[high_seas] Application

[captainhornblower]

[Name]:
Lynn
[Age]:
25
[Contacts]:
♦ DW: sepiaepiphany
♦ AIM: celia0sword
♦ Plurk: harlequindream
[Timezone]:
PST
[Other Characters]:
Kyouya Otori - Ouran High School Host Club - hostclubshadowking



[Name]:
Horatio Hornblower
[Canon]:
Hornblower (BBC/A&E movie series)
[Age]:
26
[Gender]:
male
[Canon Point]:
early Loyalty

[History]:
The Even Chance
The Examination for Lieutenant
The Duchess and the Devil
The Frogs and Lobsters
Mutiny
Retribution
(Note: Mutiny and Retribution are delightfully ambiguous about the fate of Captain Sawyer. He might have stumbled or he might have been pushed/pulled. In my own personal opinion and, for the sake of this RP, Horatio saw an opportunity to disable a tyrant and instinctively took it, pulling on Captain Sawyer from behind to force a fall.)
Loyalty
Duty

[Personality]:
Even those most fond of him could not describe Horatio Hornblower as a man easily put up with or described.

His quiet but sincere patriotism shapes him. It is not prize money or ambition that drives Horatio to desire to be swift, true, and continuous in his dedication to the advancement of England's naval power. He does not seek acclaim for his victories. His greatest aims are the furthering of British causes, not his own. When Horatio was transferred from the Justinian to the Indefatigable, he and those he transferred with were greeted by a speech from their new captain, Sir Edward Pellew. Horatio listened with rapt attention through the talk of battle and prize money, but he was silent as the rest of his fellows cheered. Only when Pellew reached his final note of "God save the King" did Horatio join his shipmates in the enthusiastic reply. The man believes in Crown and Country and the advancement of both at any cost to himself.

Horatio was born on the day that the Contential Congress of the then-Colonies ratified their Declaration of Independence. Some of the radicalism, republicianism, and rebellion of the day, it would seem, infected the boy born then. Horatio has a strong, innate need to fight tyranny where he sees it. Whether it is standing up to a stranger claiming authority of him without rank to back it up (as when he first met Jack Simpson), challenging a predator despite being out-skilled (the desperate bid against Simpson with the demand for satisfaction through a duel), opposing a corrupt commanding officer (dragged away from an attempt to engage Colonel Marquis de Moncotant, then insulting the same man and his views on the aristocracy versus commoners at a dinner), or conspiring to mutiny against a man lost to madness and prone to cruelty because of it (the agreement between the lieutenants of the Renown that led to the circumstances of Captain Sawyer's fall down a hatchway), Horatio Hornblower is usually the first to speak for an unchampioned person or cause based around the rights of man and the last to stop fighting. In his opinion, he has seen three faces of tyranny, each one dangerous in its own way. He sees Sawyer as a tyrant out of madness. A deplorable state, but one that any man could fall victim to at any time. Once a war hero, Sawyer's mind turned against him, filled him with fear, and made him vicious. Moncotant was a tyrant from patriotism. His sense of country was stronger than his sense of humanity, and he felt no remorse for butchering innocents who saw the world differently for the sake of his ideal country. Simpson's form of tyranny was and will always be Horatio's idea of evil. The man was not mad-- not as Sawyer was, at least. He was in full control of himself and his mind. He had no justification for his actions, no cause or country furthered other than the cause of himself. He caused pain because he enjoyed causing pain. All three tyrants, Horatio opposed. Sawyer, he pitied. Moncotant, he grudgingly respected at the very end. Simpson, he hated. Napoleon, too, is a tyrant in Horatio's mind, but an abstract one. He is a man to be stopped, but Horatio has no strong personal inclinations against him, only against the enemy that he is to England. While always the King's man in his service, there can be no doubt that Horatio is aware that any man (perhaps even the man on the throne of England) has the potential to be a tyrant... and there can also be no doubt that Horatio considers it his duty to oppose tyranny where he sees it.

At sea, Horatio seems a born leader. Even at seventeen, once he acts against Simpson, others follow. Clayton and Archie Kennedy, possibly the two men most afraid of Simpson, are the ones who agree to stand with Horatio when he duels Simpson, Clayton as his second, and Archie accompanies Clayton when the man renders Horatio unable to face Simpson. When transferred to the Indefatigable and given command over the division that was formerly under Simpson, Horatio discovers that they gamble using a game that involves killing rats. Rather than report them (as he threatens to do), Horatio tells them he will give them a chance to prove themselves worthy of their trust. When he tries to save one of their number after the man is wounded in a battle, the men who survive acknowledge his efforts with a salute. It is a small gesture, but it is a sign of the respect that Horatio has already earned. As an acting-lieutenant, he is told that to truly test his readiness for command, he should look to his men. This suggestion never leaves him, and he considers any failing of his men (such as death or desertion) to reflect directly on him. He tries to show mercy where he can, but he knows the Articles of War. A deserter must face trial and a careless stewart the cat-o-nine-tails. He sets clear standards for those who follow him, and they are expected to uphold them or face the punishment.

If there is a daring plan to be carried out, one can be sure that Horatio Hornblower, if at all able, will be on the front lines to see it through. Most often, if he is involved in the action, then the plan originated from him. He demonstrates that there is a fine, sometimes blurred, line between recklessness and heroism. He can plan a sneak attack (such as ambushing a French crew refilling water at a stream and taking their uniforms to board the main ship, all without costing a life) or launch an assault on an armed fort with only a small division. Horatio rarely misses an opportunity to be in the middle of action or to put forward a plan of attack.

Horatio's need to champion causes and people no others would comes with a drawback. He has the tendency to make a martyr of himself. He takes blame that does not belong to him, offering to serve punishment for acts he did not commit if he feels they can at all be attributed to him. When a man steals food from the ship's stores, Horatio argues that the fault is his for not having dealt with spoken dissatisfaction from the man better. When another of his crew leads an unsuccessful attempt to escape from a Spanish prison, Horatio steps up as the lone instigator, taking the punishment meant for the man for himself. Even his marriage is martyrdom. Rather than see a woman in love with him who had helped him but refused to allow him to give her money leave her home and work, Horatio proposes so that his salary might keep her and her mother. He goes so far as to be sure that the young woman, Maria Mason, believes that he is marrying her for love, due to her feelings for him, rather than because he feels that he owes her. He does not look for acknowledgement from the people he speaks for, rather considering what he does to be necessary, required of him by conscience.

While he tries to be calm, rational, and fair, Horatio has, under it all, a temper. Reason overrules it often (such as his ability to not shoot Simpson, even when he was shaking with pain and fury), but he does fall victim to it. A comrade-in-arms, Lord Edrington, is forced to pull him away from Colonel Marquis de Moncotant in Muzillac when the colonel raids the Republician schoolhouse, terrifying the young teacher and her students. Usually, though, Horatio's temper is more verbal than physical. When rational explanation fails him and people whose discretion he can trust are nearby, Horatio gives way to small barbs of sarcasm. As his frustration mounts, he turns to swearing. Only when a situation offends the morals on which his world rests does he attempt to make a physical strike.

Horatio Hornblower possesses a great amount of vanity where his appearance is concerned. He is rarely seen on deck in less than full dress, and his uniform (while sometimes patched) is dutifully cleaned often. He takes great pride in his appearance, going so far as to have a daily shower... which requires stripping, getting men to work the ship's pump, getting other men to hold and aim the hose on board, and turning about under the hard spray of salt water. It is a peculiar ritual, one which, on board his ship, never fails to attract anything less than the whole (or almost the whole) crew of the ship to watch.

In regards to his character and achievements, however, Horatio is not even modest. He is, in fact, entirely self-deprecating. When he accidentally kills one man who was attempting to desert, he blames himself for the man's entire unhappiness, sure that a better commanding officer could have found a way to reach him. He climbs aboard a burning ship to steer it away from its course toward the docked Indefatigable and then saves the life of a captain who went with him, risking his own in the process. Despite this, he is surprised when he is commended for valor. When he finds Archie Kennedy half-mad and starving in a Spanish prison, he dedicates himself almost wholly to seeing to Archie's recovery and then insists that any man would have done the same. When a bomb is launched at his ship and lands on deck, Horatio leaps on it, using his gloved hands to put out the fuse. His report mentions only that the shell "failed to explode," and he scolds his lieutenant, William Bush, when the man tries to insist that Horatio tell the whole story. Remarkably, Horatio seems to believe himself when he insists that there is little to be admired about him or that he did only what another would have done, despite any evidence one might present to him to the contrary.

Horatio also has a profound respect for life. While he battles without a second thought, cutting down or shooting his enemies in the heat of the moment, he cannot pull a trigger in cold blood. Jack Simpson reminds Horatio that he killed Clayton, admits to killing Kennedy, promises to kill Horatio, and fires early in an attempt to make good on that promise before Horatio has a fair chance... yet when the man is on his knees and begging for his life, Horatio fires into the air. For all his rage, he either stops himself from or cannot bring himself to shoot Simpson and kill him. When a man attempts to desert, Horatio aims his gun and warns him to stop or he will shoot. Despite saying this three times, Horatio only pulls the trigger by accident, when he and the man are struggling for the gun. Horatio never forgives himself. When a Navy captain betrays England to side with France (for the advancement of the Irish cause), Horatio again threatens to shoot. The man, however, knows Horatio too well... and pulls his own gun on himself to do what Horatio will not. Even with a gun pointed at him by another traitor, Horatio does not fire. It is Lieutenant Bush and the Royal Marines who shoot the man to save Horatio. If tyrants and traitors cannot bring Horatio to kill in cold blood, it is difficult to imagine that anything could.

Nothing matters more to Horatio-- whether as a midshipman or a captain-- than his men. He takes the blame for their actions, devotes himself to their protection, and goes out of his way to help them when he can. They are his family, and Horatio treats them as such. Whether he is the youngest-- as with the members of the division he received as a midshipman who followed him throughout his career-- or the oldest-- as a lieutenant or captain toward the midshipmen-- he stands as a kind of patriarch. As captain, he can easily be likened to a king on board his ship, and even as a lieutenant or midshipman, he was given the respect of a lord by those who served him because he was willing to stand for them and also beside them. There is no task given to them that he is not willing to do himself, and he was almost always right beside his men when the time comes for battle.

Even though he cares for his men, he maintains a certain distance. He likes to know them, their previous occupations if they were pressesd, their families... anything they will tell him. However, he shares little of himself. When he first arrives on the Justinian, Captain Keene remarks that Horatio's father has written, calling Horatio a "solitary boy." A few people get close to him-- Archie Kennedy and William Bush, for example--, but they are the exception rather than the rule. When Archie dies, the walls Horatio has built to keep the rest of the world at bay are made thicker and higher. He withdraws more than usual and seems to lose some of his compassion, treating the midshipman Jack Hammond as a kind of burden when the boy proves he has much to learn, whereas he was had an almost paternal affection to the midshipman Wellard whom he and Archie had taken under their wing on the Renown.

Horatio Hornblower is a man of contradictions. He has great sympathy for those in trouble but presents a cool front. He is a soldier, willing to fight a bloody war, but he cannot kill outside battle. He believes himself unworthy of praise yet indulges his own vanity by striving to make himself look his best at all times. He professes a belief in the divine right of the King of England while striving to live up to ideals and shape the world around him into something very in line with a Republican way of thinking. He is rarely aware of these contradictions, though they cause a constant struggle in him as he tries to rationalise a very complicated world into something neat and orderly. He is aware that it is an exercise in futility, but it something he still attempts.

On a typical day on his ship, Horatio Hornblower is seen but not heard. His orders are either calmly given or, if shouting is required, passed through his first lieutenant. He splits his time between handling his dispatches, charts, and other such private business in his cabin and being seen on deck. He holds himself apart from his men, as the nature of command is that there is a distance between him and those who serve under him, but he makes it known that he is present and watching and listening. Horatio thinks more than he speaks, and, when not extremely agitated or in a position to make lightning fast life-or-death decisions, is very careful with his words. Those who know him well and can either read his expressions (no easy task) or whom he will open up to (an even more difficult task) know that his thoughts tend toward melancholy and doubts about his previous actions. When battle or another crisis comes, Horatio is seen immediately, shouting his orders and springing to the forefront with no sign of hesitation or fear.

Horatio has several tics that, once learned, betray the captain's stoic facade. Low levels of anxiety and restlessness are betrayed by Horatio's hands. When there is nothing to be done but the man craves action, he will act with his hands. This can be as pronounced as fiddling with his spyglass or as subtle as faintly tapping on his thigh as he stands. When he is nervous or trying to set a course of action properly in his mind ahead of time or sort through information, Horatio paces. In fact, part of his morning ritual on his ship is that, for an hour, he walks the length of the quarterdeck, back and forth. Those who have sailed with him before know that the captain is not to be spoken to during this hour, unless it is about an enemy within sight. While Horatio chooses his words carefully, he is prone to thinking in a far different course. When his thoughts threaten to become speech uncensored, he often checks himself. A verbal tic signifies that this has occurred. It is a soft vocalization, rather like the clearing of his throat.

[Abilities / Strengths & Weaknesses]:
Strengths:
Physical
Horatio came into life as a midshipman late, seventeen rather than the usual thirteen or fourteen. Still, he threw himself into his duties, and his muscle tone and especially upper body strength show it. He has exceptional balance and exercises extreme caution in his climbing, always making sure of his hand and foot holes. He manages to, for instance, scale a sheer cliff face. He is a good swimmer, able to keep his head up and rescue someone else even in the middle of a storm. Used to shouting orders that must be heard, his voice can be heard over a din when he chooses to make it heard.

Mental
Horatio's ability at mathematics is what makes me a skilled navigator. He understands complex algebra easily, able to calculate angles, tides, and winds quickly to chart his course and alter it as necessary. Even at seventeen, he is the only man among the midshipmen to, during a mathematics lesson, get the correct answer on a problem involving navigation. (However, whether this is from Horatio's ability or because they all knew that one of the men among them, Jack Simpson, would get the wrong answer and seek retribution from anyone who could answer correctly is debatable and likely the latter.) Horatio also employs his knowledge to cards. He can easily keep track of a deck of 52 cards, so when a game of whist is down to its last two or three hands, he can estimate the cards still left to play and know his odds. Horatio seems to have a natural draw to him. While they may either like him immediately or dislike him immediately, people rarely fail to notice him. They are also rarely indifferent to him. He tends to provoke a strong reaction in everyone he comes across. Sometimes this is positive (he quickly establishes himself as a firm but merciful figure in the eyes of Matthews, Styles, and the other men of a division he is given) and sometimes this is negative (Captain Hammond, for one, immediately sees Horatio as driven by ambition and deliberately undermining of his superiors). Horatio's orders are rarely questioned by his men and less often disobeyed. When an order is disobeyed, such as when the young Jack Hammond ordered a retreat against the absent Horatio's orders, other men protest. Matthews, for instance, questions Jack but obeys, since Jack is the superior officer. He tells Jack later, though, that he knows Horatio well enough to know that the order to retreat was not, in fact, given. In the heat of battle, Horatio acts as he sees fit. As a midshipman, he is part of a team that takes a French ship called Papillion. When the other officers are killed, he assumes command and sails into battle to help the Indefatigable while still flying French colors. This violation of the Articles of War allows him to live long enough to be helpful, and he shows no regret over disregarding a rule he saw as a hinderance. Horatio even tells one French captain, who accuses him of playing too loosely with the Articles of War "I play to win, sir." He acts on spur-of-the-moment instinct often, and in battle that often helps him turn the tide in his favor.

Emotional
Horatio cares about people. He rushes an injured member of his division to the surgeon when wounded and demands, due to the severity of his injures, that the man be seen ahead of the minorly injured lieutenant the surgeon was treating. He shows the same compassion to Maria Mason. He is surprised when William Bush points out that she seems fond of him as something more than a friend, and he repeatedly stresses to her that she is only his friend. However, when she and her mother are bankrupt and she feels she must travel away from home to be a governess, Horatio tries to offer her money. When she makes it clear that her reputation could not survive the offer and starts to cry, Horatio proposes marriage to her. While never in love with her, Horatio continually softens his demeanor around her when he accidentally upsets her. Horatio is also extremely loyal. Despite the Hell he is put through on Justinian as a midshipman, when the transfer to the Indefatigable is announced, he personally speaks to Captain Keene, arguing that he was accepted on the Justinian and feels he should remain there. It takes having Keene specifically order him to take the transfer to make him agree. When Horatio finds a half-mad Archie Kennedy in the Spanish prison at Ferrol, he devotes himself to the man's recovery, insisting to his shipmates that they will not leave until Archie is strong enough to go with him. Even when Archie starves himself, Horatio sits by his bedside, relentless in trying to force him to eat and drink. Perhaps most remarkable about Horatio emotionally is how resilient he really is. While prone to self-doubt and melacholy, nothing truly breaks Horatio. A beating at the hands of Jack Simpon quiets him, but he takes the first opportunity presented to challenge the man. When overwhelmed and taken prisoner on a quarterboat, Horatio merely bides his time for the opportune moment to turn the tables again. Made a prisoner of war, Horatio takes his time in trying to formulate a workable escape plan. He is shattered by the events at Muzillac, where he is forced to retreat after helping to reinstall a tyrant (as part of the royalist cause, which he supported on the whole), witnessing executions at the guillotine, being overwhelmed by French Republican troops set on retaking the town, and losing a young woman he had sworn to protect in their desperate bid for a retreat. However, after uncharacteristically breaking down into tears, a new day, headed back for England and away from the failure, sees the settling of Horatio and the rebirth of hope. Even placed under a paranoid tyrant of a captain, Horatio remains vigilant. He discusses, despite threat of death, the possibility of a mutiny with his fellow lieutenants. The death of Archie Kennedy shakes him. He does not react with an emotional outburst, as he did over Musillac, but his reaction is much more far-reaching. He withdraws into himself, begins to reserve what he says around everyone, and seems to temper the kindness he shows to people in general. Despite this, however, he keeps going. It wounds him-- a scar that will likely never heal-- but it does not destroy him.

Weaknesses:
Physical
While Horatio can fight and hold off foes, he relies more on raw power and speed than on any kind of finesse. He can fire a gun and get near the target, swing a sword at flesh, and punch... but he lacks the control that any actual training might afford him. In a boarding party, with others around him, this is not too much of a problem, but he would likely stand little chance in a one-on-one test of skill. (It is probably a very good thing that he took the advice of his second captain and never attempted to fight another duel.)

Mental
Horatio's willingness to disregard rules that do not suit his purposes has the tendency to get him in trouble as often as it helps him. He goes ashore in France dressed as a fisherman-- for which he could have been shot as a spy if caught. When later captured during action, his earlier attempt is known about, and he is threatened with hanging for this breach of the Articles of War. Horatio also has a fear of heights, which makes him nervous on the riggings of his ships and on tasks that require him to deal with heights alone. This does not stop him from accomplishing the task at hand, as he considers duty paramount. He manages to secure a cannon hanging over a cliff (on which a midshipman was riding to keep its climb steady), unloose sails where no footropes were available, and scale a cliff face, but he is visibly nervous every time. Off his ship and on land (when not in battle), Horatio loses much of his lustre. His manners are superb, but sometimes overdone. He is not sure of his speech, and he proves to lack knowledge of how to, for instance, carve a chicken at a dinner given by a superior officer. Worst of all is Horatio's idea of himself. He rarely lives up to his own expectations for him. While he forgives the faults of others, he expects nothing less than perfection in himself. When a man struggles with him for a gun and is killed, he feels the fault is his. When he puts out a bomb fired from shore at his ship, he gets angry when William Bush calls him brave, saying that he had been terrified. While he makes good decisions instinctually, he thinks after a course of action and is prone to regret if anything has gone wrong, even if it was unavoidable.

Emotional
Especially since the death of Archie Kennedy, Horatio Hornblower is not a man to feel in touch with his own emotions. He is compassionate, but he often hides how much he cares about others, presenting a cool facade that leaves most people sure that he is indifferent to them. He manages to generally be kinder to men than women. He reassures a man who has lost his ship and crew, telling him that he would have acted in the same fashion, but he dismisses a woman upset by the fact that Horatio followed his orders and separated her from her husband without her knowledge. He is more open with William Bush (though he keeps the man at a distance as well, stopping himself from speaking freely more than once) than with his own wife. William, he will tell of his uncertainties and doubts, but he refuses to speak of his service at all to Maria and is quite dismissive of her worries about him. Horatio buries his emotion, quietly taking on the weight of the world, his sorrows, and his frustrations without a word to anyone. When it comes out (such as when Maria presses him about a report in the Naval Gazette), he verbally lashes out, leaving hurt feelings. He rarely follows these outbursts with any kind of apology or explanation, so there is rarely a clear-cut resolution for either party. While some might consider it a strength, Horatio himself struggles with the fact that he cannot kill a man in cold blood. He is given several opportunities and is not able to take any of them. One foe, Wolfe, even calls him on it, urging another man to keep walking despite Horatio's gun on him, as the captain won't shoot. Horatio also puts his duty to his king and his country above all else. His mother-in-law chides him that he thinks only of his crew and his ship and not of his wife. He tells the man of the couple he separates that, if he were told to leave his own wife, he would do his duty. His admiral (and father-figure) tells him that "I hope, Hornblower, one day you fight for more than England." Horatio's reply? A sincere "What is there more than England?"

[Limited Powers]:
n/a

[Other Important Facts]:
Because of his canon point, Horatio is not married yet. I have included canon information beyond his canon point to better illustrate his personality, as it does not dramatically change.

[Samples]:
♦ Thread:
Test sail post!
♦ Post:
Day 13,

Enemy ship remains in sight. We are as matched in speed as we are in determination -- him to engage and I to avoid. I fear the casualties of battle with an untrained crew against a frigate of the Navy. If there country of origin was one I knew, I could feel somewhat more certain about our chances, but this is entirely foreign.

What is their rate of fire? What is their accuracy? What is their discipline at the loss of their commanding officer? What are their rules of war?

Until these questions can be answered, I cannot in good conscience trust a ten-gun caravel against a twenty-four gun frigate.

There is a storm on the western horizon. If we are very fortunate, that will hide our flight if we can stay ahead of him long enough to thrust ourselves into it.

Hornblower