What is the connection between Captain Wentworth and Francis Austen? How did Naval prize money work? Learn the answers to these questions and more in this episode of My Cousin Jane.
Hey everybody, welcome back to My Cousin Jane. Today we’re going to be talking about some of the bonus features and interesting facts about what’s going on in Persuasion Chapter 4.
We talked about last time how Jane Austen had strong familiarity with the Navy because of her brothers. Two of her brothers were naval officers, one of them, Francis, going quite far through the naval ranks, and we’ll talk about that here in a minute.
Naval Ranks
When chapter four opens, one of the first things we hear about is Captain Wentworth, and he is the big love interest of Persuasion, plays a big role in the novel. What’s interesting about him is his backstory. In chapter four, we find out that he was made commander as a consequence of the Battle of San Domingo, or St. Domingo.
Naval rank goes like this during that time period. You had captains, and there were two types of captains. If someone was in charge of a ship, you would always refer to them as captain, even though their rank might be something else. Technically, any officer could be in charge of the ship. If the real captain was killed and the commander was killed, the lieutenant could be the captain.
We had all the lower ranking folks. We had the midshipmen, and then we had lieutenants, and your rank as a lieutenant depended on how many lieutenants were on the ship. There was the first lieutenant, second lieutenant, etc. Then you would have a commander and the captain.
The Battle of San Domingo
At the beginning of chapter four, we have Captain Wentworth, who at the time had just been made a commander as a consequence of the Battle of San Domingo. This was another big battle that happened in the Napoleonic Wars, not nearly as important as the Battle of Trafalgar, but still a pretty important battle. Once again, we have the British fleet uncontested. They lose no ships. French Navy loses a bunch of ships in this battle. As a consequence of this, we have Captain Wentworth reaching the rank of commander. We’ll talk more about naval ranks here in a minute.
What’s interesting about Captain Wentworth, or Commander Wentworth at the time, is the fact that he receives his big promotion to become commander during this battle, the Battle of San Domingo. It’s the same battle where Jane Austen’s brother, Francis, who becomes a highly decorated naval officer, also received a great promotion. There’s a lot of parallelism between her real-life brother, Francis, and Captain Wentworth in this novel.
So much so that some people think that Captain Wentworth is a little bit of wish fulfillment for her brother, because her brother did not receive as much money in the Navy as Jane had hoped. She makes sure that at some point in the novel, we learn that Captain Wentworth probably received at least 20,000 pounds in prize money. We’ll talk about prize money in a little bit.
Francis does go on to eventually rise through the ranks and becomes rear admiral, vice admiral, full admiral. Then he goes on to eventually retire as Admiral of the Fleet. Admiral of the Fleet at the time was an honorary position for high-ranking admiralty, for them to retire with the highest honor the Royal Navy could give you. You would usually see several Admirals of the Fleet at a given time period. This was a way to honor them for their service.
Interest and Promotion
The other interesting thing is how naval officers would go from the midshipman ranks to becoming an officer. This was a key point in chapter four, because we learn that Frederick Wentworth, when he comes on shore right after the Battle of San Domingo, is a commander. There’s a lot of concern by Anne’s friends that, as he proposes to her, they’re like, look, he’s not very wealthy. He doesn’t have a lot of prospects for achieving higher ranks.
That was because your ability to go from midshipman to higher rank depended a lot on your interest, or how many friends in the aristocracy you had. Because the aristocracy had a huge influence over the Royal Navy. If you were going to advance, it helped if you had friends in high places, so to speak.
To go from midshipman to become lieutenant, which was the first officer’s rank—not first officer, but the first rank in the officer corps, so to speak—you had to take a test. It was hard to study for this test, because it was given by three captains, and it depended on the proclivities of the people who were administering the tests, like what they would ask you about. They would ask you different naval tactics and navigation and things like that. The specific questions weren’t set. It could be anything that they felt like asking you.
Once you passed the test, you had the ability to then be promoted, but it depended on whether you had friends or not. Then your promotion from there was a mixture between interest and seniority and how well you carried yourself during battles, your performance, and things like that.
Once you became captain, at that point, everything was just based on seniority. If you became vice admiral or rear admiral or admiral, it all depended on when the people above you retired or died.
Prize Money
The big thing, and Sir Walter mentions this in the last chapter, about how the Navy takes men of obscure birth and helps them to rise in rank: that was largely because of the amount of money they could receive in being in the Navy.
You earned a salary based on your rank. On top of that salary, if they captured or destroyed an enemy ship, or captured enemy soldiers in battle, they could earn prize money. The amount of prize money they earned changed quite a bit over the years. It depended on what laws were in effect at the time, as well as what type of ship it was. Was it part of an enemy fleet that we were at war with, or was it a privateering ship, or was it a ship that was trying to illegally run slaves after the British abolished the slave trade in 1807? The amount of money you would get would depend on the type of ship, how many people it had on it, whether you captured or destroyed it, how many guns it had, all of these different things.
The prize money was distributed then based on rank. The way it worked is, imagine that you’re on a ship, you’re the captain, and you have been sent out on orders by the admiral. You capture an enemy ship. It’s worth a thousand pounds of prize money. You as the captain would get two eighths of that, and then another eighth would go to the admiral, another eighth was divided amongst the lower ranking officers, another eighth was divided amongst another group, etc., etc.
Even all the way down to the rest of the crew, all of the crew would get part of this prize money, and it would be divided into parts and shares depending on rank and length of service, etc. You could earn altogether quite a bit of money, depending on your rank and how many ships you were capturing. If you were a pretty brave captain, and you had good tactics and a fair amount of luck, you can make a pretty sizable fortune.
We’re told again in the novel that Wentworth made at least around 20,000 pounds. This is interesting because, again, we talked about this last time, but in the book Jane Austen and the Navy, Brian Southam points out that this is in some ways wish fulfillment. Because Jane’s brother, also at the Battle of San Domingo, Francis, she felt like he did not earn as much prize money as he was entitled to. This is her way of making things right, so to speak, by making Captain Wentworth get all this prize money and become rich and get all the ranks and advancement that he deserves.
What’s interesting about this idea of prize money is that over the years in the United Kingdom, the laws have changed and shifted back and forth. This idea was even brought back during the Crimean War, and came up again during World War I—decisions being made about how much the Royal Air Force should get, since they were helping to support the Navy. Then eventually prize money was abolished, and it was all paid into a central fund and distributed to everybody in the Navy, regardless of whether you were directly involved in the capture of the ship.
During the time of the Napoleonic Wars, the idea of prize money had a strong influence over how the Royal Navy fought. Because in some cases, it would be more profitable for you to capture a ship than to sink it, or to capture certain types of ships, or to go after certain types of ships. Many historians think that the idea of prize money played a significant role in the development of battle tactics, because you not only were trying to save your lives and defend your country, but you were also trying to maximize your profits that you would get through prize money. That influenced the decisions you would make.
Austen and the Navy
That’s everything we’re going to talk about in chapter four. Again, the Navy is going to come up again and again in this book, and we’re going to talk about it here and there.
For now, the thing to remember, the key takeaway here, I think, is how familiar Jane Austen was with the Navy, how much respect she had for its officers, and what a pivotal role it plays in Persuasion and in Mansfield Park. You can see she’s familiar with the army as well. She has a brother who was in the army, and you can see that in Pride and Prejudice. The influence of the Navy, I think, was even more so in her life. You can see that by the central role it plays in Persuasion.
Conclusion
That wraps up this episode of My Cousin Jane. As always, if you enjoy the show and would like to help support us, please consider clicking the little donate button or subscribing to our newsletter. Either way, thanks so much for listening.
