The Fishing Fleet: Husband-Hunting in the Raj

By Anne de Courcy

From the author of the critically acclaimed biographies Diana Mosley and The Viceroy's Daughters comes a fascinating, hugely entertaining account of the Victorian women who traveled halfway around the world on the hunt for a husband.

By the late nineteenth century, Britain's colonial reign seemed to know no limit—and India was the sparkling jewel in the Imperial crown. Many of Her Majesty's best and brightest young men departed for the Raj to make their careers, and their fortunes, as bureaucrats, soldiers, and businessmen. But in their wake they left behind countless young ladies who, suddenly bereft of eligible bachelors, found themselves facing an uncertain future.

With nothing to lose and everything to gain, some of these women decided to follow suit and abandon their native Britain for India's exotic glamor and—with men outnumbering women by roughly four to one in the Raj—the best chance they had at finding a man.

Drawing on a wealth of firsthand sources, including unpublished memoirs, letters, photographs, and diaries, Anne de Courcy brings the incredible world of "the Fishing Fleet," as these women were known, to life. In these sparkling pages, she describes the glittering whirlwind of dances, parties, amateur theatricals, picnics, tennis tournaments, cinemas, tiger shoots, and palatial banquets that awaited in the Raj, all geared toward the prospect of romance. Most of the girls were away from home for the first time, and they plunged headlong into the heady dazzle of expatriate social life; marriages were frequent.

However, after the honeymoon many women were confronted with a reality that was far from the fairy tale they'd been chasing. With her signature diligence and sensitivity, de Courcy looks beyond the allure of the Raj to tell the real stories of these marriages built on convenience and unwieldy expectations. Wives were whisked away to distant outposts with few other Europeans for company. Transplanted to isolated plantations and remote towns, they endured heat, boredom, discomfort, illness, and motherhood removed from familiar comforts—a far cry from the magical world they were promised upon arrival.

Rich with drama and color, The Fishing Fleet is a sumptuous, utterly compelling real-life saga of adventure, romance, and heartbreak in the heyday of the British Empire.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Mar 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9780062290090

Anne de Courcy

Anne de Courcy is the author of several widely acclaimed works of social history and biography, including CHANEL'S RIVIERA, THE HUSBAND HUNTERS, MARGOT AT WAR, THE FISHING FLEET, THE VICEROY'S DAUGHTERS and DEBS AT WAR. She lives in London and Gloucestershire.

Reviews for The Fishing Fleet

[arubabookwoman · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Subtitle: Husband-hunting in the Raj"Getting engaged in the Raj was sometimes a bit like speed-dating. Often minds were made up and a lifelong commitment to another human being promised after only a few meetings...."Maintaining the British Empire was hard. The British men doing the work of the Raj were expected to remain unmarried until they were in their 30's. Since there was a shortage of eligible women in India, the government initiated a program in which it subsidized young women to induce them to travel to India to enjoy a social season in search of a husband. Even after the government stopped subsidizing the program, the young women ("the fishing fleet") continued to arrive each year in droves, all the way through to the independence of India and its partition. This book is a social history of the movement, through time, and it covers all facets of the phenomenon, from the voyage out, to the social whirl, to the engagements and marriages (and the few who returned to Britain unmarried) to the hard and lonely postings with their new husbands deep in the wilderness of the land still so strange and hostile to them.The women had to put up with the horrible climate, many dangers (exotic tropical diseases, contaminated water, and poisonous snakes, for example), and had to deal with the stringent social protocols to which they were subject. de Courcy depicts their experiences through examining the lives of a few dozen of these women, ranging from the upper-echelons of society (the viceroy's daughter) to its lower-fringes (Anglo-Indian women). She relies on interviews, diaries, letters, and so forth in putting together their stories.The social protocols were quite rigorous:"The iron rule of precedence regulated social intercourse, from whom you called on to whom you sat next to at dinner. As the position of every official and military officer was detailed in a graded list known as the 'Warrant of Precedence,' published by the Government of India, it was possible not only to seat people according to seniority but for a new arrival to deduce everyone's place in the pecking order."Many of these women were courageous and wiling to take risks, although I did not care for the several descriptions of tiger hunts, which seemed to me barbarous, but which seemed to be de riguer for a certain class of Brit in India. The women who married the men of the Raj also had to be prepared to send their children off to England to be educated at a very tender age, and to not see them for years at a time.Although overall I enjoyed the book, I have some serious complaints about its execution. First, de Courcy organized the book by topic, rather than chronologically or by woman. So, for example, the first section covered the voyage out. The experiences of a number of women on the voyage out were discussed. Since the voyage out in the 19th century (pre-Suez canal) was quite different that voyages in the 1940's, this creates a bit of a mish-mash. (And this observation also applies for each of the other topics covered in the book.)This method of organization resulted in frequent instances in which a particular woman might appear in one chapter, and then we hear nothing further of her for several further chapters, if she even reappears at all. Since there were so many women whose experiences were covered, I had difficulty keeping track of who was who, what time period they were from, who they married, their social position, and so on.Another complaint I have about the book is that a great deal of it is repetitious and frivolous. There were long and detailed descriptions of the dresses the women wore to the balls on the ship out, what they wore to the social events they attended once they arrived in India, what they wore to be introduced to the Viceroy, etc. etc.I got tired of hearing about all the laces, ribbons, silk flowers etc. adorning their frocks. In fact, I very nearly gave up on the book early on, but I am glad I carried on, since the book does cover many interesting and substantive issues. However, much of the repetition and frivolity could have been eliminated, and this would have been a better book.I am giving this 3 stars because the subject was fascinating (I kept referring in my mind to Paul Scott's Raj Quartet). If I rated it on execution, it would have a lower rating by a fair amount.3 stars

[dramman_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Wide ranging, informative and entertaining account of young ladies in search of a husband, during the time of the Raj: a veritable fishing fleet of tales.

[panopticon2_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Parties, punkahs, tiger shoots and romance aplenty in this jolly but flawed book, with its tales of British women who went out to India to bag husbands in the days of the Raj. De Courcy paints a dazzling picture of a forgotten era...and yet, I found myself wanting so much more from this study, which is in dire need of a feminist and postcolonial lens for its subject. This is the kind of book that last enjoyed broad popularity in Britain thirty years ago, and nobody these days has any business writing about the British Raj in such an uncritical and largely celebratory manner. Plenty of British women went out to India under their own steam, to work, and of those Fishing Fleet girls who married, not all ended up leading bone-idle, pointless lives. The book would have benefitted from profiling some of these women, alongside an otherwise unbroken stream of frivolous girls fresh off the boat, interested only in evening dresses and the number of invitations they received. And on the inevitable topic of racism, this book leaves a tremendous amount to be desired. The subject of these women's relationships with "the natives" is largely confined to one chapter (and the shortest one in the book, at that), in which the author alternately holds her nose and wrings her hands over the subject. I very much had the impression that she'd have avoided the topic altogether if the editors had allowed it. In short, there's some great storytelling here, but this is an old-fashioned and inadequate treatment of an otherwise fascinating subject.

[jenburge · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

The number of books I have started and not finished in my life is exactly 1. This is it.

[sylviac_43 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

[The Fishing Fleet: Husband-Hunting in the Raj] by [[Anne de Courcy]]. This was a fascinating exploration of an aspect of the British empire experience of which I had been unaware. I knew about all those ladies in their stifling finery, living lives of ridiculous luxury amidst unthinkable poverty in a brutal climate, but I had never wondered how they got there, or why they went. I had certainly never heard of them referred to collectively as the Fishing Fleet. The girls fell into two main categories: those who were returning to parents in India after being sent to England for their education; and those born in England who hadn't found a suitable match at home (probably because all the eligible men were off building the Empire) and were shipped out to stay with relatives or family friends in India. They were all looking for marriage because, well, there were no other options. And those sex-deprived Empire-building Englishmen with their stiff upper lips were all too willing to oblige.The book focuses on the period of the Raj, especially from the 1890s to World War II, because that was the period for which the author was able to get plenty of first-hand accounts, from letters, diaries, and even some personal interviews. The author does a good job of providing the historical context for the Fishing Fleet in the Raj, going back to 1671, when the East India Company paid young women to sail out to India and marry. The book has chapters on the women and the men, the voyage, physical and social conditions in India, courtship and marriage, as well as chapters spotlighting the experiences of individual women. Many aspects of the women's lives in India were explored, and they even had menstrual cycles! (It bugs me that basic inconveniences of human bodily functions are so often ignored in books.) Everything is described through the first-hand accounts, and there are dozens of photographs.My only complaint about the book was that it dragged a bit through the middle, with account after account of dances, clubs, protocol, lavish entertainments and unimaginably wealthy maharajahs. Towards the end I started to notice some repetitions. I'd recommend this to anyone interested in British India. It amazes me how they built such an exaggerated version of English society in a place completely different from their home, and managed to keep themselves so separated from the enormous native population, while at the same time relying on native labour for everything.

[opinionated_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent. From the first days of the Raj to World War II, every year boatloads of women descended on India, looking for husbands. Generally, women being in short supply, they found them. In the meantime, apart from harsh weather, they had a fabulous time going to endless balls and parties and err, shooting tiger. Luckily some kept diaries and corresponded widely. Anne de Courcy has mined this information expertly to illuminate a corner of colonial history probably not that well known - the history of the fishing fleet. And very entertaining it is; you can't help feeling that despite the perils of the voyage, the deprivations of heat and cold, the rigid formality and need for constant chaperoning, the girls enjoyed themselves immensely - certainly more than they would have done in England. Who wouldn't enjoy the attention of being one of only a few single women in the midst of fit young men in the prime of their lives? Even if from a romantic perspective a few stolen kisses were all you could hope for until engagement struck. Fascinating and often very funny. Recommended

[reader68_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Aide memoir: Excellent book. Focuses on the first half of the 20th century, but gives plenty of earlier stories. Highly recommend.

[starbox_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"In India they would be besieged by suitors...richer, with more prospects than anyone they could meet in England"By sally tarbox on 3 September 2017Format: Kindle EditionAn eminently readable account of the young unmarried women who went out to India in the days of the Raj to find a husband. Where men massively outnumbered women, this could be a much easier proposition than back home, where the reverse was true.Using memoirs of some of those women, the author takes different aspects of this world in each chapter. The journey out - seasickness, sometimes romance - then the backgrounds of some of those women: some were daughters of colonials, going home after years in a British school. Others were sent out to friends in the hope of marrying them off.Life in India could be great fun: endless parties, an exotic culture, tiger hunts, male attention, but was also far more conservative, snobbish and constrained than in Britain: "If I were asked what struck me as the chief concern of English social life in India, I should answer 'to seek Precedence and ensure it.'" noted one woman. With their own 'royalty' of the viceroy, the author observes the difference between Britain (where women and working-class men were getting into Parliament) and India, where a viceroy HAD to be a man of a certain background. Socializing with the fabulously wealthy local maharajahs took place - but these 'natives' were not permitted to join the all-White clubs. And Anglo-Indians - born of (formerly sanctioned) marriages between white men and local women, were a race apart, colonial children forbidden to mix with them.The author looks too at the hardships these women took on: primitive housing, the heat, disease, earthquakes, skirmishes - and the sad knowledge that any children born would have to be sent to Britain for education - to attend school in India meant they were regarded as 'domiciled' and of a lower social status.Although the ethos was always of putting up with things, I wondered if all the stories were so resolutely 'jolly hockey sticks' as the accounts given. Were there no wives who fled their husband and the privations? They seemed a uniformly tough lot!With b/w photos this is a very interesting read.

[anglersrest_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When the author was undertaking her research we did correspond rather briefly, but my interest regarding my ancestral links to India was out of the time frame for Anne's book.I waited rather eagerly for the book to be published. Once it hit the shelves of my local library I managed to grab the book and then quietly enjoy it.The book looks at women who migrated to India looking for a husband during the period of the mid 19th Century until 1947, when India gained it's Independence.I loved the colour of the cover which for me set the tone of the book. I enjoyed the depth of the research, which was gathered from letters and memoirs of the time and the focus of the book.There is a suitable explanation of why the women were there, and why they risked travelling the globe to find a husband, but there was little detail on how the women adapted to the change in culture and their experiences. The author further explores the processes in India at this time, the bureaucracy of India and mixed raced children and how they were viewed.Despite all that, I was a little disappointed. There is little scope given to how these women coped, not only with the country and culture, but also how they experienced married life with the men they met in India. I felt as though the author ran out of steam with the subject matter before the end of the book.I enjoyed it, but it could have been better.

[rebarelishesreading · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

From the mid-19th century until independence in 1947, women from England who were in search of a husband headed to India where English men outnumbered English women 4 to 1. Anne de Courcy introduces these women, their quest in India and, if they were successful, the life they ultimately led in The Fishing Fleet. In researching her book she was allowed access to the private letters, diaries, journals and memoirs of nearly thirty of these young women. The women of the "fleet" generally were either the daughters of families living in India who were returning after their years at school in England or "gentle women" who lacked the fortune, beauty or charm to find a "suitable" husband at home. Especially in the 19th century their options were to remain a "spinster" and find employment as a companion or governess at home or look for marriage in India.The stories of the young women are quite interesting but I enjoyed the descriptions of life in India even more so. Although I had a general idea of what life was like from reading fiction set there, Ms. deCourcy provides a closer, more detailed look. I give it 4 stars.Edit More

[dinadansfriend · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A book that is useful and entertaining. Anne de Courcy intersperses chapters on general principles with colourful chapters of personal memories. A competent study of British mating habits.

[briandrewz · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this book about British women who went to India in search of a husband. It's full of tales of adventure. From the palaces of maharajahs to the dusty avenues of the hill country, we get a fascinating glimpse into life for British women in India. Some of the descriptions (insects and reptiles) made my skin crawl. The diseases and perils these women faced could be horrific. The author uses letters and diaries, many published here for the first time, to bring her stories to life.A job well-done and an excellent read.