Abstract
Naval Families offers an intimate look at the personal and professional relationships that affected the careers of Royal Navy officers and seamen during Britain’s wars of the ‘long’ eighteenth century. This study, adapted from Ellen Gill’s doctoral thesis, delves into the networks of ‘family, friendship and patronage’ (p. 120) that determined advancement and, ultimately, success within the ranks and ratings. The source material for information about these networks comes from letters, both personal and professional, collected from a select group of subjects. The author acknowledges the limitations of basing research on correspondence which is often one-sided and favours the elites and the well-known. As a result, Gill offers a wider selection of correspondence from the quarterdeck. She focuses on the letters of two naval officers to their wives: Philip Bowes Vere Broke (of Shannon V Chesapeake fame) and Sarah Louisa (Loo) Broke; and Matthew and Ann Flinders. There is also extensive use of letters from a third family, the Knollis’ (the earls of Banbury) to their wives, however, both the seventh and eighth earls who are discussed here served as army officers before assuming the title. Gill points out the differences between the military and naval experiences, including the perception of the army as a more ‘part-time’ career that kept officers closer to home and ‘relatively safe’ (p. 100). While the personal and professional stories of the Knollis’ are worthy of the telling, their inclusion in this volume on ‘naval families’ raises more questions than it answers.
The voice of the lower deck is expressed in the letters of James Whitworth, a coxswain who was disrated to landsman aboard HMS Portia, and suffered years of mental and physical abuse at the hands of a ‘flogging’ captain. Whitworth’s story is vivid and displays the depth of familial and friendship networks that were activated to prevent a court martial being brought against him for desertion from the Portia. Such an extraordinary tale exemplifies the question at the heart of this study – to what extent do individual cases constitute a representative sample from which to draw conclusions? Gill’s refrains from any assertion that the letters selected represent a general experience. She makes best use of the evidence gathered from the correspondence but emphasizes the need to understand the subjects as individual cases from which a deeper understanding of the naval condition can be gained, not as new stereotypes.
The broader sample of quarterdeck candidates allows Gill to make more convincing arguments. In the chapter on ‘Letters, love and duty’, she offers evidence of more companionate, less patriarchal, marital relationships by the end of the eighteenth century and of the emotional strains brought on by the ‘tyranny of distance’ (p. 12). Gill argues that for most naval officers, professional advancement was motivated by a desire to support their families financially and to secure their upward mobility rather than attaining personal fame and glory in the vein of Lord Nelson (p. 5). Most men struggled to balance duty and patriotism with domestic devotion and the letters presented do much to dispel the view of naval men as ‘ruthless rogues’ incapable of marital fidelity (p. 51). The emotionality of the epistolary relationship is emphasized and shown as a means of both maintaining intimacy over long distances and as a release from the professional stoicism demanded aboard ship. The high level of paternal involvement in child-rearing matters, from midwifing and breastfeeding to education, is reflected in language that attempts to share the burden of parental responsibility.
Throughout this study the importance of family networks is given equal weight to non-kin networks, including friends and naval acquaintances, in the success (or otherwise) of a naval career. The dependence of naval men on their ‘brother-officers’ and shipmates, and of naval wives on the ‘sisterhood’ of those left behind is convincingly told through correspondence and commentary from both sides. The chapter, ‘Women of War’ successfully demonstrates the hardships facing the naval wife/mother/daughter, whether at home in Britain, or overseas on foreign station with her husband or father. The harrowing story of Elizabeth Bass is powerful and illuminates the depth of the challenges faced by naval families abroad. The discussion of personal and professional networks as they related to female agency in naval circles does, however, present certain conflicts. While ‘personal friendship’ networks are defined in the introduction as being ‘ostensibly free from patronage or official interest’ (p. 11), the ‘friendships’ between naval wives and families addressed in this later chapter are weighted with issues of patronage and professional ‘interest’. The inability to separate ‘private’ and ‘professional’ in such a complex and overlapping system of networks complicates the definitions used as framework for this study.
The discussion of the use of petitions to the Admiralty and other high-ranking naval boards and officials further emphasizes the intersection of networks – familial, naval, patronage – that crossed social and professional boundaries. Seaman James Whitworth escaped trial due to the success of petitions from his wife, family, and friends. Officers awaiting appointment or promotion and dockyard workers seeking better pay and conditions used petitions as a mechanism for engaging these interlocking networks. This chapter illustrates the difficulty of classifying ‘professional’ and ‘personal’ relationships as discrete entities and suggests that efforts at drawing a distinction only hinder an understanding of how naval/familial networks functioned.
Overall Naval Families offers valuable insight into the domestic roles of naval men and their domestic relationships as they existed within the world of the Royal Navy. The challenges of maintaining long-distance family relationships, and the ever-present influence of duty, honour, patriotism, and professional demands on the family brings humanity to the naval story, too often overshadowed by heroes and battles. By placing larger-than-life characters like Broke, Flinders, and others in the context of their families this study allows for a deeper understanding of their motivations. It also offers rare insight into their most intimate fears, joys, and struggles.
Naval Families dovetails with the body of existing scholarship by Margaret Lincoln, Elaine Chalus, and others on naval families, relationships, and the role of women in what was once understood as the male-dominated world of Nelson’s navy.