Flying Colours was published by Michael Joseph in 1938 (published the same year as Ship of the Line — Forester wrote them as a continuous narrative and the publisher split them). Hornblower, Bush (badly wounded, having lost a foot), and his coxswain Brown are prisoners of the French, being transported to Paris where Napoleon intends to make a public spectacle of their trial and execution.
They escape during the journey — Hornblower overpowers their guards during a river crossing — and are sheltered by the Dobie de Dobie, a French noblewoman whose husband was guillotined during the Terror. She hides them through the winter while Bush’s stump heals. Hornblower and the Comtesse begin an affair (one of the few romantic relationships in the series, and characteristically guilt-ridden on Hornblower’s part). In spring, they build a small boat and sail down the Loire to Nantes, where Hornblower bluffs his way past French authorities and reaches a British frigate.
The novel won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize alongside Ship of the Line. It is the most purely picaresque of the Hornblower novels — escape, pursuit, disguise, romance — and the one that most clearly shows Forester’s debt to Dumas.
Collecting Flying Colours
First edition (Michael Joseph, London, 1938): Blue cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition with jacket, fine/fine: $300–$900
- Without jacket, very good: $80–$200
- US first (Little, Brown): $150–$400