Cassandra Esten Austen: Naval Child during the Napoleonic Wars

A girl born to a genteel Georgian family in England would likely be raised in a comfortable home, supported by parents and servants, and provided with all that she needed. Her predictable upbringing would include the security of a familiar, local community in which she could find appropriate playmates and would receive the respect due to her father.[1] Cassandra (Cassy) Esten Austen’s childhood was different. On account of her father’s career in the British navy during the Napoleonic Wars, Cassy moved between the North American port towns of St George’s, Bermuda and Halifax, Nova Scotia, travelling back and forth by sailing ship, despite the hazards of attack by enemy vessels or shipwreck by ocean storms. In 1811, she made the dangerous voyage across the Atlantic and then lived on a working naval vessel, stationed off the cost of England. Here is her story.

Cassy, the first child of Fanny and Charles Austen, was born in St George’s, Bermuda on 22 December 1808. She was first described in a letter that her ecstatic father wrote to his sister, Cassandra Austen, in England soon after her birth. He reported: “The Baby besides being the finest that ever was seen is really a good looking healthy young Lady of very large dimensions and as fat as butter.”[2] At the time, Charles was a naval lieutenant in command of a sloop of war, HMS Indian (18 guns) in service on the North American Station. He had met and married Fanny Palmer in Bermuda, where her father had been the expatriate Attorney General.

 From a very young age Cassy experienced the peripatetic nature of naval life. In the autumn of 1809, the Indian needed extensive repairs at the Halifax Naval Yard. Charles’s family accompanied him on the voyage from Bermuda to deliver the vessel for this purpose. Cassy’s presence in Halifax and her connection to the navy became a matter of public record when she was baptised at St Paul’s Anglican church, Halifax, on 6 October 1809. The service was performed by the naval chaplain, Rev. Robert Stanser, and two of her sponsors,[3] Captain Edward Hawker of HMS Melampus and Esther Esten, one of Cassy’s aunts, were able to attend. The record of her baptism specifies her father’s rank, citing him as “Capt. Charles John Austen Royal Navy.”

Fig. 1: St Paul’s Church, Halifax, Nova Scotia[4]

Fig.2: Entry of Cassy Austen’s Baptism (on the bottom line) in the Church Records  

That autumn was also notable for the family’s horrific voyage in the Indian whilst returning to Bermuda from Halifax after the vessel’s repairs were completed. It was late November and winter on the North Atlantic. Just out of Halifax, the Indian was caught in a fearful storm of “strong gales, sleet and snow.” The logbook recorded “the gales increased” and “the ship was labouring and shipping heavy seas.”[5] These matter-of-fact remarks belie the ferocious nature of the storm and the awful risk of sinking. The Indian, after the harrowing journey, limped into Bermuda after fifteen days at sea, twice the usual time. Cassy must have been terrified by this experience. She would make other sea voyages between Halifax and Bermuda before she was three years old, and she would face the rigours of a transatlantic crossing in mid 1811. In addition to the hazards of sea voyages, Cassy was not a happy traveller. During an eight day passage from Bermuda to Halifax in 1810, her mother regretfully recorded that “poor little Cass was very sick.”[6]

Fig 3: HMS Cleopatra in a Storm[7]

Cassy lived in Halifax again in 1810 when her father began service on HMS Swiftsure (50 guns) as flag captain for Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren. On arrival from Bermuda, Cassy was housed on shore with her parents in the Admiral’s residence situated at the north end of the busy Halifax Naval Yard. By then her personality traits were becoming apparent: she gave evidence of vigour and independence. Fanny described her 17-month-old daughter as “so riotous and unmanageable, that I can do nothing with her.”[8] Ever practical, Fanny decided to dress her child in “short frocks and pantaloons for she is such a romp.”[9]

For four warm summer months Cassy enjoyed her new situation in Halifax. Popular with her host, Lady Warren, who was apparently “very fond of … little Cassy,”[10] the child had, in addition to the attentions of her mother, the services of a maid, Molly. Cassy’s company had an added importance for Fanny during the ten weeks Charles was away on a mission, delivering troops to a war zone off the coast of Portugal. When there was no word of the Swiftsure’s progress, Fanny became increasingly anxious. Cassy provided a distraction, a ready subject for affection and care, and her cheerful presence helped Fanny get through a worrying period of separation from Charles.  

Cassy’s place in her father’s naval world was dependent on the ship into which he was commissioned and the station on which he was serving. Her first naval associations had been with the North American Station, but by mid 1811 the family was in England. Shortly after arrival, Charles unexpectedly lost the command of the frigate, HMS Cleopatra (32 guns) and, as a result, he and his family were cast on shore on half pay.

Fortuitously, about this time his former commander and family friend, Admiral Sir Thomas Williams,[11] was appointed Commander in Chief at the Nore. He asked Charles to be his flag captain. For Cassy this meant another big change in her lifestyle. She was to live on board HMS Namur (74 guns), a working naval vessel riding at anchor 3 miles north-east from Sheerness, Kent.[12] Cassy, together with her sister, Harriet Jane, born in February 1810, found themselves in a new home with unusual features.

The family’s living space was the captain’s quarters which occupied the width of the ship in the stern on the quarterdeck and under the poop deck. The spacious captain’s cabin was a very pleasant room, with its extensive view of the anchorage and the ships passing by. However, it was also a place of business for Charles so the children did not have unlimited access. Fortunately, there were other spaces to inhabit. A sleeping cabin next to the captain’s cabin may have been used by all the family so that Cassy and Harriet would have the comfort of being close to their parents overnight. The dining room, situated across from the sleeping cabin, was sometimes the site of family meals. The rest of the quarters would have had multiple uses, such as storage for books and family possessions, space for makeshift accommodation for the occasional visitor, and a useful place for spinning tops and playing children’s games. An armed marine stood on guard continuously at the entrance to the captain’s quarters, another unique feature of living on board as part of his family.  

Cassy was confined to the family quarters while aboard the Namur, but access to the exposed poop deck above made pleasurable perambulations possible. Not only was this a healthy undertaking in the bracing sea air, but the poop deck afforded a panoramic view of the ship at work. Men could be seen working aloft on the sails and masts or scrubbing the deck. Others took receipt of shipments of provisions delivered by a barge sent from the Sheerness Dock Yard. Periodically red-coated marines could be seen drilling on the upper deck, or men “pressed” into naval service were visible as they were received on board before assignment to a particular ship. Cassy might also listen to her father being piped aboard after a meeting on shore with Admiral Williams. In the background she heard the cries of swooping gulls and the sound of the channel buoys over the perpetual creaking of the ship and the whistle of the wind in the riggings.

Sometimes Cassy left the Namur for visits to her Austen and Palmer relatives on land in Hampshire, Kent, and London. On these occasions, she disembarked in a bosun’s chair - a plank seat with canvas surrounds slung by ropes and pulleys from the ship. Secure in a parent’s arms, then swung over the side of the Namur, she was lowered into the ship’s tender, which would take her ashore, - surely a heady adventure for a naval child.  

Cassy was devoted to her parents and her sisters, Harriet and little Fan, born in December 1812, and was happiest when with them, but it became increasingly clear that the benefits of family life on the Namur were outweighed by her sufferings when the ship’s motion in rough seas triggered severe and prolonged bouts of sea sickness.[13] Adding to this problem were the discomforts of exposure to frigid weather at sea in winter. So Cassy’s parents decided that she should periodically leave the family circle and stay on land with her aunts, Jane and Casandra at Chawton Cottage and Harriet in London. The aunts welcomed her, though it meant more changes in her home life.   

Cassy’s story reveals one child’s experiences growing up in a naval community. Some circumstances of her family life were favourable to her well being and development, others were less productive of comfort and pleasure. Cassy was able to grow up in a stable and caring family because her parents determined to keep all its members together as far as possible. Rather than leave her in Bermuda on the two occasions when Charles’s career required him to stay in Halifax, Cassy and her mother came along as well. Once in England in 1811, instead of Fanny and the children living on shore, as many naval families did, the Charles Austens chose to establish an “aquatic abode,” as Cassandra Austen called it, on the Namur. Thus, Cassy was spared separation from her parents during most of her early formative years. Additionally, Cassy mixed with a variety of naval folk, including the officers under her father’s command, as well as the Admirals he served under - John Warren and Thomas Williams - together with their wives. She was introduced at a very young age to adult company and social life. Cassy was also exposed to a variety of climates, landscapes, towns and cities in North America and England, and she must have begun to observe the diversity of nature and human life. She was gaining views of the wider world.

Other aspects of Cassy’s naval lifestyle were difficult. She was plagued with sea sickness. Not only did her parents grieve to see her so discomforted but they were concerned that her early education would suffer. Additionally, she lacked the advantage of a steady land-based home in a familiar neighbourhood. To a sense of instability may be added loneliness. Once on the Namur Cassy may have found the captain’s quarter too confining. There was no scope for running about outside; the lack of other children, apart from her younger sisters, conceivably added to a feeling of isolation. Such was Cassy Austen’s early childhood, far removed from the predictable norms for a girl of her station in Georgian life, yet revealing of a naval family’s existence during the Napoleonic Wars as experienced from a child’s point of view.

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[1] Cassy’s first cousin, Caroline Austen (1805-1880), daughter of her uncle, James Austen, had a similar lifestyle.

[2] Charles Austen to his sister, Cassandra, 25 December 1808. See Sheila Johnson Kindred, Jane Austen’s Transatlantic Sister (hereafter JATS), MQUP, 2017, 2018, 216.

[3] The other sponsor was her aunt, Cassandra Austen, in England.

[4] Attributed to Amelia Almon Ritchie and thought to be a copy of a watercolour of the same scene by Halifax artist, William Eagar (1796-1839), who taught Amelia Ritchie drawing.

[5] The Indian’s Logbook, 29 November 1809, ADM 51/1991.

[6] Fanny Austen to her sister Esther, 1 June 1810. See JATS, 52.

[7] Cassy crossed the Atlantic in HMS Cleopatra in 1811. This image depicts the ship’s struggles in a severe storm in 1814 when Charles was no longer her captain.

[8] Fanny to Esther, 1 June 1810, See JATS, 52.

[9] Fanny to Esther, 23 September 1810. See JATS, 68.

[10] Fanny to Esther, 1 June 1810. See JATS, 53.

[11] Charles had served under Thomas Williams on HMS Unicorn (32 guns) and HMS Endymion (44 guns).

[12] The Namur had had an illustrious career in the sea service. She had seen action in numerous battles: Louisburg (1758), Lagos (1759), Havana (1762), and Ortegal (1805). Now she was the guard ship at the Nore and a receiving ship for sailors waiting to be deployed to naval vessels fitting out in the Thames and Medway rivers.

[13] As Jane explained to Cassandra, Fanny and Charles “do not consider the Namur as disagreeing with [Cassy] in general - only when the Weather is so rough as to make her sick.” Jane to Cassandra, Letter # 94, 26 October 1813.