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Book review
Jane Austen and the Navy
By Brian Southam
Hambledon & London, London, 2000
Reviewed by David Byrne
Brian Southam's work is an attempt to tie in the content of certain of Jane Austen's
novels with the careers of two of her brothers who served with the Royal Navy. The work is
adequately indexed and includes a full bibliography, which gives the reader sources for
further inquiry. The illustrations are appropriate and reflect careful selection. The
appendices are informative and relevant.
Someone once said ‘Not a sparrow falls that its fall has not been noted by God and
Marcel Proust.’ Similarly it can be said that in the lives of the Austens no item is
too insignificant not to have been recorded by Brian Southam. Unfortunately this, combined
with wandering chronology and a predilection for long sentences, tends to make the book
hard going. Southam unwittingly gives advance warning of this in the preface where one
finds a sentence containing 147 words! This is an exception, but many sentences contain
over forty words.
The scholarship of the author is shown in the depth of research he has undertaken to
produce facts about the Austens that may surprise members of the Jane Austen Society of
Australia. For example your reviewer was unaware that Jane's brother Francis was a tyrant
as a ship's captain and was reprimanded by both his Commander-in-Chief and the Admiralty,
and the number of floggings on board his ship fell, yet in the eleven months from 5 April
1813 to 7 March, 1814, 25% of his crew were flogged - three times the average for the
Service. Charles, on the other hand, was more lenient and only 23 men were flogged in a
year – 9% of the crew. This was still slightly above the average. There is an
inference that Francis Austen's attitude to punishment of seamen is influenced by his
rigid evangelical strictness. Could it be that his harsh punishment of the sailors under
his command and the weak excuses he gave for such treatment were the cause of his being
thirty years without a sea-going appointment - 'laid up upon the shelf’? When in 1844
Francis finally received an appointment it was as Vice-Admiral American Station where he
did not have direct command of sailors.
The author includes letters from the Rev. Austen to his sons that indicate the family
(at least the male side) was rather sanctimonious. Were they a reflection of their age?
As ships in which Charles and Francis were serving were neither at Spithead nor at the
Nore, the Great Mutinies of 1797 are not mentioned other than on page 281 ‘Lord Howe
when he was investigating the naval minutes (sic) of 1797…’ This precedes a
grievance from seamen regarding punishments.
In some respects the book gives the impression that it largely consists of several
papers cobbled together. The better chapters stand on their own, for example the two
dealing with Mansfield Park and Persuasion which are well worth reading. On
page 241 the author states that ‘Emma falls outside the compass of this
book’; nevertheless the next fifteen pages deal with Emma.
The chapter on Patronage and Interest gives a good overview of a system that generally
worked well. No doubt there were some sea officers promoted beyond their abilities and
other more competent people did not rise in the Service due to lack of patronage. Despite
these failings in the system, results, possibly due to the demands of war, sea, and ships,
were better than those in the military where, with some exceptions, commissions were
obtained by purchase.
A typical example of the author's thorough research is the chapter devoted to Prize
Money, Honours, and Promotions. Surprisingly, despite his research, the author appears to
be unaware that at the time the term Naval Officer referred to a shore based officer,
dealing with dockyards, stores, or supply generally; sea going officers were known as Sea
Officers. He states that there was an ‘... influx of naval officers...’ into
civilian life following the Peace of Amiens 1802. A similar minor error is made in
referring to commissioned officers; at the time the term was Commission officers, which
the author later explains as being officers appointed for a ship's commission.
There is a deal of speculation in the book ‘... the Austens may have paid a visit
to...’ p.31 and ‘...we can suppose that Jane Austen followed every twist and
turn of these events...’ p. 86. Also an apocryphal story is told about Jane Austen
being in Switzerland with her family after the 1802 Peace, yet ends that at the time
‘... we know for sure that they were in England.’
There are many references to Jane Austen's letters of which only 162 exist, but
regrettably some comments and quotations lack relevance to the book's subject. Also the
flow is disjointed: for instance reference is made to Popham's court-martial on pages
135-6, but the continuation does not appear until page l44. Comment on Popham, which is
related to a satirical poem Jane wrote, could have been handled in a few lines. The author
appears to support the view held by V. S. Prichett that Jane Austen was a war novelist
(see George Meredith and Comedy) on the grounds that Jane was acquainted
with naval matters in Persuasion and Mansfield Park. The wars are not the
subject of her works, nor are they accorded more than passing mention: accordingly one
cannot support the view that Jane Austen was a war novelist. Winston Churchill's opinion
of her writing is more valid ‘...no worries about the French Revolution, or the
crushing struggle of the Napoleonic wars. Only manners controlling natural passion so far
as they could, together with cultured explanations of any mischances…’ (p. 10)
Although interesting in parts, overall Brian Southam disappoints.
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