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unpublished memoirs, letters and diaries rescued from attics -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.
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