Chapter 2: The Fishing Fleet

Arabian Sea, February 18^th 1833

“The Fishing Fleet is a rather unkind label affixed to those females who travel out from England to seek husbands in India,” Captain Hands said, “and I am considered the Admiral of the Fishing Fleet as it was an impromptu remark I made to my brother that initiated the practice.”

Captain Robin Hands and I were seated in his cabin aboard Hermes. We were two days out from Aden, heading due east with all sail set.

His cabin would have made any Royal Navy captain green with envy, for only an admiral would occupy such well-appointed and spacious quarters aboard one of His Majesty’s ships. It appeared that masters of vessels owned, or leased, by the Honourable East India Company were held in as high esteem as an Admiral in the Royal Navy. The cabin took up the width of the Hermes’s stern, and contained a large, ornately carved oak desk with a matching, leather cushioned, chair, both items securely shackled to the deck, as was a rectangular mahogany table, large enough to seat eight persons but at the moment had a number of charts spread on it. I noted a curtained alcove, which I took to be the captain’s sleeping berth. There were surprising touches of a woman’s hand in the décor of the cabin, such as tastefully arranged cushions, with a definite scent of attar of roses on the drapery concealing the captain’s bed.

Hands was a large, imposing, man of some sixty years of age, his weather-beaten complexion testifying he had spent most of those years at sea. In fact he had first visited India when a ten year- old cabin boy.

“In them days,” Captain Hands was not from gentry, as the manner of his speech soon informed one. “It were normal for John Company employees to have a local girl, or girls, sharing their bed and teaching them the native lingo, besides other things of course. The Company thought it good for business if their military officers and administrators could converse with the natives in the local language, and have some knowledge of native customs, however outlandish they appeared to English ears and eyes.” He poured a measure of rum from a carafe into two bumpers, and then pushed one of the glasses across the desk to me.

“The sun is over the yardarm, Sir Elijah. Time for the morning tot.”

Drinking rum at midday, or any other time of day, was not something I enjoy. I have no head for rum, and even the smell turns my stomach. Nevertheless, I gave a sickly smile and thanked him.

“And is cohabitation with native females still condoned nowadays, Captain?” I was part interested and part delaying the moment when I would have to take a drink from my glass.

He shook his head, a truculent expression on his face. “No, them damned missionaries have seen to that. Some fifteen years ago they finally convinced the directors of the East India Company that plugging native women without the benefit of a Christian marriage –specifically, a Church of England marriage – was a sin. The directors brought in a rule that unmarried employees of the HEIC would not be considered for promotion to the rank of Captain and above in the military or Principal Writer and above in the civil branch of the Company. A few native girls converted from their family religion but the majority did not. There was a dearth of European females of marriageable age in India then, and still is, so men who wished for promotion had little option but to return to England to seek a bride, an expensive and lengthy business.” He swallowed his drink and refilled his glass. I saw him glance at my still full glass, and once again I asked him a question to stave off the time when I would have to bite the billet, in a manner of speaking.

“And how is it that you can be considered the Admiral of the Fishing Fleet?”

He gave a basso profundo chuckle. “Serendipity, Sir Elijah, and pure chance. My brother is the proprietor of a domestic employment agency that specialises in finding employment for females from genteel families, genteel but impoverished families. Girls who have been ‘left on the shelf’ for one reason or another, usually because they had no dowry to bring to a marriage, and now have to support themselves. He finds them employment as governesses, or the companions of elderly, and usually cantankerous, ladies. I was visiting him at his office in Cheapside one afternoon when a young woman, not in the first flush of youth but agreeable enough to look at, came into his office seeking employment. She had spent the best years of her life looking after her aged parents, who had shuffled off the mortal coil a few weeks previous, leaving her with nothing other than memories of happier times. Israel arranged an interview for her with a family seeking a governess, and she left with a smile on her face.”