When the Uranie entered the roastead of Port Louis, Mauritius, a British frigate, the Magicienne, was already there, and for Rose de Freycinet there was a surprise in store. Not only did she meet Renira Purvis, the wife of the frigate’s captain, John Brett Purvis, but she discovered that she often accompanied her husband on his voyages and could speak of China, Ceylon and Bengal from first-hand experience. As Rose wrote to Caroline in her diary
There was an English frigate in Maurice at the same time as we were there. Her captain was a sociable fellow whom we met and saw quite often, because he was a friend of M. Smith. His wife, who is very young, travels with him, but what a difference in his mission compared to that of Louis. He sails the Indian seas to protect merchant ships against pirates, anchors where he wants and when he wants, and in all those places has a fully furnished house ashore and servants to look after him. Sometimes he goes on short cruises and when he does so he leaves his wife with friends, so as not to tire her with too much travelling. Immediately after her arrival on the Isle de France, where the frigate had come to be repaired, she gave birth to a fine little boy. She is a small, charming woman who was very well brought up; the similarities in our situations brought us together [FL686980]
It was not always this way in the British navy. In July 1801 Matthew Flinders left England in the sloop Investigator to chart the coast of Australia, carrying a passport from the French government (matching a similar document provided by Great Britain to France for the Baudin expedition) that allowed him to proceed with his work without interference from French warships. He was well suited for the task, having already published a report, Observations on the Coasts of Van Diemen’s Land, on Bass’s Strait, etc, based on the work he had done in the previous three years in command of the sloop Norfolk. However, there was, from his point of view, one flaw in the appointment to this new exploration; on 17 April 1801, he had married Ann Chappelle and planned to take her with him.
Unlike Louis de Freycinet, Flinders was insufficiently circumspect in concealing his intentions. Rumours of what he was about to do reached the Admiralty and he received a severe reprimand and strongly worded instructions to remove his wife from the vessel, or else relinquish his command. He also received a personal letter from his chief sponsor for the post, Sir Joseph Banks, who in May 1801 wrote that:
I have but time to tell you that the news of your marriage, which was published in the Lincoln paper, has reached me. The Lords of the Admiralty have heard also that Mrs. Flinders is on board the Investigator, and that you have some thought of carrying her to sea with you. This I was very sorry to hear, and if that is the case I beg to give you my advice by no means to adventure to measures so contrary to the regulations and the discipline of the Navy; for I am convinced by language I have heard, that their Lordships will, if they hear of her being in New South Wales, immediately order you to be superseded, whatever may be the consequences, and in all likelihood order Mr. Grant to finish the survey.
Ann remained in England and was separated from her husband, not for the anticipated two years but for nine, because Decaen, the governor of French Mauritius, ignored the passport when Flinders put into port there on his way home and imprisoned him on the island.
Long years of the Napoleonic wars, with ships interminably at sea, must have led to increasing reluctance on the part of experienced sea officers to endure the long separations from their wives, and some softening in attitudes at the Admiralty (where, anomalously, the taking of wives to sea by petty officers had long been tolerated), but when peace came at last, the idea was still a controversial one. The arguments are well described in Persuasion, the last book completed by Jane Austen, two of whose brothers, Francis and Charles, were naval officers, and Charles was indeed accompanied by his wife on some occasions. In the book, its hero, Captain Frederick Wentworth, having become eligible for Anne Elliot’s hand by making prizes of enough French shipping during the war to make him very rich, was informed by the new tenant at the Elliot’s ancestral home, his brother-in-law, Admiral Croft, that …
… if you had been a week later at Lisbon, last spring, Frederick, you would have been asked to give a passage to Lady Mary Grierson and her daughters.
Wentworth replied
Should I ? I am glad I was not a week later, then.’
He was then accused by the Admiral, whose wife had accompanied him on many voyages and whose opinion was therefore evident in his actions, of lack of gallantry, and defended himself by saying that although he would never willingly admit ladies on board any ship of his, except for a ball or a visit of a few hours …
… “this is from no want of gallantry towards them. It is rather from feeling how impossible it is, with all one’s efforts, and all one’s sacrifices, to make the accommodations on board, such as women ought to have. There can be no want of gallantry, admiral, in rating the claims of women to every personal comfort high—and this is what I do, . . . and no ship, under my command, shall ever convey a family of ladies any where, if I can help it.”
This brought the Admiral’s wife into the fray, quoting her own experience.
“Oh Frederick!—But I cannot believe it of you.—All idle refinement!—Women may be as comfortable on board, as in the best house in England. I believe I have lived as much on board as most women. and I know nothing superior to the accommodations of a man-of-war. I declare I have not a comfort or an indulgence about me, even at Kellynch Hall ‘ (with a kind bow to Anne), beyond what I always had in most of the ships I have lived in; and they have been five altogether.’
‘ Nothing to the purpose,’ replied her brother. ‘You were living with your husband, and were
the only woman on board.’
But you, yourself, brought Mrs. Harville, her sister, her cousin, and the three children, round from Portsmouth to Plymouth. Where was this superfine, extraordinary sort of gallantry of yours then ? ‘
All merged in my friendship, Sophia. I would assist any brother-officer’s wife that I could, and I would bring anything of Harville’s from the world’s end, if he wanted it. But do not imagine that I did not feel it an evil in itself.’
‘ Depend upon it, they were all perfectly comfortable.’
‘I might not like them the better for that, perhaps. Such a number of women and children have no right to be comfortable on board.’
‘ My dear Frederick, you are talking quite idly. Pray, what would become of us poor sailors’ wives, who often want to be conveyed to one port or another, after our husbands, if every body had your feelings?’
My feelings, you see, did not prevent me taking Mrs. Harville and all her family to Plymouth’
‘But I hate to hear you talking so, like a fine gentleman, and as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures. We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days.’
“Ah! my dear,” said the admiral, “when he has got a wife, he will sing a different tune.”.
“Now I have done!” cried Captain Wentworth “When once married people begin to attack me with ‘Oh! you will think very differently, when you are married.’ I can only say, ‘No, I shall not;’ and then they say again, ‘Yes, you will,’ and there is an end of it.”
He got up and moved away.
It is a nice distinction that Mrs Croft draws between ‘fine ladies’ and ‘rational creatures’, and the conversation as a whole is probably a fair reflection of opinions in the British navy in 1817, the year in which the Uranie sailed from Toulon and Jane was writing Persuasion. Few French captains were faced with this particular dilemma during the Napoleonic wars, because France’s ships seldom put to sea and when they did they were usually either sunk, captured or forced into a hasty retreat to port. Louis de Freycinet was one of the first French captains to embark on a long voyage to distant lands after the Bourbon restoration, and dealt with the accommodation problems anticipated by Captain Wentworth by a method that it is hard to imagine a British captain daring to use. Ignoring the instructions of the Admiral commanding the port of Toulon, who was responsible for overseeing the readying of the Uranie for her voyage, he had an additional cabin or dunnet constructed on the afterdeck, ostensibly as additional space for science, but actually as accommodation for Rose.