Fanny Jane Marlay (1819–1848), was the second-eldest daughter of military officer, Edward Marlay (1792–1839). A veteran of the Napoleonic Wars, Marlay came to Australia with his family around 1825, and by the time of Stokes’s visit was the barrack master-general in Sydney. Stokes and Fanny Jane Marlay married in Sydney in January 1841. Later the same year, Stokes succeeded Wickham to the command of the Beagle. Their daughter, Fanny Anne, was born in 1842 at The Vineyard, Parramatta, (the home of Phillip Parker King’s brother-in-law), where Fanny Jane was living while the Beagle continued its survey of the Australian coast. Back in England between 1843 and 1847, Stokes – whose 18 years on the Beagle had made him its longest-serving officer – published his two-volume account of its third voyage, Discoveries in Australia (1846). Promoted to captain and appointed to the command of the Acheron in 1847, Stokes sailed south again to undertake the first full hydrographical survey of New Zealand. Fanny Jane died in South Africa while en route to Sydney with Stokes in 1848.
