The Fishing Fleet: Husband-Hunting in the Raj

During the time of the British Raj, the Fishing Fleet consisted of the young eligible women of Britain undertaking long journeys by ship to India to attempt to hook a husband. In Britain itself, there were such shortages of ‘quality' husband material that for many this was their best way to progress in life, as Britain's best and brightest were in British India (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Burma (Myanmar)) - in either the ICS (India Civil Service), in the army, in trade or commerce, or other roles.

This book covers just about everything you could ever want to know about this topic over this period (with plenty of examples). With a clear and concise introduction, which summaries the entire book well, and then chapters on each aspect of the topic, there really is nothing missing!

Chapter titles deliver what is promised, with titles such as: The Voyage Out, The Women Who Went out, The Men They Met, Arrivals, The Climate, The Social Whirl, etc being self explanatory. Some of the others which were perhaps the most interesting to me:

Maharajahs (subtitled “It would be a pleasure to be in his harem, I thought” - which shared the diary thoughts of some of the young women who were to accompany others to parties and festivities at a Maharajahs palace - the opulence of the reception rooms, the extravagances of the maharajah's jewels, the elaborate hunting process etc.

Viceregal Entertainments (subtitled “There are so many Ladies”) - a little like the Maharajah chapter - the glory and extravagances the Viceroy enjoyed - and by extension his daughters.

The Hills which discusses the hill stations, where the government officials took refuge from the heat of the plains over summer (subtitled “Where every jack has someone else's Jill) alluding to the loosening of morals and what had been got up to when a man was down country working and his wife was at the hill station.

Up Country (subtitled: “Just lift up your skirt's and you'll be all right” which despite how it could sound, was about those wives who accompanied their husbands to the much more remote postings - the forestry wardens, the plantation managers, or near the borders with Afghanistan.

Drawing heavily from the diaries, letters and memoirs of the men and women of the time (often unpublished, of course) the whole book is formed around multiple examples of the thoughts and actions of the time. Each chapter may contain 20 of more quotations or narrative explanations of the situation of one person. Probably because each chapter gives so many examples, it perhaps becomes repetitive at times. For me the excessive descriptions of what the girls were wearing every time they featured became tiresome quickly (although I can understand for other readers this may be the highlight). I can't say I didn't enjoy the odd namedrop which I recognised (mostly authors), and the quotations from books i have read (Kipling mostly).

But perhaps best of all, it is such a quotable book - some really good ones, of which I found only a few for this review:

For the fishing fleet, and ICS man was considered the creme de la creme - once he was eligible. ‘Mamas angled for us for their daughters,' wrote John Beames. ‘The civil service was, in those days [1858] an aristocracy in India, and we were the jeunesse doree thereof.' Or as Jim Acheson put it in 1913, ‘The young ICS men were generally supposed to be the chief quarry - the turbot and halibut of the matrimonial nets.'

It was not a particularly beautiful town: Sir Edward Lutyens, the architect of New Delhi, once said that if Simla was built by monkeys, one would have said: “What clever monkeys! They must be shot in case they do it again.”

The summer was the season when frogs croaked, cicadas sawed away relentlessly and jackals howled... It was the time of year when rabies was most prevalent. For human too the hot weather was intensely debilitating: boils, eczema, infections ad fevers were common. Prickly heat was almost impossible to avoid and although not health-destroying could be appalling unpleasant and painful. “Sitting on thorns would be agreeable by comparison”, wrote one lieutenant, “the infliction in that case being local; now, not a square inch of your body but is tingling and smarting with shooting pains.