The trickiest problem facing the female sailor every day was using the toilet facilities, which in most ships were extremely primitive. The seamen usually climbed over the sides onto the leeward channels and urinated into the sea, or they went forward to the heads. This was the name given to the platform at the bows that was built over the beakhead and behind the figurehead. There the seaman crouched over a hole to defecate or sat on a crude box with a hole in the top, called a “seat of easement.” Presumably most women would have gone to the heads rather than attempting to urinate over the sides, although there is evidence to show that some women who cross-dressed made use of a small funnel of horn or metal to assist them. 17
The subject of menstruation is not mentioned in any of the accounts of female sailors, but women historians have suggested that this might not have been such a problem. One theory is that the young women on board ship lived such ferociously active lives that, like modern athletes in training today, they may have ceased to have periods. In the case of prepubescent girls, the hard life and poor diet could have delayed the onset of puberty for several years. Another theory is that so many seamen suffered from a range of diseases and ailments including piles and gonorrhea that they were not likely to comment on one of their number having bloodstained clothing on occasion.
Which brings us to the question of why a woman would want to go to sea dressed as a man. The traditional reason, and the one made popular in numerous ballads, was that women went to sea to join their sailor lovers. We have already seen it suggested that the young woman known as William Prothero followed her lover to sea. So did the seventeen-year-old Margaret Thompson, who left her uncle’s home in London in 1781 and joined the navy under the name George Thompson. She revealed that she was a woman when she was blamed for a theft and condemned to be flogged. When asked by the captain why she had taken the extraordinary step of going to sea disguised as a man she said it was “to see her sweetheart, who quitted England three years since, and is now resident at Bombay.” 18 Hannah Snell is said to have married a Dutch sailor and followed him to sea. And according to the History of the Pirates by Captain Charles Johnson, the pirate Anne Bonny left her father’s house in the Carolinas and ran away to sea with a feckless sailor. Perhaps these and others were prompted to go to sea because of love affairs, but the evidence suggests that most of the women who went to sea disguised as men did so for hard economic reasons or because they wished to escape from something in their past.
Anne McLean is a typical example of one who went to sea for economic reasons. She was born of poor parents in Ireland around 1829. When they died she found it difficult to obtain a livelihood, and “being stout and hardy, thought she might pass for a boy.” 19 She had a brother who was a seaman in the service of the East India Company, and this prompted her to go to Cork to sign on as a sailor. She made two voyages to the West Indies, but on her return in November 1846, she left the sea and spent three weeks in a factory in Glasgow. She did not like the confinement of the work there, so she found employment as a coal porter and then did some field labor at Pollokshaws on the outskirts of the city. She decided to go to sea again and applied to the recruiting sergeant of the East India Company in Glasgow. He was delighted to sign on a fit and experienced young seaman, but a sharp-eyed onlooker saw through her disguise and she had to confess that she was a woman. A newspaper report described her appearance in detail. She was eighteen years old and was exactly five feet, five and three-quarter inches in height. She had a manly look, “and was dressed in corduroy jacket, moleskin trousers, blue bonnet, striped shirt, and hob-nailed shoes.” She had a rather shrill voice but attempted to overcome this drawback by adopting such male habits as smoking and swigging back glasses of whiskey or porter. When she left the recruiting rendezvous after her gender had been revealed, she said she would try to get work on the railways as a navvy.
Forces of circumstance led to eighteen-year-old Betty Wilson’s going to sea. She was staying at a lodging house in the English town of Whitehaven when she was robbed of her clothes. We read that “in her extremity she was induced to rig herself in the clothes of a sailor who was asleep at the time in the same house.” 20 She had no friends or relations to help her, so she resolved to find employment as a seaman and embarked on the merchant ship Charlotte of Dundalk. She made two voyages to Ireland disguised as a man and would have made more but on going ashore in Belfast in September 1832, she got so drunk that she passed out in the street. She was picked up and taken in a handcart to the police station. It was while they were trying to resuscitate her that it was discovered she was a woman. She said that she had assumed the name James Wilson and was apparently deeply ashamed of the awkward situation she found herself in. A collection was taken to enable her to buy some women’s clothes.
The Morning Chronicle of May 22, 1813, carried a story of another woman who took to the sea when she lost her clothes. She was traveling on a coastal voyage as servant to a family when the vessel was wrecked and everyone else on board was drowned. She was cast naked on the shore, and finding the dead body of a seaman lying near her, she dressed herself in his clothes and begged her way to the nearest port. She managed to find work as a landsman on a ship and then transferred to the American schooner Revenge. She spent three years as a member of that crew, but when the Revenge was captured by the British frigate Belle Poule, she became a prisoner of war. Rather than be sent to a British prison, she revealed her sex and told her captors that she would like to be sent home to America. She said she was owed about $200 in wages and prize money. There was no mention of the woman’s name in the newspaper article, but there was a brief description: “She has a comely face, sun-burnt, as well as her hands; and appeared, while in men’s clothes, a decent, well-looking young man.”
A few women evidently went to sea to escape problems at home. It will be recalled that the fictitious Lucy Brewer left home to save her parents from shame when she realized she was pregnant. There are several real-life accounts of young women pursuing the same course. In 1813, Captain Embleton, master of the British collier Edmund and Mary, was sailing from Blyth to Ipswich when he discovered that one of the boy apprentices on his ship was female. His wife, who was traveling on board with him, interviewed the girl and learned that she was the daughter of a Northumberland widow. She had become pregnant and after she had given birth decided to leave home and never to return. She got hold of some men’s clothes, made one coastal voyage, and then applied to the owners of the Edmund and Mary, who agreed to take her on as an apprentice mariner. The discovery of her gender was made on the vessel’s second voyage. It seems that the girl had behaved well “and was considered a very active lad.” 21
Many of the women who went to sea disguised as men or boys attracted no more than a brief mention in the newspapers of the day and were quickly forgotten. But there were four female sailors whose stories circulated more widely. Their biographies were frequently reprinted, their lives inspired plays and ballads, and their names continue to crop up in books and discussions relating to the theme of the female warrior. Their names are Hannah Snell, Mary Anne Talbot, and the pirates Mary Read and Anne Bonny.
5
Hannah Snell, Mary Anne Talbot, and the Female Pirates
THE NEW WELLS Theater was in Goodman’s Fields, a few hundred yards north of the Tower of London. In the 1750s, it lay on the edge of the City. To the west was a jumble of rooftops and church spires dominated by the dome of St. Paul’s, and to the east were green fields and the scattered houses forming the village of Stepney. The theater was managed by William Hallam, who presented nightly performances of shows called harlequinades. These consisted of a series of acts that included anything from tightrope walking and acrobatics to song-and-dance routines. The performances usually began at five o’clock in the afternoon and sometimes lasted four or five hours. On June 29, 1750, an unusually large crowd assembled to see a twenty-seven-year-old woman named Hannah Snell sing two songs. The Whitehall and Genera
l Evening Post noted that “She appeared in her Marine Habit, and met with universal applause, as she behaved with great decency and good manners.”
Hannah Snell had spent four and a half years dressed as a man. 1 She had joined the marines, sailed to India, and taken part in the siege of Pondicherry, where she had been badly wounded. After nine months recovering in the hospital at Cuddalore, she sailed back to England on HMS Eltham and served as a seaman during the voyage. On her return she revealed her identity. She was discharged from the navy, and when the press got hold of her story, she became a celebrity. Her portrait was painted by several artists, a London publisher issued a vivid account of her life story, and everyone was curious to see the young woman who had bravely fought for her country disguised as a man.
It was a shrewd idea to cash in on her popularity by appearing on the London stage. Exactly how much she was paid for her appearances is not recorded, but her biographer noted that she persuaded the manager of the theater to pay her a weekly salary for the season, “which is such a stipend that not one woman in ten thousand of her low extraction and want of literature could, by any act of industry (how laborious soever) with any possibility procure.” 2 So between June 29 and September 6, Hannah performed every night except Sundays at the New Wells. For the first three weeks she restricted herself to singing two specially written songs. A typical verse gives an idea of the rousing, patriotic nature of the material:
In the midst of blood and slaughter, bravely fighting for my king,
Facing death from every quarter, fame and conquest home to bring,
Sure you’ll own ’tis more than common, and the world proclaim it, too,
Never yet did any woman more for love and glory do. 3
On July 19, it was decided to extend her repertoire by having her demonstrate the military exercises normally carried out by the marines on parade. Dressed in a red coat with brass buttons, white breeches, and a tricorn hat, she marched onto the stage to the sound of tabor and drum and accompanied by female attendants. It was reported that she performed the military exercises with such precision that even veteran soldiers who came out of curiosity were full of admiration.
There are articles in the London papers, and brief details appear in ships’ muster books and the records of Chelsea Hospital, but the prime source for the life of Hannah Snell is the biography that was written and published by Robert Walker. The first edition came out in July 1750 under the title The Female Soldier; Or, The Surprising Life and Adventures of Hannah Snell. A second and somewhat extended edition was published a few months later. Most of the basic facts recorded by Walker appear to be true and are confirmed by other sources, but he could not resist embellishing the story with sensational incidents, several of which are probably fictitious.
Hannah Snell was born in Worcester on April 23, 1723. Her father was a hosier and cloth-dyer. 4 Her parents died when she was twenty, and she moved to London to stay with her sister, Susannah, and her sister’s husband, James Gray, who was a house carpenter. They had a house on Ship Street in Wapping, not far from the waterfront. 5 Hannah spent two or three years with them, and during that time she met a Dutch sailor named James Summs. According to Walker, she married Summs on January 6, 1744, at the Fleet. There is no record of the marriage, but this is not surprising: The area near today’s Fleet Street was notorious in the eighteenth century for “Fleet Marriages.” These were originally carried out in the chapel of the Fleet prison by clergymen confined for debt but later took place in taverns and rooms in the neighborhood. No licenses or other formalities were involved, and therefore they were much favored by runaway couples and by sailors in a hurry to marry before rejoining their ships.
Walker tells us that Summs proved to be a bad choice for a husband. He not only kept company with criminals but took up with other women and sold off Hannah’s possessions in order to support his dissolute way of life. After a while he deserted her, but not before he had gotten her pregnant. She gave birth to a daughter, whom she named Susannah after her sister. The infant’s baptism is recorded in the registers of the church of St. George-in-the-East, Middlesex, in September 1746. The child lived for only six or seven months, and soon after her death Hannah decided to disguise herself as a man and set off to join the army. She dressed in her brother-in-law’s clothes and adopted his name. As James Gray, she traveled to Coventry, where she joined Colonel Guise’s 6th Regiment of Foot. According to her biographer, she intended to track down her husband to seek her revenge. This may or may not be the case, but it is curious that instead of looking for James Summs on a ship she headed inland to Coventry.
The regiment was sent to Carlisle, and there an incident reportedly took place that must surely be fictitious. Her sergeant wanted Hannah to act as an intermediary so he could have his way with a young woman. Hannah warned the woman of his intentions, and when the sergeant found out what she had done, he took his revenge on Hannah by accusing her of neglect of duty. She was sentenced to receive 600 lashes, and according to Walker’s account, she was tied to the city gates and received 500 lashes before some of the officers intervened. Since 200 or 300 lashes often amounted to a death sentence for hardened soldiers and seamen, it seems unlikely that she not only lived through this ordeal but managed to maintain her male disguise: It was standard practice for the flogging to be administered on a man’s bare back. Walker explained, “At that time her breasts were but very small; and her arms being extended and fix’d to the city gates, her breasts were towards the wall, so that then there was little or no danger of her comrades finding out the important secret, which she took such uncommon pains to conceal.” 6
She served as a soldier for between four months and two years and then deserted. Still using the name James Gray, she went to Portsmouth and in 1747 enlisted in Colonel Fraser’s regiment of marines. On October 24, 1747, she joined the sloop Swallow as a marine, and shortly afterward she sailed aboard her to India, where the vessel met up with the fleet commanded by Admiral Boscawen. 7 In August 1748, Boscawen’s fleet arrived at Cuddalore on the southeastern coast of India, and Hannah was dispatched with the other marines to take part in the siege of Pondicherry. Standing knee-deep in water, she reportedly fired thirty-seven rounds of shot before she was hit herself. She received six shot in her right leg, five shot in her left, and another shot in the groin. She lay wounded in the camp for a day and a night before she was carried to the hospital at Cuddalore. She allowed the surgeons to treat the gunshot wounds in her legs, but in spite of the dreadful pain, she did not let them see the wound in her groin because she did not wish to be revealed as a woman. The biography contains a graphic description of how she probed the wound and managed to extract the musket ball with her thumb and finger. She persuaded an Indian nurse to bring her lint and healing ointment to dress the wound, and as a result she recovered sufficiently from her injuries to be able to get up and about.
She was released from the hospital on August 2, 1749, and was temporarily assigned as a seaman to the frigate Tartar. On October 13, she was transferred to HMS Eltham, 44 guns, which set sail for England. 8 Among the various incidents on the voyage home two would appear to be entirely fanciful. In Lisbon she supposedly met an English sailor who told her that her husband was in prison for murdering a Genoese. While there is no reason why she should not have had news of her husband at some point, the picturesque details of James Summs’s life since abandoning her do not ring true. Even less convincing is her biographer’s description of a flogging she was subjected to while on board the Eltham. On this occasion, Hannah was accused of stealing a shirt from one of her shipmates. She was ordered to be clapped in irons for five days, flogged with twelve lashes, and then sent up to the foretop for four hours. Again Walker has to use some ingenuity to explain why she was not revealed to be a woman: “When her hands were lashed to the gang-way, she was in much greater danger of being discovered; but she stood as upright as possible, and tied a large silk handkerchief round her neck
, the ends whereof entirely covered her breasts, insomuch that she went through the martial discipline with great resolution, without being the least suspected.” Walker concludes, “At this time, ’tis true, the boatswain of the ship taking notice of her breasts, seemed surprised, and said, they were the most like a woman’s he ever saw; but as no person on board ever had the least suspicion of her sex, the whole dropped without any farther notice being taken.” 9
The Eltham arrived at Spithead on May 25, 1750. 10 The crew went ashore, and Hannah and some of her shipmates took lodging at the sign of the Jolly Marine and Sailor in Portsmouth. While she was staying there, Hannah met a young woman named Catharine, who was the sister-in-law of the man who ran the lodging house. Within a few hours they became very intimate, and Hannah found that “her amorous caresses were so engaging to Mrs. Catharine, that she fell victim to the young God of Love.” 11 Catharine would have liked to marry her, but Hannah told her that first she must go to London to collect her pay. She set off in the company of her shipmates, and when she reached the capital she went to see her sister and brother-in-law in Wapping. In spite of her marine uniform, her sister recognized her at once, flung her arms around her neck, and stifled her with kisses. After Hannah had told them about her adventures, they went to Downing Street. There Hannah met up with the other marines, and they called at the house of John Winter, who was agent to their regiment. He very readily paid them what they were due. Hannah was owed two and a half years’ pay and received £15 plus two civilian suits, which she later sold for 15 shillings.
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