From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Cecil Scott "C.S." Forester was the pen name of Cecil Louis Troughton Smith (27 August 1899 — 2 April 1966), an English novelist who rose to fame with tales of naval warfare. His most notable works were the 11-book Horatio Hornblower series, depicting a Royal Navy officer during the Napoleonic era, and The African Queen (1935; filmed in 1951 by John Huston). His novels A Ship of the Line and Flying Colours were jointly awarded the 1938 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. Description above from the Wikipedia article C. S. Forester, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia​