Star Trek: 5 Literary Precursor Captains To James T. Kirk

5. Captain Horatio Hornblower

Hornblower Take Captain Horatio Hornblower from C.S. Forester's "Hornblower" series. Hornblower begins his career as a midshipman but it's his stints as captain and leader that provide inspiration for Captain Kirk's character in Star Trek. In Forester's "Ship of the Line", the self-conscious captain is completely aware of the fact that he needs to enlist hands for HMS Sutherland. Instead of looking down on the handcuffed, gaol-supplied convicts who would have resented taking punishment as service at sea, he wins them over by immediately ordering their handcuffs released and addressing them as honourable men with a glorious career at sea before them. Of course, he is desperate for crew and in early 19th century England, pressed crew was the best that a captain could hope for when short of men. Still, he approaches the simple act of greeting new crew members as a leadership opportunity €“ and succeeds wildly in a total Kirk manner. It's a ballet of tactical manoeuvres to read Forester's account of Hornblower defending the merchant ships in his convoy against two French privateers. Even with its inexperienced crew, The HMS Sutherland weaves in and out of the convoy, dodging the big, bulky freighters and manages to position itself to deliver volley after volley of the ship's 74 cannons at the enemy French vessels. Throughout the battle, Hornblower notes his crew's deficiencies but wears an iron mask of mental concentration as he makes multiple calculations in his head: trajectory of the opposing ships, their speed and the direction of the wind in addition to the other factors at play. The immediate battle zone is a chaotic mess of freighters, ships-of-the-line and privateers yet Hornblower is able to stand on the bridge of his ship and calmly survey the whole situation and deftly pilot the ship to victory, driving the French attackers away, defending the convoy. Does he take joy from this? No €“ he is merely relieved at crippling one enemy and driving off the other. In fact, his rage at the crew's excitement of winning the encounter is because of the errors he calmly noted during the action. It's very much like Kirk's own reaction to being surprised by Khan's sneak attack in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. To the exclamation: "you did it, Sir!" He rounds on the speaker and shouts: "I did nothing! Simply got caught with my britches down!" Though Kirk saves the Enterprise from sure destruction, he is simply relieved by driving Khan away. Both captains display their respective tactical genius, but neither takes any pleasure from it.
Contributor
Contributor

John Kirk is a Teacher-Librarian and currently a History/English Teacher with the Toronto District School Board. But mostly, John teaches Geek. Comics, Sci-Fi (Notably Star Trek), Fantasy and Role-Playing and table-top games all make up part of John’s repertoire, There is a whole generation of nerds-in-embryo who rely on him to make sense of it all, to teach that with great power comes great responsibility, that the force will be with us always and that a towel IS the most useful thing to have in one’s possession. When John isn’t in the classroom, he can be found in his basement writing comic reviews for www.popmythology.com and features for Roddenberry Entertainment's www.1701news.com.