High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! HMS Surprise is the 1973 historical naval novel by Patrick O'Brian. It is third in the series of stories of Captain Jack Aubrey and the naval surgeon Stephen Maturin. In it Aubrey gains command of HMS Surprise, the most important fictional ship in the Aubrey-Maturin series. The capture of the Spanish treasure fleet features in Hornblower and the Hotspur, the last-published full length novel in C. S. Forester's Hornblower series. Forester adds Hornblower in the Hotspur as an extra to the five British ships in the squadron sent to intercept the fleet. Theoretically, the episode provided the fictional character Jack Aubrey with an opportunity to meet the fictional character Horatio Hornblower.