Oh dear...! I remember you saying Hornblower does something particularly awful in one of the latest-set books—is this what that was about?

Yes—I'm afraid I am too literal-minded for a lot of unreliable narration and minimal-explanation writing styles, so I hadn't put the pieces together to figure out what was really happening (nor had I twigged that the plague ship was foreshadowing—that's neat). I do expect that having that as the only ending I knew for years and re-reading it several times on its own would have improved it for me.