The Fishing Fleet: Husband-Hunting in the Raj

by Anne de Courcy

Overview

The adventurous young women who sailed to India during the Raj in search of husbands.

From the late 19th century, when the Raj was at its height, many of Britain's best and brightest young men went out to India to work as administrators, soldiers and businessmen. With the advent of steam travel and the opening of the Suez Canal, countless young women, suffering at the lack of eligible men in Britain, followed in their wake. This amorphous band was composed of daughters returning after their English education, girls invited to stay with married sisters or friends, and yet others whose declared or undeclared goal was simply to find a husband. They were known as the Fishing Fleet, and this book is their story, hitherto untold.

For these young women, often away from home for the first time, one thing they could be sure of was a rollicking good time. By the early 20th century, a hectic social scene was in place, with dances, parties, amateur theatricals, picnics, tennis tournaments, cinemas and gymkhanas, with perhaps a tiger shoot and a glittering dinner at a raja's palace thrown in. And, with men outnumbering women by roughly four to one, romances were conducted at alarming speed and marriages were frequent. But after the honeymoon, life often changed dramatically: whisked off to a remote outpost with few other Europeans for company, and where constant vigilance was required to guard against disease, they found it a far cry from the social whirlwind of their first arrival.

Anne de Courcy's sparkling narrative is enriched by a wealth of first-hand sources - unpublished memoirs, letters and diaries rescued from attics - which bring this forgotten era vividly to life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780297863830
Publisher:	Orion
Publication date:	07/12/2012
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Anne de Courcy is the author of thirteen widely acclaimed works of social history and biography, including THE HUSBAND HUNTERS, THE FISHING FLEET, THE VICEROY'S DAUGHTERS and DEBS AT WAR. In the 1970s she was Woman's Editor on the LONDON EVENING NEWS and in the 1980s she was a regular feature-writer for the EVENING STANDARD. She is also a former features writer and reviewer for the DAILY MAIL. She lives in London SW3.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations vii

Map of India ix

The Viceroys of India xi

Prologue 1

Intorduction 9

1 'Champagne has been known to allay sea sickness when all else failed' The Voyage Out 17

2 'Happy hunting-ground of the single girl' The Women Who Went Out 32

3 'Kisses on the boat deck' Love at Sea 44

4 'A £300-a-year man-dead or alive' The Men They Met 55

5 'Welcome to India' Arrivals 72

6 'A hell of a heat' The Climate 85

7 'Parties, parties, parties' The Social Whirl 94

8 The Viceroy's Daughter Elisabeth Bruce 108

9 'There are so many "Ladies"' Viceregal Entertainments 125

10 'I told him it was only the moonlight' Courtship 139

11 'It would be a pleasure to be in his harem, I thought' Maharajas 154

12 'Us and them' Brits and Indians 166

13 'I thought my heart was going to jump out of my body' Grace Trotter 173

14 'Where every Jack has someone else's Jill' The Hills 185

15 '"No" would have been unthinkable' Engagement 202

16 Daughter of the Raj Bethea Field 216

17 'Colonels must marry' Marriage 230

18 'No one will want to marry me now!' Perils 241

19 'As I inspected ours I sighed a bit' The First Home 256

20 "But what about horses? And Polo? And Parties?' Iris Butler 265

21 'Just lift up your skirts and you'll be all right' Up Country 278

22 'Cheerio, old girl' Sheila Hingston 292

Epilogue 307

Acknowledgements 313

Bibliography 315

Index 319

Editorial Reviews

09/23/2013
What’s a marriage-minded young Englishwoman to do when so many eligible young men have gone off to India to uphold the British Empire? Follow them, of course. Journalist De Courcy (Snowden: The Biography) provides a fascinating account—not quite gossipy but loaded with juicy anecdotes—of adventurous women sailing for the subcontinent in the 19th and early 20th centuries to fulfill their destinies as wives. Their matrimonial objectives were Englishmen of the Indian Civil Service and officers in the British army, the cream of the Raj crop, whose position and salary made them fine catches. First for the single women came the voyage, with its promise of shipboard romance that could quickly seal the marriage deal. The majority didn’t secure husbands that fast, so once the new arrivals settled in with relatives, they paid social calls and attended dinners, parties, and sporting events—all opportunities to meet eligible young men under the watchful eyes of chaperones. Typical of colonial outposts, interracial romance and marriage were banned. Successful fleet members became like Cinderella after the Prince fitted the slipper: married with a home and children to care for; unsuccessful ones, De Courcy notes with subtle irony, went back to England where they were known as “returned empties.” Three eight-page b&w photo inserts. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

The contrasts are irresistibly melodramatic, the characters colorful yet tantalizingly repressed. …. It is enough to make you wonder why Julian Fellowes hasn’t sent a few more members of the Downton Abbey cast on the heels of Miss O’Brien, seeking their fortunes in Delhi and beyond...” — New York Times Book Review

“Vividly sketches the lives lived in this strange limbo…richly entertaining.” — Boston Globe

“Making liberal use of letters and journals, The Fishing Fleet paints a fascinating picture of these women and their history…a glimpse of a unique era.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune

A “lively history…. Colorful.” — Daily Beast

“Journalist De Courcy provides a fascinating account—not quite gossipy but loaded with juicy anecdotes—of adventurous women sailing for the subcontinent in the 19th and early 20th centuries to fulfill their destinies as wives.” — Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

A “lively history…. Colorful.

Daily Beast

The contrasts are irresistibly melodramatic, the characters colorful yet tantalizingly repressed. …. It is enough to make you wonder why Julian Fellowes hasn’t sent a few more members of the Downton Abbey cast on the heels of Miss O’Brien, seeking their fortunes in Delhi and beyond...

New York Times Book Review

Vividly sketches the lives lived in this strange limbo…richly entertaining.

Boston Globe

Making liberal use of letters and journals, The Fishing Fleet paints a fascinating picture of these women and their history…a glimpse of a unique era.

Minneapolis Star Tribune

2013-10-20
A British biographer finds lively fodder from the accounts of Victorian women venturing to India to find a spouse--and the men who scooped them up. De Courcy (Snowdon, 2010, etc.) fleshes out the stereotypical portrait of the wilting English gentlewoman who functioned chiefly as a means of perpetuating the imperial status quo across the British empire. The women she chronicles in this vigorous study, sent to India to find a husband mostly during the Raj period (roughly 1850 to 1950), faced hardships with equanimity and purpose. Fortunes were to be had for the intrepid young men who flocked to India to work in the East India Company, Indian Civil Service, and other trading, government and army ventures, although diseases and an unfamiliar climate rendered their work perilous. The depletion of the marriage pool back in England left many English girls, those without fortunes, beauty or good connections, facing spinster futures during a time when marriage largely defined women, who had few other prospects. However, in India, men outnumbered women four to one, de Courcy estimates, increasing a woman's chances of finding a mate. Yet these were not passive women, and as the author delves deeper into their diaries and letters, she finds that voyaging to India allowed many women an exciting outlet they did not have in England. However, the arduous voyage took many months and required hardiness, as did weathering illness and oppressive heat. After hasty marriages to eager, lonely men, the wives were often obliged to pull up stakes and move constantly as their husbands' jobs required or live out in the jungles where their plantations were located. Moreover, they often faced long separations from their children, sent back home to boarding schools. De Courcy offers numerous, richly detailed accounts. An expert researcher brings the romantic Raj era to colorful life.

Kirkus Reviews