Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(Anglo-Ind.) the regular groups of single women who came to India in search of husbands among the British community.

1929		Brisbane Courier 26 Oct. 24/2: ‘The Fishing Fleet’ [...] is the name given by custom and the unkind to the girls who ‘do the season’ in India, Malta, or Egypt, and who usually end the season with one of the unattached naval or military officers as a husband.
1932		P. Rodney Smythe Ceylon Commentary 38: The English ‘fishing-fleet’ lands at Bombay and displays its fading charms before the sex-starved bachelors of Northern India, whose taste in women has deteriorated since they left home.
1955		(ref. to late 19C) Listener (London) 964/1: [C]ertainly a pukka sahib, and yet one who scorned the tiffin-parties and the fishing fleet handled by Mrs. Hauksbee and those other ladies of the station, who have been caught for ever by Kipling in his Plain Tales.
1979		B. Cartland Flowers for the God of Love 16: This was a joke, for the girls who went out to India every year in the hopes of finding a husband were known always as the ‘Fishing Fleet,’ and those who came back unsuccessful in their quest were referred to as ‘Returned Empties’.
1992		(ref. to 18C) R. Pearson ‘Eighteenth Century Calcutta’ in Mankind Qly Fall 102: This led to an annual ‘fishing fleet’ of unmarried young Englishwomen who would visit relatives in India during the cool winter months in search of husbands among the many eligible young English bachelors resident in that country.