Brown on Resolution is a nautical novel written by CS Forester. It is set during World War I. The hero of the novel, seaman Brown, is the sole survivor of a sunken British warship, picked up by one of the German warships of the German Asiatic Squadron after the German victory at the Battle of Coronel. Cecil Scott Forester is the pen name of Cecil Smith (August 27, 1899 - April 2, 1966), an English novelist whose rose to fame with tales of adventure with military themes, notably the 11-book Horatio Hornblower series (being filmed with Ioan Gruffudd as Horatio Hornblower) about naval warfare during the... Combatants Allied Powers: British Empire France Italy Russia United States Central Powers: Austria-Hungary Bulgaria Germany Ottoman Empire Casualties Military dead: 5 million Military dead: 4 million The First World War, also known as The Great War, The War to End All Wars, and World War I (abbreviated WWI) was... Diagrams of first and third rate warships, England, 1728 Cyclopaedia. ... German squadron leaving Valparaiso 3 Nov. ...

As so often with Forester's novels, the action takes place against a background of carefully researched historical fact. During the early part of the Great War, Germany had a small squadron of modern vessels in the Far East. When war was declared, SMS Emden was detached to serve as a commerce raider. The larger vessels of the squadron set out to return to Europe. The German squadron encountered an inferior British squadron off the coast of Chile, and defeated it at the Battle of Coronel. The German fleet then rounded Cape Horn and encountered a superior British squadron, which defeated it at the Battle of the Falkland Islands. All the German ships were sunk in this battle, with the exception of the SMS Dresden, which escaped back in to the Pacific Ocean. The cruise of the German light cruiser SMS Emden was among the most romanticised and notable incidents of World War I. In the latter half of 1914 Emden raided Allied shipping in the Indian Ocean, sinking or capturing thirty Allied merchant vessels and warships before being run aground by its... German squadron leaving Valparaiso 3 Nov. ... Combatants British Empire Germany Commanders Doveton Sturdee Maximilian von Spee Strength 2 battlecruisers, 3 armoured cruisers, 2 light cruisers and 1 grounded pre-dreadnought 2 armoured cruisers, 3 light cruisers Casualties 10 killed, 19 wounded No ships lost 1,871 killed, 215 captured All but one light cruiser sunk The... The SMS Dresden was a German Kaiserliche Marine light cruiser of the Dresden class, commissioned in 1908. ...

In the novel the German vessel (the fictitious SMS Ziethen) where Brown was held prisoner suffers damage in the second battle. Her captain plans to pull into an isolated Pacific anchorage to try to repair his vessel. In the novel, he chooses (fictitious) Resolution Island, in the Galápagos. Orthographic projection centred over the Galapagos Map of the Galapagos archipelago showing the names of the islands. ...

Resourceful Brown escapes, steals a rifle and a small amount of ammunition, and makes his way ashore.

Her captain having already careened his vessel, the vessel's main battery could not be brought to bear on Brown, and he was able to pick off exposed crew-members who are trying to repair her punctured hull plates. In Forester's description Resolution is an inpenetrable tangle of scrub and thorn bushes, making it difficult for shore parties to run our hero to ground.

Brown never learns that his actions delayed the repairs long enough to ensure that the German vessel fails to escape her British pursuers.

This novel has some parallels to Forester's Death to the French. In both novels the hero is an enlisted man, cut off, and acting alone. In both novels the enlisted man's dogged and surprisingly effective actions are attributed to a kind of instinctive shrewdness rather than to conscious planning. For the Wikipedias treatment of anti-French movements in the modern world, see Anti-French sentiment in the United States Death to the French is a 1932 novel by C. S. Forester, the author of the Horatio Hornblower novels. ...

Film versions

• Brown on Resolution, 1935
• Single-handed, 1953