This book has its origins in a wider research project that initially arose from the authors’ shared love of hms Indefatigable's most famous fictional midshipman, Horatio Hornblower, and a mutual fascination with the career of his historical captain, Sir Edward Pellew. Despite the honours Pellew earned during his long and distinguished naval career, the Droits de L'Homme engagement still stands as the apotheosis of his career as a fighting captain so it was perhaps unsurprising that we were drawn to this iconic frigate action as the starting point for our archival research. Our original intention was to explore the lives and careers of the commissioned officers of all three ships that fought through the night and the storm off the lee shore of Hodierne Bay on 13 January 1797; the Indefatigable, the Amazon and the Droits de L'Homme. However it did not take us long to realise that any one of these officers warranted extensive biographical research in their own right and consequently we narrowed the scope of our research to concentrate on a single ship.

The first young gentleman we focused our attention on was the Honourable George Cadogan. Cadogan had already been the subject of an authoritative biography written in 1989; however, we were intrigued to discover that he had been subjected to three courts martial during the early years of his career, none of which were mentioned in the otherwise comprehensive biography. Cadogan became the subject of our first research paper, ‘The Honourable George Cadogan: A Career in Courts Martial’, which we presented at the New Researchers in Maritime History Conference in Glasgow in 2012. It was as a result of this paper that we were approached by Peter Sowden of Boydell & Brewer who invited us to submit the proposal for this book.

One theme that emerged early in our research was the high regard, mutual affection and lasting friendship that bound Pellew and the young gentlemen of the Indefatigable together throughout their careers and later civilian lives. The parallels with the fictional Pellew's affection and concern for Hornblower were clear. This should not have been a surprise, of course – Pellew was renowned for his patronage of junior officers; however he also had a reputation for avarice and nepotism that arose partially from C. Northcote Parkinson's influential but flawed biography.