Brassey, Annie, 1839-1887

Anna Brassey, Baroness Brassey, née Allnutt, was born on October 7, 1839, in London, England.

She was an English travel writer who was orphaned from her mother at an early age and brought up at her grandfather's country estate. As a result, she became a bit of a tomboy, interested in the outdoors and the natural world. She had extensive grounds to play on and a private library from which she read voraciously, teaching herself botany and several languages. As a young woman, she suffered severe burns when she stood too close to a fireplace and her skirt caught fire. This event led her to develop a lifelong interest in emergency medical care and first aid, promoting the formation of branches of the St. John Ambulance Society all over the Empire. In 1860, she married Baron Thomas Brassey, 1st Earl Brassey (1836-1918), with whom she lived near his Hastings constituency. The couple had five children together before they traveled aboard their luxury yacht Sunbeam. What began as Brassey's journal-like letters to her father became "A Cruise in the Eöthen," published in 1872 for circulation among family friends. "A Voyage in the Sunbeam," describing their journey around the world in 1876–1877, ran through many English editions and was translated into at least five languages. Her accounts of later voyages include "Sunshine and Storm in the East" (1880), "In the Trades, the Tropics, and the Roaring Forties" (1885) and "The Last Voyage" (1889, published posthumously). She donated all the royalties to charity. The family took at least eight sailing trips lasting at least four months. These were not, however, pleasure cruises; Thomas demanded a rigorous sailing schedule and considered his duty before convenience, often to his wife's disappointment and frustration. At home in England, she performed charitable work, largely for the St. John Ambulance Association. Her collection of ethnographic and natural history material was shown in a museum at her husband's London house until it was moved to Hastings Museum in 1919. Brassey was an accomplished photographer. She joined the Photographic Society of London (later the Royal Photographic Society) in 1873 and remained a member until her death, and she exhibited some of her work in its exhibitions in 1873 and 1886.

Brassey's books contain little about herself and are nearly silent on her almost constant seasickness and debilitating bouts of neuralgia. In August 1887, Anna Brassey abruptly fell ill on a voyage to Australia. Her last diary entry before her death at sea on September 14, 1887, was made on August 29, 1887. The ship's log only records that she was buried at latitude 15° 50' S, longitude 110° 35' E, 100 miles from Makassar in the South Pacific.