This excellent series of novels on the war at sea in both the War of the American Revolution and the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars is highly recommended.
I have found it to be superior to the Hornblower novels.
I first read the Bolitho series in college and have recently begun them once again, finding things that I didn't recall immediately. It's a great series and I'm still reading through them.
If you are looking for a good historical fiction series (not our era) try John Biggins' "Otto Prohaska series". First book is "A Sailor of Austria", it starts a little slow, but is well-worth reading.
https://www.goodreads.com/series/218184-otto-prohaska
I started buying the collection again, and they are in a larger paperback format instead of the smaller paperbacks of the 1970s. The cover art is excellent. Douglas Reeman/Alexander Kent has a website which is maintained by his widow, as he died in 2017. He was a War II vet in the Royal Navy.
Douglas Reeman's Official Website
Just checked. Not only do we still have a bunch of them, but they are checked out in spite of Covid. (Whereas almost all the Flashman series has been weeded).
Read those in the early 1970s. They were still fairly popular at my library in the 2000s, but not sure if they've survived the ruthless weeding campaign. I'd rank them with the Sharp series, but not up to Flashman (But what is?).