guardevoir:

I just found an old Hornblower post of mine, from way back before I actually tagged that stuff with anything, in which I was being unreasonably amused by the Hornblower novels. 

So, here - I’ll just copy that over. The Great Saga Of Hornblower Being Naked, aka “Fic or Forester” aka “reasons why you should really read the books”.

First off, have some excerpts from “The Epic Adventures of the Highly Decorated and Very Naked Naval Officer Horatio Hornblower” aka “The Commodore / Commodore Hornblower”:

Suddenly the jet ceased; a skinny little midshipman was standing saluting his naked Commodore. Despite the gravity of addressing so great a man the child was round- eyed with wonder at this fantastic behaviour on the part of an officer whose doings were a household word.

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Hornblower snatched the towel from Brown, but the message was too important for time to be wasted drying himself, and he ran up the companion still wet and naked, with Brown following with his dressing-gown. The officer of the watch touched his hat as Hornblower appeared on the quarter-deck — it was like some old fairy story, the way everybody rigidly ignored the Commodore’s lack of clothes.

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Hornblower remembered he was still wet and naked; at least, he was still wet in those parts of him which did not offer free play for the wind to dry him. He began to dab at these inner corners with the towel he still held, only to be interrupted again. “There she is!” said Bush; the ship’s upper sails were over the horizon, in view from the deck.

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“And now I’ll get some clothes on, by God,” said Hornblower; he had only just realized that he had been standing naked on the quarter-deck for an hour or more — if he had obeyed his first impulse and gone over in his barge he would have boarded the Maggie Jones without a stitch on

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(Bonus Round: From “Ship of the Line”):

He heard Gerard’s voice saying “What the devil — ?” come clearly over the water to him; apparently Gerard had just detected the nakedness of everyone in the approaching boat. The pipes twittered to call the watch’s attention to the arrival of the ship’s captain. He would have to come in naked through the entry port, receiving the salutes of the officers and marines, but keyed up as he was he gave no thought to his dignity. He ran up to the deck with his sword hanging from his naked waist — it was an ordeal which could not be avoided, and he had learned in twenty years in the Navy to accept the inevitable without lamentation. The faces of the side boys and of the marines were wooden in their effort not to smile, but Hornblower did not care. The black pall of smoke over the land marked an
achievement any man might be proud of. He stayed naked on the deck until he had given Bush the order to put the ship about which would take the Sutherland southward again in search of fresh adventure.