In the novel Lieutenant Hornblower there were a few scenes were Hornblower was a success and a few were he was a failure.In my opinion the first success of Hornblower was when he used all the cannons on one side of the ship to free them from the mud holding the ship. Another success was when Hornblower suggested a landing attack on Samana Bay. The commanding officer agreed with his suggestion, and they put together a landing party. Hornblower had the whole attack planed and the coordinates marked. His surprise attack on the Spanish at Saman approved to be a success. O ...view middle of the document...
These achievements made by Hornblower is what later earned him the command of the Retribution, although his command of the Retribution did not come until later when the war started again. Hornblower had also had a few failures that hindered his successes. Among these was when Hornblower was using the red hot shot to sink enemy ships. This was both a success and failure. It was a failure because after heating the shot for a considerably long period of time the shot began to deform. This deformity of the shot wouldn't allow it to fit into the cannon. Hornblower realized his mistake after one of the shots wouldn't fit into the cannon. This slowed their operation down but didn't cause a defeat to them. The situation with Hornblower gambling is mostly in my opinion a success but it could also be a failure.The way I think it would be a failure is that he lost a lot of his money and couldn't afford some necessities. Hornblower also won a considerable amount of money and his playingWhist with Parry led to the confirming of his command of the Retribution.I feel these examples show both the success and failure of Lieutenant Hornblower throughout the novel. His success lead him to commander of Retribution and his failures were small and didn't have great effect on his outcome.
