Fanny Palmer Austen: Challenges and Achievements in Making a Family Home Onboard HMS Namur

This month I helped the Chatham Historic Dockyard, Chatham, Kent, England celebrate their new exhibition, Hidden Heroines: The untold stories of women of the Dockyard. Here is the text from my talk on June 23 which was followed by a live Q&A.   For the video of this event, visit the Chatham Historic Dockyard website.

Fig. 1: Fanny Palmer Austen[1]

Fanny Palmer Austen was a young woman who had a unique connection to the Chatham Dockyard. She was never a flag maker in the Sail and Colour Loft or employed in Spinning Rooms as other 19th century women in this exhibition were. Fanny counts as one of the hidden heroines because of her life on HMS Namur.

The Namur was known as one of the most famous ships built at the Chatham Dockyard. When her husband, Captain Charles Austen, was in command from late 1811-1814, the capable Fanny undertook the unusual task of making a family home for him and their young daughters on board. Her candid and articulate letters written to family members reveal her opinions and sentiments about the challenges she faced. She tells us what it was like to be a naval wife and mother living at sea during the later years of the Napoleonic Wars. In fact, she provides a strikingly realistic picture of naval family life on board as seen from a woman’s perspective. Let me take you on board to discover how Fanny coped with this exceptional situation.

When Charles was commissioned into the Namur, Fanny must have wondered about the size of the ship and the vessel’s current naval duties. Launched at Chatham in 1756, the Namur saw action in nine sea battles.  Originally a three-decker ship of 90 guns, in 1804 she was reduced to a two decker with 74 guns. The Namur rode at anchor at the Great Nore, an area located offshore three miles northeast from Sheerness, Kent. She was in use as a receiving ship for sailors - both volunteers and pressed men - waiting to be assigned to warships needing crews. She also acted as a guard ship, the first line of defence against any enemy vessels that might attempt an attack on the Sheerness and Chatham Dockyards or an advance upon London further up the Thames. So, there was an element of risk where Fanny was to be located.

Fig. 2: HMS Namur as a ship of 90 guns. She is the largest vessel in the harbour.[2]

Once aboard, household management at sea tested Fanny’s ingenuity and patience. An initial priority was reconfiguring the captain’s quarters in the stern of the ship to best suit her family’s needs and comforts. She no doubt liked the look of the captain’s day cabin, with its large glass windows that provided a panoramic view of the Nore anchorage, and the opportunity for access to an exterior gallery. However, this room was sometimes used for Charles’s official business, so the adjacent areas became the family’s private preserve. Most likely there were existing walls which marked out a state room or sleeping cabin on one side and another cabin on the other. Fanny could complete the division of the remaining area assigned to the captain, by directing the placement of movable wooden panels. Fortunately, the family quarters enjoyed some measure of quiet and seclusion. They were only accessible from the quarter deck, which was the exclusive domain of the officers. An armed marine stood on guard at the entrance to the captain’s quarters, another unique feature of living on board.

So, what did Fanny think about what she had accomplished? I would like to read you some passages from Fanny’s letters, so you can hear her voice. Initially she was enthusiastic about the adaptations to make a family living space. She wrote to her brother-in-law, James Esten, in Bermuda. Mama & Palmer [her nephew] have been staying with us, … & we mean to keep them as long as the Holidays will permit: they are very much pleased with our habitation, which, now that we have got things to rights, we find extremely comfortable (21 January 1812). During a visit by her father several months later, Fanny noted: Papa is very much pleased with our accomodations & enjoys sleeping in a Cot extremely (5 March 1812).This was quite a feat for Fanny’s aging father, given that he was sleeping in a small canvas bed, only three feet wide, which swung suspended from the ceiling. Other members of the Austen family expressed an opinion. Charles’s sister, Cassandra Austen, observed to a cousin that [Fanny] and [their] children are actually living with [Charles] on board. We had doubted whether such a scheme would prove practicable during the winter, but they have found their residence very tolerably comfortable & it is so much the cheapest home she could have that they are very right to put up with little inconveniences.[3] Three months later, Cassandra visited the Namur to see for herself what she called Fanny and Charles’s aquatic abode.

Fanny was initially pleased she had got things to rights with our habitation, that she had created an establishment where they could live and sleep in relative comfort. Unfortunately, problems arose which interfered with the smooth running of her household. Fanny required at least one female servant to help with childcare, to perform basic domestic tasks and, by times, to serve as her lady’s maid. Yet, competent servants willing to live and work at sea proved difficult to find and even harder to retain. As Fanny wrote: I am much teased in my domestic concerns …  and am at this moment without a Nurse. Though I [had] a very nice woman in that capacity, …some lady has most unhandsomely enticed her away from me, by holding out advantages which I could not (30 June 1814.)  As a result of her servant problems, Fanny took on more domestic tasks herself than would ordinarily be expected of a gentlewoman.

It did not help that the weather was changeable and sometimes exceptionally rough. Seasickness was a problem for which Fanny had no easy remedy. Her eldest girl, Cassy, was particularly vulnerable and Fanny hated to see her grow thin and look poorly. Nor did Fanny want her children to suffer on board in frigid weather when a damp chill penetrated and persisted. From 1813 onward Fanny regularly sent a daughter to spend time on shore with her aunts: Jane, the acclaimed novelist, and Cassandra Austen at Chawton Cottage in Hampshire or to Fanny’s sister, Harriet Palmer, in London. This distressed her. She missed her daughters terribly in their absence. Such arrangements made it impossible to maintain the family intimacy which Fanny so greatly valued.

Furthermore, her efforts to create a pleasing and peaceful atmosphere within their home space were sometimes frustrated by the darker side of naval life. She was living in a world where misdemeanors were punished swiftly and brutally. The Royal Navy required that instances of mutinous language and conduct, disobedience of orders, theft, inter-personal violence, drunkenness or riotous behaviour must be punished by public flogging. During Fanny’s tenure on board there were five occasions of the cruellest sort of punishment, known as flogging around the fleet. Presumably, Charles was able to warn Fanny in advance when a flogging was about to occur. Perhaps he even arranged for her to be on shore in nearby Sheerness. Yet inevitably there must have been times when there was no ready escape from the distressed cries of the punished. We do not know how Fanny managed to cope with the cruelty of flogging, with the sound of suffering, with the ominous pulsating of the drums which accompanied the lashings, all terribly disturbing noises for her and her children.

Other features of Fanny’s situation came to bother her over time. She was lonely in her isolation from genteel female company. She felt confined by the limited area of the ship where she could move freely, this being parts of the quarter deck and the poop deck above.

It may sound as if Fanny was having a terribly difficult time on board, but in between the situations which tried her patience and triggered her disappointment, were happier, more satisfying occasions. She helped to create an atmosphere of supportive friendliness for midshipmen, the young trainee officers under Charles’s tutelage.  As these young men received some of their instruction in the captain’s cabin, they must have also benefited from Fanny’s feminine attention. They in turn gave her a sense of community within the navy of the quarterdeck.

Fanny also appreciated Charles’s initiatives to bring civilizing influences to rough and rigorous shipboard life. There was a band of musicians on board, although Fanny’s father, while visiting the Namur, remarked on the indifferent talent of the clarinet player. Nonetheless, it was cheering to have a source of music, even if it fell far short of professional standards. Charles encouraged his sailors to present theatrical entertainments for the edification of the officers and men. This pleased Fanny, although on one occasion she notes: we were all disappointed for the Theatre was not finished, & consequently, they were obliged to postpone acting until next Monday (22November 1813). 

Best of all was the joy of the uninterrupted togetherness of her family.  Fanny and the little girls had the pleasure of Charles’s regular company. He was at hand to help with the children’s education, to play with them at bedtime, and to celebrate the milestones of their development, such as when the baby of the family, little Fan, born early December 1812, showed great determination to walk on her own. Fanny and Charles could also share in their children’s newfound pleasures, such as Cassy’s delight when she mastered the technique of leaving the ship by the bosun’s chair, which swung her out from the Namur’s main deck and swooped her down to a waiting tender that would take her to shore.

So why is Fanny to be seen as a heroine? She was brave to take on the project of creating a home for her beloved family on a working naval ship during wartime. She was courageous to take the chance of living with small children on a coastal guard ship, exposed to the possibility of attack from the enemy’s navy across the North Sea. Fanny was also heroic in the way she carried out her life distinct from the expected behaviour of naval wives, who made homes on land, where shops, services and supplies were readily accessible, where social routines were predictable and comforts dependably available.    

Finally, Fanny had the courage to commit to a lifestyle of immediate support for Charles, to be his affectionate companion and to encourage him during the hazards and uncertainties of his naval career, regardless of the risks to herself. She was his heroine, as well as ours.[4]

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[1] Fanny’s portrait was painted by British artist, Robert Field, in Halifax in 1810. Private collection.

[2] “Town and Harbour of Halifax as they appear from the opposite shore called Dartmouth,” by Dominic Serres, 1762. Art Gallery of Nova Scotia.

[3] Cassandra Austen to Mrs George Whitaker (Phylly Walter), quoted in Austen Papers 1704-1856, ed. Austen-Leigh, (1942), 249.