Sorry to burst your bubble, but it is obvious that you have never read any of the novels. The basic plotline of your story is starkly contradictory to the rest of the series. I suggest you read the series, not merely for canon but also because it is a good series of novels.
First, Horatio and Maria have two children between the events in Hornblower and the Hotspur and those in Hornblower and the Atropos, a boy, Little Horatio and a girl, Little Maria, and near the end of that novel they both die of smallpox at a Southsea lodging. Hornblower holds himself responsible for their deaths for years afterwards.
At the end of Hornblower and the Hotspur, Hornblower is recommended for promotion to post captain. In Hornblower and the Crisis, after his duty in blockading Brest in the Hotspur is over and his commision in the Hotspur ends, he attends a court martial for the new commander and officers of the Hotspur, as it had ran aground and was lost the day after he turned over command. He also finds out that Admiral Villaneuv has escaped from Ferrol, and, using an example of Napoleon's new signature, forges documents to draw out Villanuev in an engagment with Admiral Nelson, culminating with the Battle of Trafalgar. THis is the unfinished volume, as C. S. Forester died before he completed it. It has a description of what likely happens afterwards from Mr. Forester's notes, as it ends at the point where Horatio Hornblower is pursuaded to atttempt the mission himself, and usually contains the short stories Hornblower and the Widow McCool and The Last Encounter.
In Hornblower and the Atropos (1953), he has a large part in Nelson's funeral, and is given command of the HMS Atropos of 20 guns, the smallest vessel in the Navy to warrant command by a Post Captain. This book contains a number of inconsistancies between Beat to Quarters (The Happy Return in the UK), the next novel chronologically, the first written and published (1937), and the short story The Hand of Destiny (1940), involving the capture of the Spanish frigate Castille, in which Hornblower recieves a powder burn on his left hand. I think it best that I don't spoil it for you.
In Beat to Quarters, he commands a 36 gun frigate on a secret mission to deliver 500 muskets, ammunition pouches and ammunition, to a madman named Don Julian Alvarado, calling himself El Supremo, who is leading a revolt against Spain, then England's enemy, in Nicaruagua. Halfway through, Spain switches sides, making such an alliance with a madman redundant. He is forced to take on a passenger, Lady Babara Wellesley the fictional sister of Aurthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington. He also has to destroy a 50 gun fourth rate that he had previously captured and was forced to give to El Supremo as a gift.
Upon his return, in the book A Ship of the Line, he is posted to the 74 gun Sutherland, ex-dutch Endracht, and the crew of the Lydia, his previous command, is transferred to the Sutherland. Maria is pregnant when he leaves England for the Meditarranean. The book ends when the ship is dismasted and run aground and burned to prevent its capture, with Hornblower and the survivng crew prisoners at a French fort.
In Flying Colours, the stroy picks where it left off. Hornblower, Bush, who has lost his foot in the last combat, and Brown, his coxswain, are taken by carrige to be tried in Paris. They escape and meet the Comte du Grace, who allows them to stay at his estate until spring. Then, they make it to the coast, capture a recently captured British cutter and return to England. Hornblower discovers Maria died during childbirth of their son, Richard. Lady Babara adopted him, and later she and Hornblower, who were very much in love, are finally allowed to marry. Bush is promoted to post capatin and given a shore appoinment.
It is these three novels that are used as the basis for the 1950 film, Captain Horatio Hornblower, RN, staring Gregory Peck.
In The Commodore, he is made commodore of a squadron of ships in the Baltic, with the mission to pursuade Czar Alaxander I to join England. This happens in 1812, right as Napoleon is about to attack Russia. Commodore was not a substantitive rank in the Royal Navy until 1997, meaning it was a post for the most senior Post Captain in a squadron. Bush is made Hornblower's flag Captain. He later dies several years later from a powder barge explosion in a night time raid.
I feel this is enough, and I do not feel like detailing the entire series. That is already seven out of eleven books.
I do not mean for you to give up writing fan fiction, just to inform you of the rest of the series.
Besides, with respect to Mr. Forseter, it is my opinion that Patrick O'Brian's series, the Aubrey/Maturin series, is better. It contains a certain amount of wit that Hornblower is lacking, and has more realistic air, and Aubrey sails aboard real ships, and is in fact based on Lord Thomas Cochrane.
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