Women Sailors & Sailors' Women

by David Cordingly

  In a jovial mood, they repaired to the Two Fighting Cocks, a tavern next door to Mr. Winter’s house on Downing Street. After they had drunk the health of the King, Hannah decided to tell them who she really was. Turning to a marine she had sometimes shared a bed with she said, “Had you known, Master Moody, who you had between a pair of sheets with you, you would have come to closer quarters. In a word, gentlemen, I am as much a woman as my mother ever was and my name is Hannah Snell.”

  Her companions were at first shocked and unbelieving, but her sister and brother-in-law assured them it was the truth and said that they would swear it upon oath if necessary. When they had gotten over their initial surprise, her companions suggested that she should submit a petition to the Duke of Cumberland, captain general of the British army, for financial recompense for her injuries. On June 16, Hannah, dressed in a man’s suit, went to St. James’s Park to see whether she could meet him. She spotted him in an open carriage accompanied by Colonel Napier. Fortunately, the carriage was standing still while a servant was sent on some errand, so she had no difficulty in handing over her petition. The duke read it through in a leisurely manner and then handed it to Colonel Napier, asking him to look into the merits of Hannah’s case.

  On June 27, the Penny London Post reported that the duke had put her on the King’s List, which in theory meant that she would receive a pension of £30 per annum for the rest of her life, but there is some doubt as to whether she ever received any money from this source. Later in the year, however, she was admitted as an out-pensioner to the Royal Hospital, Chelsea. There is a brief entry in the admission book for November 21, 1750, which notes that Hannah Snell, age twenty-seven, served in Fraser’s regiment of the 2nd Marines and in Guise’s regiment for four and a half years, and was “Wounded at Pondicherry in the thigh of both legs, born at Worcester, her father a Dyer.” 12 The Royal Hospital had been founded by King Charles II in 1682 as a retreat for veteran soldiers, and Hannah Snell was one of only two women to be granted a pension by the institution. The other was Christian Davies, who had fought in Marlborough’s campaigns as a foot soldier in the 2nd Dragoons. 13 She had enlisted under the name Christopher Welsh, but her identity was revealed by army surgeons when she was wounded at the Battle of Ramilles in 1705.

  Meanwhile, Hannah had become famous, partly through the reports in the newspapers and partly through Robert Walker’s biography. As we have seen, she took advantage of the publicity to get onto the London stage, and she enjoyed three months of public adulation. When London audiences eventually tired of her act, she looked elsewhere for a living because the pension from Chelsea Hospital of 5 pence a day was not enough to support her. According to Walker’s biography, she opened a pub in Wapping called the Woman in Masquerade, but no evidence can be found of a pub by that name or of any licensee named Hannah Snell or James Gray. What seems to have happened is that she moved out of London to the country. Advertisements in the newspapers indicate that she took her stage act on tour in the provinces for a while. She performed at the Merchant’s Hall in Bristol in January 1751, and she was at the New Theatre in Bath on February 25. 14 We then lose sight of her for eight years.

  In November 1759, the following item appeared in The Universal Chronicle:

  Marriages. At Newbury, in the county of Berks, the famous Hannah Snell, who served as a marine in the last war, and was wounded at the Siege of Pondicherry, to a carpenter of that place. 15

  The carpenter’s name was Richard Eyles, and we know from the marriage registers of Newbury that the marriage took place on November 3. They had two sons, George and Thomas. George grew up to become a lawyer in London: It seems that a wealthy lady who admired Hannah’s heroism became his godmother and contributed to his education. In 1781, he was married at St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, and he lived to the age of eighty-five. 16 It is not known what happened to Thomas.

  There is no record of the death of Hannah’s husband, Richard Eyles, but on November 16, 1772, she married Richard Habgood at Wickham Chapel at Welford in Berkshire. Nothing whatsoever is known about him, and by 1778 he had apparently disappeared from her life, because in that year we get a fascinating glimpse of Hannah in the pages of the Reverend James Woodforde’s diary. Woodforde was rector of Weston Longeville in Norfolk, and when he learned that Hannah was in the neighborhood he went to see her. The entry in his diary for May 21, 1778, is worth quoting at length:

  I walked up to the White Hart with Mr Lewis and Bill to see a famous Woman in Men’s Cloaths, by name Hannah Snell, who was 21 years as a common soldier in the Army, and not discovered by any as a woman. Cousin Lewis has mounted guard with her abroad. She went in the Army by the name of John Gray. She has a Pension from the Crown now of £18, 5 shillings per annum and the liberty of wearing Men’s Cloaths and also a Cockade in her Hat, which she still wears. She had laid in a room with 70 Soldiers and not discovered by any of them. The forefinger of her right hand was cut off by a Sword at the taking of Pondicherry. She is now about 60 yrs of age and talks very sensible and well, and travels the country with a Basket at her back, selling Buttons, Garters, laces etc. I took 4 Pr of 4d Buttons and gave her 2 shillings, 6 pence. 17

  It is curious that of all the wounds that Hannah was reported to have received during the siege of Pondicherry, no mention was made of her losing a finger, the only injury that would normally have been visible. Perhaps this was the result of a later accident that she decided to claim as a war wound while she wandered the countryside as a peddler selling buttons. By 1785, Hannah was living with her son George in Stoke Newington, and both of them had hit hard times. George was later admitted to Ratcliffe Workhouse in London, but Hannah suffered an even more ignominious ending to her days. On August 6, 1791, she was admitted to Bethlem Royal Hospital, the notorious lunatic asylum more familiarly known as Bedlam. One newspaper recorded that she was admitted because she was “a victim of the most deplorable infirmity that can afflict human nature.” 18

  It is impossible to be certain what this infirmity was, but it is unlikely to have been Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease because these do not produce the sort of violent behavior that would have compelled her son George to commit her to a place like Bedlam. The most likely explanation is that she picked up syphilis from her first husband, the dissolute sailor James Summs, and that in 1791 she fell victim to tertiary syphilis, or what was called “general paralysis of the insane.” In the days before antibiotics, syphilis was widespread among the population and in its later stages was one of the most feared of all diseases. It could be picked up from a single sexual encounter and lie dormant for twenty or thirty years. When it reached the third stage, it attacked the brain and nervous system, resulting in wild and uncontrollable behavior. Whatever struck down Hannah rapidly took its toll, because she died on February 8, 1792, six months after being admitted to Bedlam. 19 She was sixty-eight years old.

  THE ONLY OTHER female sailor from Britain to receive similar publicity was Mary Anne Talbot. The story of her action-packed years in the army and the Royal Navy was published in 1804 by Robert Kirby, a London publisher who had taken her on as a domestic servant. The book sold so well that he produced a second, enlarged edition in 1809. The biography brought her temporary fame but did not prevent her from falling into debt and spending time in Newgate prison. She died on February 4, 1808, at the age of thirty. Her story was republished in 1893 alongside the stories of Hannah Snell, Madame Velasquez, and Mrs. Christian Davies in a book entitled Women Adventurers. 20 This gave an added credibility to her adventures and has resulted in her receiving a mention in most subsequent books dealing with female sailors and soldiers. However, recent research has cast doubts on her story, and it seems that much of it may have been fabricated either by her or by her publisher.

  Robert Kirby’s extended edition of the story was entitled The Life and Surprising Adventures of Mary Anne Talbot in the Name of John Taylor, a Natural Daughter of the Late Earl Talbot . . . Rel
ated by Herself. It tells how she was born in London on February 2, 1778, and was the illegitimate daughter of Lord William Talbot. After being educated at a boarding school in Chester, she fell into the hands of Captain Essex Bowen of the 82nd Regiment of Foot: “Intimidated by his manners, and knowing I had no friend near me, I became everything he could desire.” When Captain Bowen’s regiment was posted to Santo Domingo, he took her with him as his footboy. After various adventures in the West Indies, the regiment was ordered to Europe, and Mary became a drummer boy. She took part in several skirmishes and was present at the siege of Valenciennes, during which Captain Bowen was killed. She decided to desert from the army and made her way through the countryside to the coast, where she embarked on a French privateer.

  Soon afterward the privateer ran into the British fleet under the command of Admiral Howe. The crew of the privateer were captured, and Mary was interrogated by the admiral on board his flagship, the Queen Charlotte. Howe dispatched her to the 74-gun ship Brunswick, where she was appointed cabin boy to Captain John Hervey. Within a few months she found herself taking part in the Battle of the Glorious First of June 1794. The Brunswick engaged the French ship Vengeur, and an epic duel ensued, lasting three hours and ending with the sinking of the French ship. During the course of the action, Mary received two serious wounds: A musket ball went right through her left thigh, and a grapeshot lodged in the same leg near her ankle. The ship’s surgeon was unable to extract the grapeshot, so when the Brunswick returned to Portsmouth, Mary was sent to Haslar Hospital, where she spent four months as an outpatient.

  When she was discharged from the hospital, Mary joined the crew of the bomb ketch Vesuvius, commanded by Captain Tomlinson. The Vesuvius was dispatched with a British squadron to cruise down the French coast. Separated from the squadron by a gale, the vessel was intercepted and captured by two French privateers. Mary and the rest of the crew were sent ashore and confined in the prison at Dunkirk. After spending eighteen months as a prisoner of war, she was released during an exchange of prisoners. She became a steward on the merchant ship Ariel and sailed to America and back to London. When she went ashore at St. Katharine’s Dock, she and a fellow crew member fell into the hands of the press gang.

  I accosted the inspecting officers and told them I was unfit to serve His Majesty in the way of my fellow-sufferers, being a female. On this assertion they both appeared greatly surprised, and at first thought I had fabricated a story to be discharged, and sent me to the surgeon whom I soon convinced of the truth of my assertion. 21

  She was duly discharged, marking the end of her life at sea. She was only nineteen years old and spent the remaining years of her life in London. She made several applications to the navy pay office in Somerset House and apparently received most of the pay due to her for her service aboard the Brunswick and the Vesuvius. She seems to have drifted from job to job but found difficulty in making ends meet. She joined the Thespian Society in Tottenham Court Road and performed onstage in several women’s parts. Sometimes she dressed in male clothes and frequented sailors’ taverns. Eventually her debts mounted up, and she was consigned to Newgate prison. Her time there was made more bearable by the devoted attention of a woman friend she had been living with before her arrest. The woman joined her in the prison and helped to support her with her needlework: “She has continued with me ever since and remains a constant friend in every change I have since experienced.”

  The wounds in her leg constantly gave her trouble, and at various times she was treated in St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, St. George’s Hospital, and the Middlesex Hospital. While a patient at Middlesex, she was interviewed by a reporter from The Times of London. He described her as “a young and delicate female” and published his interview with her in the issue of November 4, 1799. The account that she gave him of her adventures differed in several respects from the story she later told the publisher Robert Kirby. She maintained that she was related to some families of distinction but said that at an early age she had been villainously deprived of a sum of money bequeathed to her by a deceased relation of high rank. She had fallen in love with a young naval officer and followed him to sea, where she had impersonated a common sailor before the mast. During a cruise on the North Sea, she had quarreled with her lover, left the ship, and gone into the army. However, her passion for the sea caused her to rejoin the navy. Instead of describing her experiences with Howe’s fleet at the Battle of the Glorious First of June, she told the reporter that she “received a severe wound, on board Earl St. Vincent’s ship, on the glorious 14th of February [the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, February 14, 1797], and again bled in the cause of her country in the engagement off Camperdown [October 11, 1797].” She told the reporter that her knee was shattered in the battle, which was not what she subsequently told Kirby.

  The name that Mary went by when she was masquerading as a boy in the army and the navy was John Taylor. The research of Stark has shown that there was a John Taylor who was a fourteen-year-old captain’s servant on board the Brunswick. 22 According to the ship’s muster book, he had joined the ship at Portsmouth on December 18, 1793 (and not been taken from a French privateer) and was discharged by request together with his brother Isaac on July 4, 1794. There is no mention of his being wounded at the battle on June 1, 1794, nor does his name appear in the muster books of Haslar Hospital for June and July 1794. Mary Talbot told Kirby that the bomb ketch Vesuvius was captured by the French in the English Channel, but the Vesuvius was in the West Indies at this time and was never captured by the French. There are also discrepancies in her description of her life in the army. There was no officer named Captain Bowen in the army lists of 1791 to 1796, and the 82nd Regiment of Foot was not in existence in 1792 nor was it sent to the West Indies until 1795, by which time Mary Talbot, according to her story, was in the navy. Her description of herself as “a natural [i.e., illegitimate] daughter of the late Earl Talbot” is equally suspect. Lord William Talbot never became an earl, and the late earl in 1804 was the fourteenth, George, who died in 1787.

  Perhaps we should not dismiss Mary Talbot’s story completely. It seems possible that she did dress as a man and spend time in the army and at sea. She certainly suffered from a wound of some sort in her leg, but whether this was received at the Battle of Camperdown, the Glorious First of June, or a shipboard accident is in doubt. It may be that when she fell on hard times she decided to embroider the experiences she had been through in the hope that she might make some money from her subsequent celebrity. Or it may be that Robert Kirby invented the entire story in the same way that the American publisher Nathaniel Coverly, Jr., and his hack writer invented the stories of Louisa Baker and Almira Paul.

  OF ALL THE women who went to sea dressed as men, the most fascinating must surely be the two pirates Mary Read and Anne Bonny. As their biographer said, “The odd incidents of their rambling story are such, that some may be tempted to think the whole story no better than a novel or romance,” but he went on to point out that their story was witnessed by the people of Jamaica who were present at their trial in 1720. The transcript of that trial has been preserved, as have several other contemporary documents, so there is enough evidence to confirm the events that they experienced at sea. 23 However, a considerable stretch of the imagination is required to picture the life they must have led while members of a pirate crew. There is a wealth of information available about life on board naval and merchant ships in the eighteenth century but relatively few documentary sources for the pirates. Apart from occasional reports from colonial governors, the records of pirate trials, and some accounts by men who survived pirate attacks, the primary source for the lives of female pirates, and most of the other pirates of the so-called Golden Age of Piracy, is a book entitled A General History of . . . the Most Notorious Pyrates, first published in London in 1724. It was so popular that four editions followed within two years and it was rapidly translated into French, Dutch, and German. The author was Captain Charles Johnson
, of whom virtually nothing is known. 24 At one stage it was suggested that this was a nom de plume for Daniel Defoe but this attractive theory has since been discredited. What is certain is that Captain Johnson must have attended several pirate trials in London and that he interviewed pirates and seamen who had voyaged with them. He assured his readers that “there is not a fact or circumstance in the whole book but he is able to prove by credible witnesses.”

  If we assume that Johnson’s description of the pirates is accurate, it is astonishing that Mary Read and Anne Bonny could have survived in such an alien world. 25 It was a world in which murder, torture, and casual violence were commonplace and where foulmouthed men indulged in drunken orgies that lasted for days on end. When pirates attacked a ship, they did not simply rob the passengers and crew of their money and valuables. They ransacked the ship, hurled unwanted goods and gear overboard, killed or mutilated anyone who offered opposition, and frequently finished the operation by setting fire to the vessel and marooning any survivors on some deserted, mosquito-infested island. In today’s terms, they were the maritime equivalent of the paramilitary gangs who have been responsible for massacres, rapes, and burnings in war-torn parts of Africa, the Balkans, and elsewhere. They were beyond the law and the normal decencies of human behavior, and among their number were men who took an active pleasure in killing.

  As far as the pirates were concerned, women were for recreation and pleasure and were not welcome on board their ships. Among the written articles that many pirates agreed to before a voyage was a rule that made the position clear: The crew of Bartholomew Roberts, one of the most formidable pirates, agreed: “No boy or woman to be allowed amongst them. If any man were to be found seducing any of the latter sex, and carried her to sea, disguised, he was to suffer death.” This makes the adventures of Mary Read and Anne Bonny all the more remarkable.