Another of the plaques that came about from my recent deluge in all things Golden Age of Sail. The Hotspur is one of these, being one of the many ships served on or commanded by C.S. Forrester's rather complex character, Horatio Hornblower. The Hotspur is young Lieutenant Hornblower's first command, and is a sloop-of-war of around 20 guns. Being such as small ship, not even of classic sailing frigate size, I had decided the Hotspur would be at the very largest a Miranda class, and I'm still toying with the idea. Guest Author Larry Stovall says she should be a destroyer, as her name sounds "to fast for a cruiser". So, I've temporised by making her an Okinawa-class improved frigate, the frigates of the WWII navy classification system I'm using for my Classic era starships being much smaller than their Age of Sail forbearers.
There is even a Hotspur already in Star Trek fiction, from the alternate timeline in Book 2 of 'The Janus Gate' trilogy by L.A. Graf. Chekov and Sulu are the command crew of the heavily armed frigate Hotspur as they combat the Gorn in a timeline in which Kirk never made it to captain of the Enterprise. it is because of this that I cling to the notion of the Hotspur as a frigate
I may yet change my mind. With the myriad of 'Star Fleet Battles' and 'Ships of the Star Fleet' sub-classes, I may make her an SFB "New Light Cruiser"—which is really a heavy destroyer by my lights—or maybe a SotSF Knox-class, a Miranda variant without the roll bar and a much shorter extended hull. However, I do want her to have an air of semi-legitimacy; of belonging to a class in the mainstream of popular computer games instead of more obscure and harder to get tech manuals.
We shall see.
The ship's motto is a quote from the Hornblower book I've just read, 'Flying Colours', as I haven't got my hands on 'Hornblower and the Hotspur' yet. Being a fictional ship, I'm using quotes from her fictional commander as a motto. Once I finally get the book(s) I want, I may be able to put in a more chronologically accurate or appropriate one.