing Spanish cargo ships headed to Panama. The battle with El Natividad is a fascinating story in its own right and so well described. 
Not only is this first ‘Hornblower’ a great adventure tale. You also have to deal with Hornblower’s many moods; especially his self-criticism. This is compounded with the presence of Lady Barbara. However, his crew loves Hornblower, for his tactical flair and his sailing skills and his fairness (for the most part) to them. You take the good with the bad in a Hornblower tale. Only after five more books with Hornblower a Captain (Ship of the Line, Flying Colours), a Commodore (Commodore Hornblower) and knighted (Lord Hornblower) did C.S. Forester in 1957 start to fill in the early career of Hornblower with Mr. Midshipman Hornblower and Lieutenant Hornblower.

A second generation of fighting sail authors came to bear in 1965 with Dudley Pope‘s Ramage, the first of an 18-book series based on the career of Nicholas Lord Ramage. In 1968 Alexander Kent‘s To Glory We Steer started the 25-book Richard Bolitho series. Followed in 1969 by Patrick O’Brian‘s Master and Commander featuring Jack Aubrey & Steven Maturin. In 1973 C. Northcote Parkinson‘s – who had written The Life and Times of Horatio Hornblower: A Biography of C. S. Forester’s Famous Naval Hero in 1970 – published The Devil to Pay the first of 6 Richard Delancey books.

Dudley Pope clearly started the Ramage series from the beginning of his career. In Ramage he is a Junior Lieutenant on the Frigate Sibella thrown into command of the sinking ship when his seniors are killed. After 18 books – chronologically covering about a 10-year period – and after the Lordships of the Admiralty have seen fit to make Lord Nicholas Ramage the youngest captain of a ship of the line since Nelson himself no more books were published.

It is questionable whether Douglas Reeman (Alexander Kent is the pen name used for the Bolitho novels) and Patrick O’Brian intended to each write (so extensive) a series.

In To Glory we Steer the first Bolitho novel, Richard Bolitho is given command of the Phalarope, a ship beset with a mutinous crew, an ex-cowardly captain, and a vicious first lieutenant. He is sent to the West Indies where he unintentionally stumbles into his black-sheep brother, Hugh, who has fled to America to seek his fortune (it’s 1782) and has also become the captain of an American privateer. Bolitho is later captured and becomes the prisoner of his brother. Through a fortuitous change in the weather, Richard escapes. Much to the consternation of the service, he fails to kill his brother in the process, the theory being that perhaps he had shown leniency to an enemy. The Phalarope, Richard’s ship, almost succumbs to a mutiny — hard to believe that might happen to Hornblower — but of course Richard manages to redeem himself in the eyes of the admiral and participate in a rather vicious battle against the French. Although chronoligically the 7th book, I still consider it the beginning of the series giving a much better introduction to Bolitho’s character and the milieu. It is written to a much older audience with much more complex characterization than e.g. Midshipman Bolitho or Band of Brothers which Alexander Kent wrote respectively on 1977 and 2005. The latter seemed written to pad out the series. Still Bolitho is clearly a more swashbuckling hero than Hornblower.

I read and reread C.S. Forester, Alexander Kent and Dudley Pope years ago. I started on Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander a few times but put it down as being too different from my longtime favourite naval fiction books (with a lot of action and strategy). At that time not considering how a slow moving time and activity it was. Which required whole different approach to the subject. Then I came across Patrick O’Brians novel as read – brilliantly – by Patrick Tull and was immediately and completely sold on the series. My favourite: Desolation Island.

Since then the authors all seem to focus purely on action. Some of them start a series with a very interesting idea. But… they always seems to …

Dewey Lambdin started his Alan Lewrie series in 1989 and has written 25 books. I tried hard but couldn’t begin to start liking the main character. He is intended to be a devil-may-care rogue, but ends up as an unlikeable, arrogant child with little if any redeeming qualities, and any moral or personal self-searching is just straight-up self-interest. You can read the review of the 6 1/4 books of the series I read here.

Julian Stockwin started hist 23-book (26 projected) Kydd series in 2001 with Thomas Paine Kydd, a wig-maker pressed into the Royal Navy.

David Donachie (currently) wrote 15 books about John Pearce, who like Stockwin’s Thomas Kydd, was also pressed into the Royal Navy.

On the horizon I see a newcomer: Philip K. Allen, his Alexander Clay‘s series already contains 6 books.

Escape reading, no doubt. But the best of its kind.

Please refer to the Historic Naval Fiction site ‘The Home of Naval Fiction Set in the Age of Sail’, a treasure trove for those in search of information (Note however that the latest releases listed date from 2017).

If you’re time is limited, I would suggest you read: