Lady Annie Brassey (1839-1887) was an English writer, traveler, and amateur photographer who documented the extensive cruises she made with her family aboard their private yachts in published memoirs and photographs.
Annie married Thomas Brassey (1836-1918) on October 9, 1860, at St. George's Church, Hanover Square, London.
Annie and Thomas Brassey had five children together: Thomas A. Allnutt (called "T.A.B"), Mabelle Annie, Constance Alberta, Muriel Agnes, and Marie Adelaide. The Brassey family lived at Beauport Park near Hastings, and later at Normanhurst Court, a house built in 1870 in the parish of Catsfield, Sussex.
Between 1869 and 1887, the Brassey family made a series of extensive cruises aboard their private yachts. On these voyages, Lady Brassey collected photographs by local and regional commercial photographers, as well as natural and ethnographic specimens and artifacts. She also wrote lively travel accounts. She privately published recollections from the 1869 and 1872 trips illustrated with photographs (her own and others) and woodcut illustrations in The Flight of the Meteor, 1869-1871 (1872) and A Cruise in the "Eothen" (1872).
Lady Brassey contracted malaria in Syria in 1869 and from that point forward experienced episodic, debilitating attacks. She also suffered from bronchial problems and favored warmer climes to gain relief from her illnesses. On November 16, 1886, Lady Brassey left England on what turned out to be her final trip. The Sunbeam traveled to India, Borneo and Australia. Brassey died on September 14, 1887, off the coast of Brisbane, and was buried at sea the same day. A recounting of Brassey’s final trip, edited by Lady Mary Ann Broome and posthumously published under the title The Last Voyage, appeared in 1889.
The Last Voyage is available to view online at archive.org